a³ Release 21.10

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.

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.

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.

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Last updated on 28 October 2021 by alex@absint.com. Copyright 2021 AbsInt.
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