Cluster: Operating Systems and Networks

High-Level Objectives 

The high level objective of this cluster is to build the fundamental basis of a new real-time software technology that can provide a more efficient and predictable support to the development of future embedded systems, characterized by high complexity dynamic behaviour and distributed organisation.

Brief State of the Art 

The main reason for investigating adaptive real-time systems is to provide predictability and flexibility for systems and environments where requirements on resources are inherently unstable and difficult to predict in advance. Such a difficulty is due to different causes. First of all, modern computer architectures include several low-level mechanisms that are designed to enhance the average performance of applications, but unfortunately introduce high variations on tasks’ execution times. In other situations, as in multimedia systems, processes can have highly variable execution times that also depend on input data.

Core participants 

Core participants in the cluster: "Operating Systems and Networks".

Affiliated Partners 

Affiliated partners in the cluster: "Operating Systems and Networks".

Main Research Trends  

Today’s embedded systems are required to work in dynamic environments, where the characteristics of the computational load cannot always be predicted in advance. The combination of real-time features in dynamic environments, together with cost and resource constraints, creates new problems to be addressed in the design of such systems, at different architecture levels.

Industrial Sectors Impacted 

The industrial sectors that can benefit from adaptive real-time technology include Consumer Electronics, Industrial Automation, and Telecommunications. Consumer Electronics (CE) products range from miniature cameras and MP3 players to advanced media servers and large displays. In the area of Industrial Automation there is a trend to use distributed solutions for connecting the general plant actuators, sensors and the controllers. Embedded systems for telecommunications applications are mainly targeted to the interfaces between communication technologies and to coding/decoding operations.

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