Report on the Flagship Real-Time Systems Conference

The CISTER Research Unit hosted the 23rd Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS'11) and its satellite workshops in Porto. ECRTS is one of the three flagship events in real-time embedded systems research.

Returning ECRTS'11 to Porto after hosting the conference already in 2003 is an homage to the hospitality and culture of the city and a reflection of the sizeable concentration of real-time systems researchers in Porto. Organizing this edition of the ECRTS series was indeed a challenge. This year we had five satellite workshops that ran in parallel in the day before the main conference. This adds to a Work in Progress (WiP) session. The excellent technical program, with a total of 25 presentations (out of 119 high quality submissions), was complemented by a substantial social program covering many touristic aspects of the city and has drawn a new record for ECRTS of over 170 participants to the conference and its associated workshops.

Particular highlights of the program were the keynotes by Prof. Hermann Kopetz on his seminal work on the time triggered architecture. The keynote on the second day was presented by Prof. David Atienza on thermal-aware design of multiprocessor system-on-a-chip architectures. Also, ECRTS ended with a discussion panel on the theme of Networked Monitoring and Control / Cyber-Physical Systems, moderated by Jorge Pereira (Principal Scientific Officer of the European Commission, DG Information Society and Media) and the participation of Ted Baker (National  Science Foundation, EUA), Chenyang Lu (Washington University - St Louis, EUA), Al Mok (University of Texas at Austin, EUA), Sérgio Penna (EMBRAER, Brasil), Eduardo Tovar (CISTER/ISEP) and Karl-Erik Årzén (Lund University, Suécia).

An event of this size could not be organised without the co-operation of a large number of people, both locally of the unit and the hosting institution as well as those externally deciding on the programs for the individual events. The feedback received from the attendees was generally centred on the outstanding organisation and running of the conference, as well as the great hospitality people felt in the city of Porto and resulted as excellent advertising for the skills available in Porto.

More information at http://www.cister.isep.ipp.pt/ecrts11/.