Dr. Christian Ferdinand

Curriculum vitæ

Christian Ferdinand, born in 1965, completed the diploma de­gree program in computer science and electrical engineering at the Saarland University from 1985 to 1990.

From 1991 to 1998, he was a research associate at the De­partment for Compiler Construction and Programming Lan­guages at the Saarland University. At this time, he also partic­ipated in the ESPRIT projects PROSPECTRA (Programming by Specification and Transformation) and COMPARE (Compiler Generation for Parallel Machines). He was also a member of the Collaborative Research Center no. 124 for VLSI and Par­allelism.

In 1997, he completed his doctorate (summa cum laude), his dissertation being entitled “Cache Behavior Prediction for Real-Time Systems”. In recognition of his work, he was awarded the Dr. Eduard Martin Prize in 1999 for the best PhD thesis in computer science at the Saarland University.

Throughout his studies, Christian Ferdinand has always kept an eye on practical applications. He received an undergraduate student scholarship and a PhD student scholarship from Siemens AG. Since February 1998, he is the CEO of AbsInt, of which he is one of the co-founders. His current work is focused on code generation for digital signal processors and on timing analysis for real-time systems.

Research interests

  • Compiler construction
  • Parallel machines
  • Functional languages
  • Program semantics
  • Pattern matching
  • Worst-case execution time prediction
  • Cache analysis
  • Software visualization

Selected publications

  • Reinhold Heckmann, Christian Ferdinand. Verifying Safety-Critical Timing and Memory-Usage Properties of Embedded Software by Abstract Interpretation. DATE 2005, pages 618–619.
  • Reinhold Heckmann, Christian Ferdinand. Verifying Safety-Critical Properties of Embedded Software by Abstract Interpretation. Sicherheit 2005, pages 125–128.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Reinhold Heckmann. aiT: Worst-Case Execution Time Prediction by Static Program Analysis. IFIP Congress Topical Sessions 2004, pages 377–384.
  • Christian Ferdinand. Worst Case Execution Time Prediction by Static Program Analysis. IPDPS 2004.
  • Stephan Thesing, Jean Souyris, Reinhold Heckmann, Famantanantsoa Randimbivololona, Marc Langenbach, Reinhard Wilhelm, Christian Ferdinand. An Abstract Interpretation-Based Timing Validation of Hard Real-Time Avionics Software. DSN 2003.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Daniel Kästner, Florian Martin, Marc Langenbach, Martin Sicks, Stephan Wilhelm, Reinhold Heckmann, Nico Fritz, Stephan Thesing, Frank Fontaine, Henrik Theiling, Michael Schmidt, Alexander A. Evstiougov-Babaev, Reinhard Wilhelm. Validierung des Zeitverhaltens von kritischer Echtzeit-Software. Workshop: Automotive SW Engineering & Concepts. 33. Jahrestagung der GI, Frankfurt/M. Informatik 2003 – Innovative Informatikanwendungen, Band 1 (ISBN 3-88579-363-6), pages 335–339, Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), 2003.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Reinhold Heckmann, Henrik Theiling, Reinhard Wilhelm. Convenient User Annotations for a WCET Tool. WCET 2003, pages 17–20.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Reinhold Heckmann, Marc Langenbach, Florian Martin, Michael Schmidt, Henrik Theiling, Stephan Thesing, Reinhard Wilhelm. Reliable and Precise WCET Determination for a Real-Life Processor. EMSOFT 2001, pages 469–485.
  • Henrik Theiling, Christian Ferdinand, Reinhard Wilhelm. Fast and Precise WCET Prediction by Separated Cache and Path Analyses. Real-Time Systems 18(2/3), pages 157–179, 2000.
  • Christian Ferdinand. Cache Behavior Prediction for Real-Time Systems. PhD thesis, Saarland University. ISBN 3-9307140-31-0, Pirrot, 1997.
  • Christian Ferdinand. A Fast and Efficient Cache Persistence Analysis. Saarland University, Special Research Project 124, Technical Report 10/97, 1997.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Reinhard Wilhelm. Run-Time Guarantees for Processors with Caches. Universität des Saarlandes, Sonderforschungsbereich 124, 1997.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Florian Martin, Reinhard Wilhelm. Applying Compiler Techniques to Cache Behavior Prediction. Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Languages, Compilers and Tools for Real-Time System (LCTRTS) Las Vegas, Nevada, pages 37–46, 1997.
  • Martin Alt, Christian Ferdinand, Florian Martin, Reinhard Wilhelm. Cache Behavior Prediction by Abstract Interpretation. SAS’96, Static Analysis Symposium , LNCS 1145, pages 52–66, Springer, 1996.
  • Martin Alt, Christian Ferdinand, Georg Sander. Graph Visualisation in a Compiler Project. P. Eades, Z. Khang, eds., Software Visualisation, World Scientific, 1996.
  • Georg Sander, Martin Alt, Christian Ferdinand, Reinhard Wilhelm. CLaX, A Visualized Compiler. F. J. Brandenburg, ed., Graph Drawing, Symposium on Graph Drawing GD’95, LNCS 1027, pages 459–462, Springer, 1996.
  • Christian Ferdinand, Helmut Seidl, Reinhard Wilhelm. Tree Automata for Code Selection. Acta Informatica, volume 31, pages 741–760, Springer, 1994.
  • Martin Alt, Christian Fecht, Christian Ferdinand, Reinhard Wilhelm. The TrafoLa-H Subsystem. B. Hoffmann, B. Krieg-Brückner, eds., Program Development by Specification and Transformation. LNCS 680, pages 539–576, Springer, 1993.
  • Christian Ferdinand. Pattern Matching in a Functional Transformation Language Using Treeparsing. P. Deransart and J. Maluszynski, eds., Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming PLDI’90, LNCS 456, pages 358–371, Springer, 1990.
  • Christian Ferdinand. Pattern Matching in the Functional Transformation Language TRAFOLA. Master’s Thesis, Saarland University, 1990.
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