AMALGHMA -An environment for measuring execution time and energy consumption in embedded systems

Measurement is an important activity whenever design embedded systems, as it provides means for platform characterization and selection as well as system validation and specification. The sample frequency is a key aspect for obtaining accurate and precise measures. Obtaining highly accurate and precise measures may require measurement systems able to gauge the system under measurement at very high sample rates. The sample rate and the sensing device of a measurement system are features that decisively affect its prices. Variability and noise are intrinsic phenomena to be handled, thus the adoption of robust and fast statistic methods are indispensable for accuracy, precision and may favour the cost reduction of measurement systems. This paper adopts a low cost measurement system for gauging execution time and energy consumption of embedded software applications. This platform allows designers to obtain accurate and precise estimates of software piece of codes as well as it is an attractive means for supporting embedded software code tuning.