a³ Release 21.10

Improved TriCore configuration

Improved value analysis

Improved statistics

General
GUI
Annotations
Analyses
Plain text

New target

StackAnalyzer, TimingProfiler, and ValueAnalyzer are now available for MIPS32.

Windows support

From this release on, a³ requires at least Windows 10.
Binaries larger than 2 GB are now supported under Windows.

General improvements

Improved handling of XTC with multiple CPU elements.
Added support for TargetLink 5.0 and 5.1.

Qualification Support Kits

New compiler-specific QSKs:
- aiT for TriCore with Tasking VX 6.2r2p3
- aiT for TriCore with Tasking VX 6.3r1p2
- StackAnalyzer for TriCore with Tasking VX 6.3r1p2

New test cases:

qk_ais2_program_point_offset_assembly	all architectures
qk_ais2_instruction_scope_nesting	all architectures
qk_setting_size_limit_register_relative_info	ARM, e200, e300, LEON3, M68020, MPC5xx, MPC755, PPC750, PPC, TriCore, V850, x86

The following test cases have been reworked to cover multiple different offset indices, including the wildcard index:
- qk_ais2_program_point_offset_access
- qk_ais2_program_point_offset_branch_pp
- qk_ais2_program_point_offset_call
- qk_ais2_program_point_offset_computed
- qk_ais2_program_point_offset_conditional
To consistently check for “exit with” in all annotation scopes that are now supported, the following test cases have been replaced:
- qk_ais2_register_values
- qk_ais2_memory_values
- qk_ais2_user_register_values
- qk_ais2_destroy_values
with the following new test cases:
- qk_ais2_enter_with
- qk_ais2_exit_with
- qk_ais2_destroy
The test case qk_setting_additional_executables has been updated to check for real executable overlay.

GUI

The Disassembly view now also shows assembly labels.
In context-sensitive statistics views, you can now select the active context used for the interactive value analysis results.
The option value for “Target” is now exported to AIS as predefined attribute target_type.
Improved GUI performance for projects with many analysis items.

Visualization and results

All percentages in statistics views are now rounded to two decimal places.
Improved visualization of C++ template functions in graphs.
In the Graph view, when switching to “exclusive” and back, the selected node will stay selected and centered.
The analysis results are now written to the XML results file incrementally, upon completion of each analysis.

Information views

Improved call annotations generated by Symbols view.
Improved tooltips for Statistics views.
The WCET-per-context view now allows sorting by routine name from the context menu of the corresponding column.

TriCore

The value of PSW.IO at the analysis begin can now be specified in the GUI.
When “Generic TriCore v1.6.x” is selected with no specific core specified under hardware options, the analysis now automatically assumes the value of the register CORE_ID to be [0,1,2,3,4,6].

Annotations

Improved handling of:
- user-specified labels
- complex area specifications and the match functor in particular
- “target not analyzed” annotations for code-duplicated call sites
Improved order in which annotations are resolved.
Improved AIS2 attribute redefinition checks.
The symbol suffix @static is no longer silently discarded when resolving symbolic program points. Annotations that still use this kind of symbol format need to be adjusted. That is,
```
routine "main@static" { ... }
```
should now be written as:
```
routine "main" { ... }
```

Now supporting annotations of the form

routine <pp1> calls to <pp2> exit with: ...;

Now allowing symbolic expressions to be used wherever symbol constants are expected. Examples:

routine if(analysisType() == "stack_analysis", "handle1", "handle2") infeasible;

loop "main.L1" bound: 0 .. switch(attribute("analysis_configuration"):
     "Core0" => 15,
     "Core1" => 10,
      ...,
      default => 0);

Improved partial evaluation of sets of values to delay computation to value analysis phase, e.g. by using reg-functor or other kinds of expressions that depend on analysis context. Example:
```
routine <pp> enter with:
    user("data") = [ mem(reg("r0") + (4 * var("i")), 4) for "i" : 0 to 3 ];
```
Extended consistency checks for “area contains data” annotations.
New annotation markers for “area contains data” annotations pointing to computed control flow instructions whose targets have been resolved with the annotated memory contents and to load/store instructions that access the annotated memory region.
Introducing wildcard offset for program-point offset specifications, allowing all instructions of a specific type to be annotated at once:
```
instruction "handleUpdate" -> computed(*) {
    calls: *("handleMsg"[]);
}
```

Now supporting nested instruction scopes to avoid repetitions of program-point specifications. For example,

instruction "main" -> return(1) { ... }
instruction "main" -> return(1) -> -1 instruction { ... }

can now be combined into:

instruction "main" -> return(1) {
    ...
    instruction -> -1 instruction { ... }
}

Introducing the new program-point specifications
-> assembly("name", <offset>)
-> assembly(match("name_regex"), <offset>).
New AIS2 functor number_of_elements that provides information about the number of elements of a set or interval.

Decoding

Binaries larger than 2 GB are now supported under Windows.
Improved handling of “area copy” when copying parts of sections.
The decoder now emits a warning if a control flow transition points to a global variable.

Value analysis

Improved handling of sub-registers.
Improved handling of register modifications that target only sub-registers.
The interactive value analysis now shows the types of values stored in registers and memory cells based on the type information obtained from DWARF debug info.

Control-flow, stack, and value analysis

ARM:
- Improved automatic resolution of computed control-flow transitions.
- The decoder now properly applies the ARM EABI mapping symbols to automatically detect the used instruction set (ARM or THUMB).
- Improved handling of “area contains data” and “enter/exit with” annotations when providing function pointers via address("<symbol>").
- Improved decoding of the MSR instruction.
  For example, “msr control_0b1000, r4” is now decoded as “msr control, r4”.
C28: Improved stack frame creation handling.
SPARC: Improved automatic switch table decoding.
TriCore:
- Improved precision for interleaved step-wise division operations.
- Improved handling of automatic stack annotations for complex control-flow modifications.
- Improved switch table decoding for GCC.
- Introducing the new program-point construct
```
interruptEntry(<pipn>)
```
  to determine the address of an ISR. Here, <pipn> refers to the pending interrupt priority number of the associated ISR.
- Improved handling of trapv and trapsv.
x86:
- Improved automatic decoding of computed control-flow transitions (x86-64).
- Support for decoding 32-bit x86 code contained in 64-bit ELF binaries.

Cache and pipeline analysis

Pipeline analysis now shows the total amount of configured cache-locked code and data.
Improved resource accesses pipeline analysis mode.
ARM Cortex-R5F:
- Support for misaligned memory accesses.
- Support for 64-bit writes to EMIF.
- Improved handling of return stack for speculative execution.
ColdFire: Improved MC5307 pipeline model.
e200: Improved handling of cache locked memory regions.

TimeWeaver

Added support for ARM ULINK Pro traces.
Improved import of Lauterbach FLOW export traces.
Added support for Lauterbach Trace32 ASCII trace exports with enabled System.Option MMUSPACES ON.
For other traces where the address-space ID (i.e. the process ID) is encoded in the address, TimeWeaver now offers the following attribute to determine and mask out the process ID:
```
attribute "trace_process_id_mask": <expr>;
```
For example, for an ARM Cortex-A53 with 64-bit addresses where the upper 16 bits store the process ID:
```
attribute "trace_process_id_mask": 0xffff000000000000;
```
Improved handling of conditional calls.
Improved return from interrupt handling for ARM.
Clarified error message in case of a conflict between analyzed and traced loop bounds.

a³ release 21.10