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Value analyser:Static value analysis for embedded systems

This is no-longer a stand alone tool but part of other AbsInt Tools

ValueAnalyzer is a tool for static analysis of register and memory contents. It is particularly useful for:

  • verifying the absence of illegal accesses to an embedded software system from within third-party modules provided as object code

 

  • initialization analysis for execution-time or stack-usage analyses, to improve precision and minimize manual annotations

 

 

Verifying the absence of illegal accesses

 

When developing complex safety-critical software systems, it is quite common to integrate third-party object code in it. However, it is usually difficult to verify that such code only does what you want it to do:

 

  • it might read variables it must not read

  • it might write variables it must not write

  • it might call functions it must not call

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Common reasons for such illegal accesses to your system by third-party code are:

 

  • programming errors (e.g., an iterator exceeds an array limit)

  • non-compliance with specifications

  • compiler or linker errors

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Illegal accesses may cause problems in the field. Additionally, license or liability issues can arise.

ValueAnalyzer provides the solution to these problems. It statically analyzes object code and reports any violation of your spec.

 

Initialization analysis

 

A common principle in embedded control software is that global data structures like (function-)pointer variables are initialized in separate code sections. Consequently, when a task or runnable is analyzed for its worst-case timing or stack usage, these initializations are unknown. This usually leads to a less precise analysis with more manual annotations.

 

With ValueAnalyzer you can automatically collect initialization data for global variables and feed it as auto-generated annotations to a WCET, stack-usage, or yet another value analysis.

 

Dead code elimination

 

Modern development standards such as DO-178B require unreachable code to be eliminated. Since the required testing effort is high, it is desirable to remove unreachable code as early as possible.

ValueAnalyzer automatically identifies code that is provably unreachable during any program execution.


Features

 

Interactive, easily explorable analysis results. Contents of registers and memory cells are shown before and after instruction execution per context.

 

Comprehensive reports on:

all memory accesses per function

all calls to user-selected functions

all accesses to user-selected memory areas

register and memory contents at the entry/exit of selected functions

 

Validation of static user-defined assertions, such as:

assertions that a user-selected instruction or function does (not) access a user-selected memory area

global assertions on user-selected memory areas (is read-only, is write-only, is inaccessible…)

 

Detection of unreachable code. Code reported as unreachable is guaranteed to be unreach­able for all possible inputs and each program execution under any circumstances.

 

 

Seamless integration with StackAnalyzer, aiT WCET Analyzer, and/or TimingProfiler in a single intuitive user interface.

 

Plugin for Jenkins, the leading open-source automation server.

 

 

Your benefits

 

The analysis is fully automatic and valid for all inputs. No input patterns need to be provided.

 

The analysis is conservative, i.e. the results are safe. All illegal accesses that are present will also be reported.

 

Supplied third-party software can be analyzed right away. It does not have to be integrated on the ECU.

 

No debug information is required. The results are not affected by possible bugs in the debug output.

 

 

Supported processors and compilers

 

ValueAnalyzer is available as an add-on to aiT, StackAnalyzer, and TimingProfiler, for all processor–compiler combinations supported by these tools.

 

Free trial

Request your free trial package today. simply email our customer support.

To receive an evaluation version of any tool, fill out and sign theEvaluation License Agreement form (PDF) and send or fax it to us.