Software Performance Aspects during Maintenance and Evolution of Embedded Platforms

For real time embedded systems software performance is one of the most important quality attributes. Although a variety of general activities has been proposed as a basis for controlling and predicting the software performance in software, these activities are not widely used in the maintenance and evolution of embedded platforms. During the maintenance and evolution of an embedded platform, which is a type of product platform, the platform is upgraded to new versions and product families. The upgrade should be done with a low cost, compared to developing the complete platform or a complete new product. Performance problems can cause large risk to the success of the project, since cost prone activities such as hardware redesign, software architecture redesign, and manual software optimization must be started. This study investigates different aspects of software performance in terms of stakeholders, developments phases and process activities, when upgrading an embedded platform. Empirical research is used in order to propose activities and aspects to focus on during the software performance work. The result of the study is a number of activities and aspects to focus on, in the software performance work during the maintenance and evolution of an embedded platform.