Influence of Onchip Scratchpad Memories on WCET prediction

In contrast to standard PCs and many high-performance com- puter systems, systems that have to meet real-time requirements usually do not feature caches, since caches primarily improve the average case performance, whereas their impact on WCET is generally hard to predict. Especially in embedded systems, scratchpad memories have become popular. Since these small, fast memories can be controlled by the programmer or the com- piler, their behavior is perfectly predictable. In this paper, we study for the first time the impact of scratchpad memories on worst case execution time (WCET) prediction. Our results in- dicate that scratchpads can significantly improve WCET at no extra analysis cost.