CFP: DIPES 2008: IFIP Working Conference on Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems Milano, Italy: 9/7-9/8, 2008

DIPES 2008 - Call for Papers

IFIP Working Conference on Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems
Milano, Italy
September 7th - 10th, 2008
hosted as part of the IFIP World Computer Congress

URL: http://www.c-lab.de/dipes

Conference Theme

Embedded systems build the key technological components of all kinds of complex technical systems, ranging from telecommunications devices to automobiles, aircraft and even complete production lines. Traditionally, such embedded control systems have been implemented in a monolithic, centralized manner, but distributed solutions have steadily been gaining popularity. In a distributed setup, the control task is carried out by a number of controllers distributed over the entire system and interconnected as a network by communication components such as field buses. The individual nodes of such a network usually consist of a processor (microcontroller) together with some sensors and actuators. More demanding local control applications require more powerful controllers based on parallel architectures such as multiprocessor systems-on-chips (MPSoCs) or VLIW. Distribution and parallelism in embedded system design increase the engineering challenges and demand new development methods!
and tools. Also, the increasing relevance of intelligent applications like autonomous systems or systems with self-x properties calls for new design methods and tools. Due to the growing complexity of these kinds of embedded systems, their development requires new, consistent and integrated design methodologies, covering the path from specification to implementation.

DIPES will be an ideal opportunity to present exchange and discuss the state of the art, novel ideas, actual research results, and future trends in the field of distributed embedded systems. Contributors and participants from both industry and academia are encouraged to take active part in this conference.

Topics

Authors are invited to submit manuscripts of original unpublished research work in all areas. Relevant topics include (but are not limited
to):

1. Specification and modelling of complex embedded systems
2. Design methodology for distributed and parallel embedded systems
3. Design support for intelligent features in embedded systems
4. Validation and verification of embedded systems
5. Novel programming techniques for distributed real-time systems
6. Operating systems and middleware for distributed real-time systems
7. Self-x properties in distributed embedded systems
8. Partitioning and allocation of tasks
9. Distributed real-time operating systems
10. Real-time communication systems
11. Software synthesis for real-time applications
12. Mixed continuous/discrete systems
13. HW/SW co-design for distributed embedded systems
14. Specific (parallel) architectures for distributed embedded systems
15. Dependability and fault tolerance of distributed embedded systems
16. Low power design of embedded systems
17. Case studies of distributed embedded systems

Important dates

December 1st, 2007: Submissions due
February 20th, 2008: Notification of acceptance
March 20th, 2008: Final papers due

Paper Submission

You may submit full papers up to 10 pages or extended abstracts (3 - 5 pages) describing original work on the topics above or related ones via the DIPES conference URL http://www.c-lab.de/dipes. Extended abstracts should provide a summary of the main results and some details to allow the program committee to assess their merits and significance, including references and comparisons. The contribution must be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere, including journals and the proceedings of other symposia or workshops. One author of each accepted paper has to present it at the conference. The proceedings will be published by Springer Science and Business Media, the official IFIP publisher. The final paper may be up to 10 pages in 11 point or larger with a text area of 7" x 4.75". Further formatting guidelines can be found at the publisher's website http://springer.com/series/6102 or at the DIPES website.

Conference Chairs

General Chair: Wayne Wolf, University of Princeton, USA
PC Chair: Bernd Kleinjohann, University of Paderborn/C-LAB, Germany
Publication Chair: Lisa Kleinjohann, University of Paderborn/C-LAB, Germany

CFP: UML & AADL 2008 (4/08, Belfast, Northern Ireland)

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CALL FOR PAPERS : UML&AADLÂ'2008

http://www.artist-embedded.org/artist/Topics,1199.html

Workshop held in conjunction with ICECCS 2008
The thirteenth IEEE International Conference on
Engineering of Complex Computer Systems

http://www.iceccs.org/

http://www.compeng.ulster.ac.uk/events/ecbs2008/workshops.php

April 02 , 2008
Belfast, Norther Ireland

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Submission deadline: December 01, 2007
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The first OMG sponsored "UML & AADL" workshop was held at ENST Paris (Telecom Paris) in 2006. The workshop was focused on embedded real-time software-intensive systems that are usually found in the avionic, vehicular control and aerospace fields. The workshop clearly had a main concern which was to determine what architectural levels would be better described with UML as opposed to AADL and vice versa, how to use these two standardised languages together (integrating them using an MDA approach, e.g.: TOPCASED).

The second edition of the workshop, "UML&AADL'2007" was held in conjunction with the 12th International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (ICECS07). The AADL standard had just been completed with a behaviour annex proposal and the MARTE UML profile was about to be accepted. Thus, the main concerns of the second edition of the workshop were centred around which parts of the MARTE UML profile could be incorporated into an AADL PSM (Platform Specific Model) without overly complicating the language, how to maintain the non-functional properties and aspects of the design throughout the whole software engineering process and how to specify functional and non-functional properties of AADL components.

The third edition of the workshop, "UML&AADL'2008" will again be held with the ICECCS conference since many concerns are found to be common and/or complementary. The proposed topics of the workshop are revolve around the architecture modeling of complex systems. This year, the main concerns are:
• How to handle code generation from a high-level specification
• How to ensure architecture model verification
• How to model DRE (Distributed Real-time Embedded) systems with an MDA approach
• How to carry out scheduling analysis from system models

Topics:
======

New real-time systems have increasingly complex architectures because of the intricacy of the multiple interdependent features they have to manage. They must meet new requirements of reusability, interoperability, flexibility and portability. These new dimensions favour the use of an architecture description language that offers a global vision of the system, and which is particularly suitable for handling real-time characteristics.

Due to the even more increased complexity of distributed, real-time and embedded systems (DRE), the need for a model-driven approach is more obvious in this domain than in monolithic RT systems. The purpose of this workshop is to provide an opportunity to gather researchers and industrial practitioners to survey existing efforts related to behaviour modelling and model-based analysis of DRE systems.

This workshop seeks contributions from researchers and practitioners interested in all aspects of the representation, analysis, and implementation of DRE system behaviour and/or architecture models. To this end, we solicit short papers (~6 pages long) as well as full papers (not more than 20 pages) related to, but not limited to, the followingprincipal topics:

• Code generation from UML (action language) or an ADL (for instance,building a runtime corresponding to what is specified in an ADL description, code patterns) towards multiple target languages. Presentation of code genaration frameworks, tool suites or component-based programming will be particularly appreciated
• Model verification to verify functional properties against constraints given in the architecture model
• Verification of non-functional properties given in the architecture model against constraints given in the model
• Modelling DRE systems with languages such as UML and/or AADL, ACME,Wright, or other ADLs
o Behaviour modelling (concerns described in the Scope part)
o How to enhance modelling languages and ADLs to capture real
time,
embedded and distributed aspects in a convenient manner
o How to specify real-time requirements and characteristics in
modelling languages

Workshop Format
===============
This full-day workshop will consist of an introduction of the topic by the workshop organizers, presentations of accepted papers, and in depth discussion of previously identified subjects emerging from the submissions. A summary of the discussions will be made available.

Submission and Publication
==========================
To contribute, please send a position paper or a technical paper to agusti[dot]canals[at]c-s[dot]fr with "ICECCS08 UML&AADL Workshop" in the title. Papers should not exceed 6 pages. Submitted manuscripts should be in English and formatted in the style of the IEEE Computer Society Proceedings Format. Preferably, submissions should be in PDF format.

Workshop proceedings will be distributed to all participants and made available through the workshop website.

The seven best papers and a workshop overview will be published in the IEEE Computer Society Press Proceedings.

Additionally, all selected papers will be availables in an "IEEE Xplore Digital Library File Cabinet".

IMPORTANT DATES
===============
Submission deadline: December 01, 2007
All Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2007
Workshop date : April 02, 2008

Organizers
==========
Agusti Canals (CS, France)
Sébastien Gérard (CEA-LIST, France)
Isabelle Perseil (ENST, France)

Programme Committee:
Yamine Ait Ameur (LISI / ENSMA, France)
Jean-Paul Bodeveix (IRIT, France)
Agusti Canals (CS, France)
Mamoun Filali (IRIT, France)
Madeleine Faugère (THALES, France)
Robert France (Colorado State University, USA)
Sébastien Gérard (CEA-LIST, France)
Irfan Hamid (ENST, France)
Bruce Lewis (US Army AMCOM)
Dominique Mery (LORIA, France)
Thierry Millan (IRIT, France)
Richard Paige (University of York, United Kingdom)
Douglas C. Schmidt (Vanderbild University, USA)
Françoise Simonot Lion (LORIA, France)
Oleg Sokolsky (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Jing Sun (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Martin Törngren (KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Thomas Vergnaud (CNES, France)
François Vernadat (CNRS-LAAS, France)
Sergio Yovine (CNRS-Verimag, France)
André Windisch (EADS Military Aircraft, Germany)

CFP: Software and Compilers for Embedded Systems (SCOPES 2008), March 13-14, Munich

11th International Workshop on
Software and Compilers for Embedded Systems

SCOPES 2008

March 13-14, 2008
ICM, Munich, Germany

http://www.scopesconf.org

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CALL FOR PAPERS

ABOUT SCOPES 2008

The influence of embedded systems is constantly growing. Increasingly powerful and versatile devices are developed and put on the market at a fast pace. The number of features is increasing, and so arre the constraints on the systems concerning size, performance, energy dissipation and timing predictability. Since most systems today use a processor to execute an application program rather than using dedicated hardware, the requirements can not be fulfilled by hardware architects alone: Hardware and software have to work together to meet the tight constraints put on modern devices.

One of the key characteristics of embedded software is that it heavily depends on the underlying hardware. The reason of the dependency is that embedded software needs to be designed in an application specific way. To reduce the system design cost, e.g. code size, energy consumption etc., embedded software needs to be optimized exploiting the characteristics of the underlying hardware.

SCOPES focuses on the software generation process for modern embedded systems. Topics of interest include all aspects of the compilation process, starting with suitable modeling and specification techniques and programming languages for embedded systems. The emphasis of the workshop lies on code generation techniques for embedded processors. The exploitation of specialized instruction set characteristics is as important as the development of new optimizations for embedded application domains. Cost criteria for the entire code generation and optimization process include runtime, timing predictability, energy dissipation, code size and others. Since today's embedded devices frequently consist of a multi-processor system-on-chip, the scope of this workshop is not limited to single- processor systems but particularly covers compilation techniques for MPSoC architectures.

In addition, this workshop intends to put a spotlight on the interactions between compilers and other components in the embedded system design process. This includes compiler support for e.g. architecture exploration during HW/SW codesign or interactions between operating systems and compilation techniques. Finally, techniques for compiler aided profiling, measurement, debugging and validation of embedded software are also covered by this workshop, because stability of embedded software is mandatory.

SCOPES 2008 is the 11th workshop in a series of workshops initially called "International Workshop on Code Generation for Embedded Processors". The name SCOPES has been used since the 4th workshop. The scope of the workshop remains software for embedded systems with emphasis on code generation (compilers) for embedded processors. SCOPES will be held in cooperation with ACM SIGBED and is sponsored by ARTIST2 and EDAA. SCOPES 2008 is co-located with the DATE conference.

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IMPORTANT DATES

Full paper submission: Dec 01, 2007
Notification of acceptance: Jan 30, 2008
Final paper submission: Feb 21, 2008

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SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Papers should present original research results not published or submitted for publication in other forums. Papers should not exceed 10 pages (single- spaced, 2 columns, 10pt font; see the DATE website http://www.date-conference.com for detailed guidelines) and must be submitted using the SCOPES paper submission website. To permit blind review, submissions should not include the author names. Accepted papers will be published via the ACM digital library.

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GENERAL CHAIR

Heiko Falk
Computer Science 12
University of Dortmund, DE

PUBLICITY CHAIR

Peter Marwedel
Computer Science 12
University of Dortmund, DE

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Website: http://www.scopesconf.org
Mailing List: http://www.scopesconf.org/list

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SPONSORS

SCOPES 2008 is kindly supported and sponsored by the following companies and
institutions:

+ ACM SIGBED
http://www.acm.org/sigbed

+ Artist2 European NoE
http://www.artist-embedded.org

+ European Design and Automation Association, EDAA
http://www.edaa.com

More information about the Artist Mailing List:
http://www.artist-embedded.org/artist/Artist-Mailing-List.html

CFP: 2008 ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers

Call for Papers
2008 ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers
(Computing Frontiers 2008)

Ischia, Italy
May 5-7, 2008

http://www.computingfrontiers.org/
Sponsored by:

Association for Computing Machinery
ACM Special Interest Group on Microarchitecture

=================================================================

Call for Papers - Computing Frontiers 2008

The increasing needs of present and future computation-intensive applications have stimulated research in new and innovative approaches to the design and implementation of high-performance computing systems. These boundaries between state of the art and innovation constitute the computing frontiers that must be pushed forward to provide the computational support required for the advancement of all science domains and applications. This conference focuses on a wide spectrum of advanced technologies and radically new solutions; it is designed to foster communication among many scientific and technological disciplines.

Authors are invited to submit papers on all areas of innovative computing systems that extend the current frontiers of computer science and engineering and that will provide advanced systems for current and future applications.

Papers are sought on theory, methodologies, technologies, and implementations concerned with innovations in computing paradigms, computational models, architectural paradigms, computer architectures, development environments, compilers, and operating environments. Papers should be submitted to one of the following areas:

* Non-conventional computing
* Next-generation high performance computing, esp. novel high-performance systems (including Cell, GPGPU and custom accelerators)
* Applications, programming models and performance analysis of parallel architectures and novel high-performance systems
* Virtualization and virtual machines
* Grid computing
* Compilers and operating systems
* Workload characterization of emerging applications
* Service oriented architecture (SOA) and system impact
* Supercomputing
* SOC architectures, embedded architectures and special purpose architectures
* Temperature, energy, and complexity-aware designs
* System management and security
* Quantum computing
* Computational biology
* Reconfigurable computing
* Autonomic and organic computing
* Computation intelligence frontiers: theory and industrialapplications
* Fault tolerance and Reliability

Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the HiPEAC journal.

Submitted manuscripts should not exceed 20 double-spaced, single-column pages, including figures, tables, and references. Submission implies that at least one author will register for the conference and present the paper, if accepted. Submissions must be made electronically as Adobe PDF files through the conferenceweb-site, and must not be simultaneously submitted to any other publication outlet.


=========================================================
Computing Frontiers 2008 Committee Information
=========================================================

* General Chair: Alex Ramirez, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC)
* Program Chairs: Michael Gschwind, IBM TJ Watson Research Center,
Gianfranco Bilardi, University of Padova

* Finance Chair: Carsten Trinitis, TU M’nchen
* Special Session Chair: Osman Unsal, BSC, ES
* Local Arrangements Chair: Claudia Di Napoli, CNR
* Publicity Chair: Julita Corbalan, UPC
* Liaison Chair for Asia: Hitoshi Oi, University of Aizu
* Registration Chair: Monica Alderighi, INAF
* Publication Chair: Sergio D'Angelo, INAF, IT
* Web Chair: Greg Bronevetsky, LLNL

=========================================================
Important dates
=========================================================

* Paper submission: *December 7, 2007*
* Author notification: *January 18, 2008*
* Final papers due: *February 22, 2008*

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Forms / downloads
=========================================================
* Call For Papers: http://www.computingfrontiers.org/docs/cf08_cfp.pdf

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Sponsors
=========================================================

Association for Computing Machinery ACM Special Interest Group on Microarchitecture
http://www.acm.org/sigmicro

CFP: First Workshop on Programmability Issues for Multi-Core Computers (MULTIPROG)

CALL FOR PAPER

First Workshop on Programmability Issues for Multi-Core Computers (MULTIPROG)

Held in conjunction with the 3rd International Conference on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers (HiPEAC) Goteborg, Sweden, January 27, 2008


Goal of the Workshop
--------------------
As computer manufacturers are embarking on the multi-core roadmap, which promises a doubling of the number of processors on a chip every other year, the programming community is faced with a severe dilemma. Until now, software has been developed with a single processor in mind and it needs to be parallelized to take advantage of the new breed of multi-core computers. As a result, progress in how to easily harness the computing power of multi-core architectures is in great demand.

This workshop aims to bring together, and cause fruitful interaction between, researchers interested in programming models and their implementation and in computer architecture with the common interest in advancing our knowledge how to simplify the task of parallelization of software for multi-core platforms. A wide spectrum of issues are central themes for this workshop such as what the future programming models should look like to accelerate software productivity and how it should be implemented at the runtime, the compiler, and the architecture level.

We will prioritize papers reporting on on-going work that address cross-cutting issues and that provide thought-provoking insights into the main themes. A special issue that contains the accepted papers is planned for the second issue of Transactions on HiPEAC in June 2008.


Topics of interest
-----------------

Papers are sought on topics including, but not limited to:

* Multi-core architectures
o Architectural support for compilers/programming models
o Processor (core) architecture
o Memory system architecture
o Performance/power issues
* Programming models for multi-core architectures
o Language extensions
o Run-time systems
o Compiler optimizations and techniques
* Applications for multi-core architectures
o Methodologies
o Benchmarking


Organizers
----------

Eduard Ayguade Barcelona Supercomputing Center Spain eduard[at]ac.upc.edu
Roberto Gioiosa Barcelona Supercomputing Center Spain roberto.gioiosa[at]bsc.es
Per Stenstrom Chalmers University of Technology Sweden pers[at]chalmers.se
Osman Unsal Barcelona Supercomputing Center Spain osman.unsal[at]bsc.es


Important dates
---------------
Submission deadline: Oct 5, 2007
Notification to authors: Nov 16, 2007
Final version of accepted papers: Dec 7, 2007

Paper submission
----------------

Submitted papers should use the LNCS format and should be 12 pages maximum. Manuscript preparation guidelines can be found at the LNCS specification web site (go to -> For Authors -> Information for LNCS Authors).
In order to submit your paper go to http://multiprog.ac.upc.edu/CRP/.


Program committee
-----------------

David Bernstein IBM Research Lab in Haifa Israel
Mats Brorsson KTH Sweden
Barbara Chapman University of Houston USA
Marcelo Cintra University of Edinburgh U.K.
Magnus Ekman Sun Microsystems USA
Pascal Felber University of Neuchatel Switzerland
Guang Gao University of Delaware USA
Roberto Georgi University of Siena Italy
Rachid Guerraoui EPFL Switzerland
Erik Hagersten Uppsala University Sweden
Michael Hohmuth AMD - Dresden Germany
Tim Harris Microsoft Research - Cambridge U.K.
Haoquiang Jin NASA Ames USA
Stefanos Kaxiras University of Patras Greece
Ami Marowka Shenkar College of Engineering and Design Israel
Milo Martin University of Pennsylvania USA
Dieter an Mey RWTH, Aachen Germany
Kathy O'Brien IBM Watson Research USA
Mitsuhisa Sato University of Tsukuba Japan
Sanjiv Shah Intel USA
Andre' Seznec IRISA France
Peng Wu IBM Watson Research USA


More details about the workshop can be found at http://multiprog.ac.upc.edu/

EWeek Foundations of Component-based Design slides available

The slides from the Embedded Systems Week "Foundations of Component-based Design", workshop in Salzburg are now available.

Honda Initiation Grant Fall Symposium: Mountain View, CA, 11/15

The Honda Initiation Grant Fall Symposium will be held on the afternoon of November 15 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

The Honda Initiation Grant (HIG) is a university outreach program designed to develop collaborative research between Honda and members of the academic community. The program typically awards several research grants each year - each between 50 & 100K - and also hosts a Fall Symposium which is set up to promote face-to-face collaboration between Honda executives, associates and university faculty attendees.

Many Honda executives, engineers and scientists will be on hand exhibiting a broad variety of Honda research interest including automotive, computer science, chemistry, materials and aviation technology. In addition to the many research topics, we will be giving a demonstration with the ASIMO humanoid robot, and presenting the HondaJet, world premiere, dynamic large-scale detailed model.

Using model-based design to test auto embedded software

The EETimes article, "Using model-based design to test auto embedded software," by Jim Tung of the Mathworks gives a good overview of the issues involved in testing embedded software with a focus on the automotive sector.

CFP: 20th Euromicro, Prague.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

20th EUROMICRO CONFERENCE ON REAL-TIME SYSTEMS

http://ecrts08.ecrts.org/


Prague, Czech Republic, July 2-4, 2008

Organised by the Euromicro Technical Committee on Real-time Systems

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* 11 January 2008: Submission deadline for full papers

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THEME AND TOPICS OF INTEREST

The twentieth EUROMICRO Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS'08) is a forum aimed at covering state-of-the-art research and development in real-time computing. Papers on all aspects of real-time systems are welcome. These include, but are not limited to:

APPLICATIONS: consumer electronics; multimedia and entertainment; process control; avionics, aerospace; automotive; telecommunications.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND HARDWARE: communication networks; embedded devices; hardware/software co-design; power-aware and other resource-constrained techniques; systems on chip; time engines and time synchronization; wireless sensor networks.

SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGIES: compiler support; component-based approaches; middleware and distribution technologies; programming languages and operating systems.

SYSTEM DESIGN AND ANALYSIS: modelling and formal methods; probabilistic analysis for RT systems; quality of service support; reliability, security and survivability in RT systems; scheduling and schedulability analysis; worst-case execution time (timing) analysis; validation techniques.

This year we want to continue encouraging the submission of papers on industrial case studies, application of real-time technology on realistic systems, worst-case execution time analysis and measurement, and real-time operating systems implementations. An Advisory Board of representatives from industries will be appointed to evaluate papers with respect to industrial or strategic impact.

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SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Full papers must be submitted electronically through our web form in pdf format (see "submission page" in http://ecrts08.ecrts.org/). The material must be unpublished and not under submission elsewhere. The paper must be in the same format as in the final published proceedings (10 pages maximum, 2 columns, 10 pt). Papers exceeding the maximum length will not be reviewed. See the submission page for more details.

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CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Twentieth Anniversary Celebrations.
In recognition of this being the 20th year of this conference a number of special events will be organised. This will include keynote presentations, historical reflections and visions of the future!

Work-in-Progress Session
Pursuing a successful tradition in the ECRTS series, a special Work in Progress (WiP) session will be organised. This session is mainly intended for presentation of on-going and recent work.

Satellite workshops and tutorials

A set of Satellite Workshops will be organized. They are in most cases the continuation of already successful series of workshops, focusing on hot topics.

A separate call for papers will be issued later for both WiP and satellite workshops. Please visit the conference website later for further information.

Awards

In this year's event, besides the Best Paper Award, a selection of best papers will be invited for a Special Issue of an international journal.

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IMPORTANT DATES


Submission of full papers: 11 January 2008

Notification of acceptance: 24 March 2008

Camera-ready paper due: 16 April 2008

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LOCAL INFORMATION

The ECRTS 08 Conference will be held in Prague that is the historical, cultural and industrial center of the Czech Republic. The centre of Prague is compact and intimate, making sightseeing a real pleasure. During a walk through the city, you will be met with a huge number of architectural treasures, representative of Prague's rich and varied history. There are Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Classicist buildings, as well as various neo-historic styles and Art Nouveau.

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ORGANISERS

GENERAL CHAIR
Zdenek Hanzalek, Czech Technical University in Prague,
Czech Republic, hanzalek@fel.cvut.cz

PROGRAM CHAIR
Alan Burns, University of York, UK
burns@cs.york.ac.uk

REAL-TIME TECHNICAL COMMITTEE CHAIR
Gerhard Fohler, Kaiserslautern University of Technology, Germany
fohler@eit.uni-kl.de

PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

Tarek Abdelzaher, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA
Luis Almeida, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
James H. Anderson, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Neil Audsley, University of York, UK
Karl-Erik Arzen, Lund University, Sweden
Theodore P. Baker, Florida State University, USA
Sanjoy Baruah, The University of North Carolina, USA
Luca Benini, Universiti di Bologna, Italy
Scott Brandt, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Render Bril, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Georgio Buttazzo, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy
Samarjit Chakraborty, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Maryline Chetto, IUT de Nantes, France
Jean-Dominique Decotignie, CSEM, Switzerland
Rolf Ernst, TU Braunschweig, Germany
Gerhard Fohler, Technische Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany
Steve Goddard, University of Nebraska, USA
Jan Gustafsson, at Mälardalen University, Sweden
Michael González Harbour, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain
Hermann Härtig, TU Dresden, Germany
Tei-Wei Kuo, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
George Lima, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brasil
Giuseppe Lipari, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy
Julio Medina, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain
Frank Muller, North Carolina State University, USA
Stefan Petters, National ICT, Australia
Michale Pont, University of Leicester, UK
Isabelle Puaut, University of Rennes / IRISA, France
Peter Puschner, Technische Universitaet Wien, Austria
Krithi Ramamritham, IIT Bombay, India
Pascal Richard, University of Poitiers, France
Rodrigo Santos, Universidad Nacional del Sur-CONICET, Argentina
Eduardo Tovar, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Tullio Vardanega, University of Padua, Italy
Rich West, Boston University, USA

EETimes: Software stuck at C, No parallel languages for multi-core on horizon

The EETimes article, "Embedded software stuck at C, No parallel languages for multi-core on horizon," discusses a panel at Power Architecture Developer Conference. The panel discusses some of the impediments to multicore programming. David Kleidermacher, chief technology officer of Green Hills Software, is quotes as saying, "Eighty-five percent of all embedded developers use C or C++. Any other language is a non-starter, ... I don't have much hope a new parallel language will get a foothold." This points out the opportunity for coordination languages and for new machine architectures such as Precision Timed Machines (PRET).

Position Statement for Panel on Grand Challenges in Embedded Software

Professor Edward A. Lee presented the following position statement at EMSOFT 07 in Salzburg, Austria, Oct. 1, 2007. A PDF version is also available.

Abstractions currently used in computing hide timing properties of software. As a consequence, computer scientists have developed techniques that deliver improved average-case performance and/or design convenience at the expense of timing predictability. For embedded software, which interacts closely with physical processes, timing is usually an essential property. Lack of timing in the core abstractions results is brittle and non-portable designs. Moreover, as embedded software becomes more networked, the prevailing empirical test-based approach to achieving real-time computing becomes inadequate.

I believe it is necessary to reintroduce timing predictability as a first-class property of embedded processor architectures. Architectures currently strive for superior average case performance that regrettably ignores predictability and repeatability of timing properties. "Correct" execution of a C program has nothing to do with how long it takes to perform any particular action. C says nothing about timing, so timing is not considered part of correctness. Architectures have developed deep pipelines with speculative execution and dynamic dispatch. Memory architectures have developed multi-level caches and TLBs. The performance criterion is simple: faster (on average) is better.

The biggest consequences have been in embedded computing. Avionics offers an extreme example: in "fly by wire" aircraft, where software interprets pilot commands and transports them to actuators through networks, certification of the software is extremely expensive. Regrettably, it is not the software that is certified but the entire system. If a manufacturer expects to produce a plane for 50 years, it needs a 50-year stockpile of fly-by-wire components that are all made from the same mask set on the same production line. Even a slight change or "improvement" might affect timing and require the software to be re-certified. All users of embedded software face less extreme versions of this problem. Upgrading an engine controller in a car to a newer micro-processor, for example, often requires substantial redesign of the software and thorough retesting. Even "bug fixes" in the software can be extremely risky, since they can change timing behavior.

Designers have traditionally covered these failures by finding worst case execution time (WCET) bounds and using real-time operating systems (RTOS's). But these require substantial margins for reliability, and ultimately reliability is (weakly) determined by bench testing of the complete implementation. Moreover, WCET has become an increasingly problematic fiction as processor architectures develop ever more elaborate techniques for dealing stochastically with deep pipelines, memory hierarchy, and parallelism.

The reader may object that there are no true "guarantees" in life, so the correct solution should be to accept timing variability and to build in robustness. However, synchronous digital hardware--the technology on which most computers are built--can deliver astonishingly precise timing behavior with reliability that is unprecedented in any other human-engineered mechanism. Software abstractions, however, discard several orders of magnitude of precision. Compare the nanosecond-scale precision with which hardware can raise an interrupt request to the millisecond-level precision with which software threads can respond.

To fully exploit such timing predictability would require a significant redesign of much of computing technology, including operating systems, programming languages, compilers, and networks. I believe we must start by creating a new generation of processors whose temporal behavior is as easily controlled as their logical function. We call them precision timed (PRET) machines [1]. Our basic argument is that real-time systems, in which temporal behavior is as important as logical function, are an important and growing application; processor architecture needs to follow suit.

Of course, timing precision is easy to achieve if you are willing to forgo performance; the engineering challenge in PRET machines is to deliver both precision and performance. In [1], we argue that the problem should be first tackled from the hardware design perspective, developing precision timed (PRET) machines as soft cores on FPGAs. The near term goal would be that software on PRET machines be integrated with what would traditionally have been purely hardware designs. This provides a starting point for a decades-long revolution that will make timing predictability an essential feature of computing.

REFERENCES

[1] S. A. Edwards and E. A. Lee, "The case for the precision timed (PRET) machine," In Design Automation Conference (DAC), San Diego, CA, 2007.

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CFP: IPSN: International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks

Note: submit papers no longer than 12 pages at 10pt in IEEE conference format

IPSN 08 CALL FOR PAPERS

The 7th International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks

April 22-24, 2008, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

http://ipsn.acm.org/2008

*Co-located with IEEE Real Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS '08) and International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HSCC '08)*


The International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) is a leading, single-track, annual forum that brings together researchers from academia, industry, and government to present and discuss recent advances in sensor network research and applications. The conference covers both theoretical and experimental research, as it pertains to sensor networks, in a broad range of disciplines including signal and image processing, information and coding theory, databases and information management, distributed algorithms, networks and protocols, wireless communications, machine learning, and embedded systems design.

The conference features two interleaved tracks, the Information Processing (IP) track, and the Sensor Platforms, Tools and Design Methods (SPOTS) track, with two separate program committees to evaluate their submissions. Authors should carefully review the intended foci of these two tracks to decide which track is better suited for their work, and they are encouraged to contact the cognizant program chairs with questions or clarifications. The Information Processing (IP) track will focus on algorithms, systems, and theory pertaining to information processing using networks of embedded sensors. Topics covered in this track include, but are not limited to:

* Applications of sensor networks
* Coding, compression and information theory
* Data processing, storage and management
* Detection, classification, estimation, tracking
* Distributed algorithms and reasoning
* Distributed and collaborative signal processing
* Fault tolerance
* Location and time services
* Operating systems
* Network health monitoring
* Network protocols for sensor networks
* Programming models and languages
* Real-time scheduling
* Security
* Sensor tasking, control, and actuation

The Sensor Platforms, Tools, and Design Methods (SPOTS) track will focus on platforms and tools designed for networked embedded sensors. Submission should refer to specific hardware, software, and system design and implementation, focusing on new architectures, modeling, evaluation, design methods, implementations, tools, or deployment experiences. Results focused on the analysis and processing aspects of data collected from deployments should be submitted to the IP track. Topics covered in the SPOTS track include, but are not limited to:

* Case studies that highlight challenges in and advantages of platforms, designs, operations, and tools
* Embedded software for sensor networks
* Design exploration and optimization tools
* Sensor network components and device platforms
* System design and implementation
* System modeling, simulation, measurements, and analysis


Organization Committee

General Chair: Bill Kaiser (UCLA)
Information Proc. Track Co-Chairs: Sam Madden (MIT), Subhash Suri (UC Santa Barbara)
SPOTS Track Co-Chairs: Jie Liu (Microsoft Research), Andreas Savvides (Yale)
Poster Chair: Andreas Terzis (Johns Hopkins University)
Demonstration Chair: Ralph Kling (Crossbow)
Competition Chair: Kamin Whitehouse (University of Virginia)
Finance Chair: Tarek Abdelzaher (UIUC)
Web Chair: Jie Gao (SUNY)
Publicity Chair: Ying Zhang (PARC)
Local Arrangements: Chris Gill and Chenyang Lu (Washington University in St. Louis)

Important Dates:

Abstracts Due: Fri, Oct 26th, 2007
Papers Due: Fri, Nov 2nd, 2007
Conference: Tue-Thur, Apr. 22-24th, 2008


Submission Guidelines:

All papers must be submitted electronically, in Portable Document Format (PDF). Instructions for submission will be availab\
le at the IPSN'08 website: http://ipsn.acm.org/2008/

Submissions must meet the following criteria:
* A paper must be original material that has neither been previously published nor is currently under review by another conference or journal.
* Submitted papers should be no longer than 12 pages at 10pt in IEEE conference format.

Each paper will be reviewed by the TPC of the track to which it is submitted, and all accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings. Following the tradition of previous IPSN conferences, an accepted paper will be allocated either an oral presentation slot or a poster presentation outlet together with a brief oral advertisement slot. The choice of the presentation style is determined entirely by the nature of results, and not by their quality.

What are Cyber-Physical Systems?

Professor Edward A. Lee wrote the following about the Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS) and Cyber-Physical Systems:

The Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS) is building foundational theories and practical tools for systems that combine computation, networking, and physical dynamics. In such systems, embedded computers and networks monitor and control physical processes in feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa. For the last 30 years or so, computers have been increasingly embedded in stand-alone, self-contained products. We are poised, however, for a revolutionary transformation as these embedded computers become networked. The transformation is analogous to the enormous increment in the utility of personal computers with the advent of the web. Just as personal computers changed from word processors to global communications devices and information portals, embedded computers will change from small self-contained boxes to cyber-physical systems, which sense, monitor and control our intrinsically distributed human environment.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are integrations of computation,
networking, and physical processes. Embedded computers and networks monitor and control the physical processes, usually with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa. The economic and societal potential of such systems is vastly greater than what has been realized, and major investments are being ade worldwide to develop the technology. There are considerable challenges, particularly because the physical components of such systems introduce safety and reliability requirements qualitatively different from those in general-purpose computing. Moreover, the standard abstractions used in computing do not fit the physical parts of the system well.

Applications of CPS arguably have the potential to dwarf the 20^th
century IT revolution. They include high confidence medical devices and systems, assisted living, traffic control and safety, advanced automotive systems, process control, energy conservation, environmental control, avionics, instrumentation, critical infrastructure control (electric power, water resources, and communications systems for example), distributed robotics (telepresence, telemedicine), defense systems, manufacturing, and smart structures. It is easy to envision new capabilities, such as distributed micro power generation coupled into the power grid, where timing precision and security issues loom large. Transportation systems could benefit considerably from better embedded intelligence in automobiles, which could improve safety and efficiency. Networked autonomous vehicles could dramatically enhance the effectiveness of our military and could offer substantially more effective disaster recovery techniques. Networked building control systems (such as HVAC and lighting) could significantly improve energy efficiency and demand variability, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and our greenhouse gas emissions. In communications, cognitive radio could benefit enormously from distributed consensus about available bandwidth and from distributed control technologies. Financial networks could be dramatically changed by precision timing. Large scale services systems leveraging RFID and other technologies for tracking of goods and services could acquire the nature of distributed real-time control systems. Distributed real-time games that integrate sensors and actuators could change the (relatively passive) nature of on-line social interactions. The positive economic impact of any one of these applications areas would be enormous.

CFP: TACAS 2008: Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

CALL FOR PAPERS: TACAS 2008

14th International Conference on

Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

http://www.cs.stonybrook.edu/~tacas2008/

Part of ETAPS 2008, March 29 - April 6, 2008, Budapest, Hungary


IMPORTANT DATES
---------------

* 5 Oct 2007: Submission deadline (strict) for abstracts of research and
tool demonstration papers

* 12 Oct 2007: Submission deadline (strict) for full versions of
research and tool demonstration papers

* 7 Dec 2007: Notification of acceptance

* 4 Jan 2008: Camera-ready versions due

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION
----------------------

TACAS is a forum for researchers, developers and users interested in rigorously based tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems. TACAS is a member conference of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS). The conference serves to bridge the gaps between different communities that share common interests in, and techniques for, tool development and its algorithmic foundations. The research areas covered by such communities include but are not limited to formal methods, software and hardware verification, static analysis, programming languages, software engineering, real-time systems, communications protocols, and biological systems. The TACAS forum provides a venue for such communities at which common problems, heuristics, algorithms, data structures and methodologies can be discussed and explored. In doing so, TACAS aims to support researchers in their quest to improve the utility, reliability, flexibility and efficiency of tools and algorithms for building systems.

Tool descriptions and case studies with a conceptual message, as well as theoretical papers with clear relevance for tool construction are all encouraged. The specific topics covered by the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Specification and verification techniques for finite and infinite-state systems
* Software and hardware verification
* Theorem-proving and model-checking
* System construction and transformation techniques
* Static and run-time analysis
* Abstraction techniques for modeling and validation
* Compositional and refinement-based methodologies
* Testing and test-case generation
* Analytical techniques for secure, real-time, hybrid, critical, biological or dependable systems
* Integration of formal methods and static analysis in high-level hardware design or software environments
* Tool environments and tool architectures
* SAT solvers
* Applications and case studies

As TACAS addresses a heterogeneous audience, potential authors are strongly encouraged to write about their ideas and findings in general and jargon-independent, rather than in application- and domain-specific, terms. Authors reporting on tools or case studies are strongly encouraged to indicate how their experimental results can be reproduced and confirmed independently.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
-------------------

Patricia Bouyer (CNRS, France)
Ed Brinksma (ESI and U. of Twente, The Netherlands)
Tevfik Bultan (U. of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Rance Cleaveland (U. of Maryland & Fraunhofer USA Inc, USA)
Byron Cook (Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK)
Bruno Dutertre (SRI, Menlo Park, California, USA)
Patrice Godefroid (Microsoft Research, Redmond , USA)
Orna Grumberg (TECHNION, Israel Institute of Technology
Aarti Gupta (NEC Laboratories America Inc, USA)
Fritz Henglein (U. of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Michael Huth (Imperial College, London, UK)
Joxan Jaffar (National U. of Singapore)
Kurt Jensen (U. of Aarhus, Denmark)
Jens Knoop (Technical University, Vienna, Austria)
Barbara Koenig (U. of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
Marta Kwiatkowska (U. of Birmingham, UK)
Kim Larsen (Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark)
Nancy Lynch (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Kedar Namjoshi (Bell Labs, Murray Hill, USA)
Paul Pettersson (Malardalen University, Sweden)
Sriram Rajamani (Microsoft Research, Bangalore, India)
C.R. Ramakrishnan (Stony Brook University, New York, USA)
Jakob Rehof (U. of Dortmund, Germany)
Bill Roscoe (Oxford University, UK)
Mooly Sagiv (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Stefan Schwoon (U. of Stuttgart, Germany)
Bernhard Steffen (U. of Dortmund, Germany)
Lenore Zuck (U. of Illinois, Chicago, USA)

INVITED SPEAKER
---------------
Sharad Malik , Princeton, USA

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
---------------------

Papers should be submitted using the TACAS 2008 Conference Service. As with other ETAPS conferences, TACAS accepts two types of contributions:

* research papers and
* tool demonstration papers.

Both types of contributions will appear in the proceedings and have oral presentations during the conference.



Research papers:
----------------

Research papers cover one or more of the topics above, including tool development and case studies from a perspective of scientific research. Research papers are evaluated by the TACAS Program Committee. Submitted research papers must:

* be in English and have a maximum of 15 pages (including figures and bibliography)
* present original research which is unpublished and not submitted elsewhere (conferences or journals) -- in particular, simultaneous submission of the same contribution to multiple ETAPS conferences is forbidden
* use the Springer LNCS style
* be submitted electronically in Postscript or PDF form via the TACAS 2008 Conference Service (abstract no later than 5 October, 2007, and full paper no later than 12 October, 2007)

Submissions deviating from these instructions may be rejected without review. Any questions regarding this policy should be directed to the Program Committee Co-Chairs C. R. Ramakrishnan (www.cs.stonybrook.edu/~cram/) or Jakob Rehof (ls14-www.cs.uni-dortmund.de/LS14/Team/Lehrstuhlinhaber/Rehof.html) prior to submitting.


Tool demonstration papers:
--------------------------

Tool demonstration papers present tools based on aforementioned technologies (e.g., theorem-proving, model-checking, static analysis, or other formal methods) or fall into the above application areas (e.g., system construction and transformation, testing, analysis of real-time, hybrid or biological systems, etc.). Tool demonstration papers are evaluated by the TACAS Tool Chair, Byron Cook (http://research.microsoft.com/users/bycook/default.htm) with the help of the Programme Committee.

Submitted tool demonstration papers must:

* be in English and have a maximum of 4 pages
* have an appendix (not included in the 4 page count) that provides a detailed description of:
- how the oral presentation will be conducted, e.g. illustrated by a number of snapshots
- the availability of the tool, the number and types of users, other information which may illustrate the maturity and robustness of the tool
- if applicable, a link to a web-page for the tool (The appendix will not be included in the proceedings, but during the evaluation of the tool demonstration papers it will be equally important as the pages submitted for publication in the proceedings.)
* use the Springer-Verlag LNCS style
* clearly describe the enhancements and novel features of the tool in case that one of its previous versions has already been presented at meetings or published in some form
* be submitted electronically in Postscript or PDF form via the TACAS 2008 Conference Service (abstract no later than 5 October, 2007, and full paper no later than 12 October, 2007)

Submissions deviating from these instructions may be rejected without review. Any questions regarding this policy should be directed to the Tool Chair Byron Cook.

Call for submissions: EDAA PhD Forum 200

EDAA PhD Forum 2008

Call for Submissions

The PhD forum is part of the DATE Conference and hosted by the European Design Automation Association (EDAA).
The PhD Forum is a great opportunity for PhD students to present their thesis work to a broad audience in the system design and design automation community from both industry and academia.
The PhD Forum may also help students to establish contacts for entering the job market. In addition, representatives from industry and academia get a glance of state-of-the-art in system design and design automation.

Eligibility
===========
Students who
* have finished their PhD thesis within the last 12 months or
* students who are close to finish to their thesis work can present their work at the PhD forum.

Benefits
========
* a poster presentation in A0 format at the DATE PhD Forum
* contacts to professionals from industry and academia
* possibility to distribute flyers summarizing the PhD work
* possibility to apply for EDAA travel grants once the PhD thesis is accepted for presentation at the PhD Forum
* a (free) dinner reception

Submission
===========
Send an e-mail to Paul.Pop@imm.dtu.dk with the subject line "DATE PhD Forum", containing:
* full contact address, with affiliation, phone, fax
* a 1-page extended abstract describing the novelties and advantages of the thesis work of not more than 800 words (PDF) . The abstract should also include name and affiliation. Figures may be included as far as the 1-page limit is not exceeded.
* either (a) a University-approved thesis proposal (PDF) or (b) one published paper (PDF)

Important dates
===============
* Submission deadline: 1st November, 2007
* Notification of acceptance: 17th December, 2007
* Presentation at DATE: 10th March, 2008

Contact
=======
Paul Pop
www.imm.dtu.dk/~pop
EDAA is a non-profit association. Its purpose is to operate for educational, scientific and technical purposes for the benefit of the international electronics design and design automation community. The Association, in the field of design and design automation of electronic circuits and systems, promotes a series of high quality technical international conferences and workshops across Europe and cooperates actively to maintain harmonious relationships with other national and international technical societies and groups promoting the purpose of the Association. EDAA is the main sponsor of DATE, the premier Design, Automation and Test Conference and Exhibition in Europe .

http://www.edaa.com

CFP: RTSS Ph.D. Student Forum

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

RTSS 2007, Dec 3-6th, Tuscon, Arizona, announces:
A Ph.D. Student Forum on Deeply Embedded Real-Time Computing

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation
Chairs: Xue Liu (McGill), Tarek Abdelzaher (UIUC)

DEADLINE: October 1st

Ph.D. students are invited to submit 2-page contributions by October 1st describing a novel idea in deeply embedded cyber-physical computing. The goal is to encourage constructive debate on emerging research topics. Authors of accepted contributions will be expected to travel to RTSS and make a presentation on their topic at the forum, as well as an optional demonstration. There is no forum registration fee for authors. Award certificates will be given for the most innovative application, the most interesting interdisciplinary research problem, the best system architecture, and the best demo.
In addition, authors of all accepted forum contributions will receive an RTSS registration fee waiver and prepaid 3 night free accommodation at the conference hotel or equivalent.

(See Ph.D. Student Forum on www.rtss.org)

HSCC Call for Papers

Call for Papers: HSCC'08
HSCC'08: Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control
http://www.hscc08.gatech.edu/.
April 22-24, 2008, St. Louis, MO, USA

HSCC-08 is part of the inaugural CPSWEEK, together with the Real Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS '08) and the International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN '08). It is a single-track conference focusing on research in embedded, reactive systems involving the interplay between symbolic/switching and continuous dynamical behaviors.

Submissions are invited in all areas pertaining to the design, analysis, control, optimization, implementation, and applications of hybrid dynamical systems. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Models of heterogeneous systems
  
• Computability and complexity
  
• Real-time computing and control
  
• Embedded and resource-aware control
  
• Control and estimation over wireless networks
  
• Tools for analysis, verification, control, and design
  
• Programming languages support and implementation
  
• Applications, including automotive, communication networks, avionics, energy systems, transportation networks, biology and other sciences, manufacturing, and robotics
  

The manuscripts are due on October 12, 2007, and detailed submission instructions are available at the conference website at http://www.hscc08.gatech.edu/.

NSF's Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation

NSF's Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation program is a followup to the NSF Information Technology Research (ITR)s, one of which funded Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS). The Cyber-Enable Discovery and Innovation program is due to start in 2007.

Christine Avanessians receives Vodafone Undergraduate Fellowship

Christine Avanessians was selected to receive a highly competitive 2007 Vodafone - US Foundation "Undergraduate Fellowship.". Christine is working with Professor Edward A. Lee on the Ptolemy Project. Christine's efforts thus far have been focussed on transforming models using XSLT.