The next meeting of the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum takes place on 6^th-8^th February, 2001, at the Doubletree Hotel, San Jose, California.

Our mission is to offer all organizations concerned with real-time and embedded systems solutions a forum, where we can share knowledge, integrate open initiatives, and certify approved products and processes. Towards that end, the Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum is holding several open plenary sessions at this conference focussing on solutions in the market today.

Please note that the IEEE PASC (POSIX) working groups are meeting co-located at the same venue for the duration of the week.

Agenda (v1.4 Jan 30 2001)

Tuesday Afternoon (Open to non-members)

The Profiles working group are holding an open session on Linux. They also will be meeting on Thursday morning.

Linux Interest Session (Tuesday 2pm -- 5:30)

This track consists of a series of interactive briefing/discussion sessions, each 45 minutes in length .

2:00-2:45 RTLinux technology and POSIX 1003.13 -- Victor Yodaiken, FSM Labs

RTLinux is a POSIX PSE51 (minimal) real time operating system that runs a PSE54 (full) operating system (Linux) as its lowest priority thread. This session will cover the technology that makes such an architecture possible, performance, and the application programmers view of a system in which a realtime thread operate in an threads/signals environment that contains within it a general purpose kernel and POSIX processes. The RTLinux architecture will be contrasted with the traditional "real-time UNIX" designs and with competing views of real-time in Linux.

2:45-3:30 Embedded Linux -- Rick Lehrbaum, linuxdevices.com

Linux is rapidly emerging as an excellent Embedded Operating System. This session discusses the status of Linux as an embedded operating system and the good and bad points of using Embedded Linux. It also reviews some interesting data collected in the LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Market Study about reasons why developers are interested in using Embedded Linux and open source software, etc.

4:00-4:45 Real Time Enhancements for Linux -- George Anzinger, MontaVista Inc.

A discussion of MontaVista's efforts to transform Linux into a fully preemptable kernel without compromising throughput-based performance.

This session will discuss MontaVista's Linux Real Time scheduler and modifications to the Linux kernel to enable full preemption. The talk will cover the Real Time scheduling algorithm as well as priority inheritance semaphores and other protection methods used to dramatically improve system responsiveness. Responsiveness improvements and throughput impacts will be reviewed.

4:45-5:30 Embedded Linux -- Dave Beal, Lineo, Inc.

This session discusses other areas of embedded and real-time Linux which are not part of the mainstream Linux source tree, including: the Real-Time Applications Interface (RTAI -- which is similar to RTLinux in implementation, but includes a few critical features); uClinux which is a very small footprint Linux modified for processors without a MMU; and Busybox and tinylogin which are sets of common Linux utilities optimized for embedded use.

5:30pm - Panel Discussion

Closing

Guest Speaker Presentation 18:00-19:30 (Open to all)

"Clash of the Titans" - Open Source Infrastructure in the Enterprise - Larry Augustin, President & CEO, VA Linux Systems
Tuesday, February 6, 6.00-7.30 p.m.
outline here.

This session is open to all interested parties and guests. To register just send your name and contact details to titans@opengroup.org

Wednesday (Open to non-members)

0900-0915 Introduction -- Andrew Josey, Director Server Platforms, The Open Group

0915-0950 Keynote Speaker: Gabriel Broner, VP Strategic Software Organization, SGI

Gabriel Broner is Vice President of Software Engineering at SGI. Gabriel has been one the main operating systems architects at Cray Research, and over the years he has held a series of technical and management roles at Cray and Silicon Graphics.

Gabriel Broner's keynote, on the theme of real-time software development, addresses the technologies, trends and challenges faced when tackling very demanding real-time computing problems.

0950-1030 Information Security for Real Time Control Systems -- Joe Weiss, EPRI

The energy industry is becoming more automated and electronically connected. Critical data and information is being transmitted through corporate LANS and WANs, in many instances with direct connection to the Internet. There has been a significant amount of security work devoted to Internet and e-commerce applications. However, there is very little corresponding security work developed for real time control and sensing systems. These systems have unique attributes that need to be considered in their design beyond the existing efforts for the Internet and e-commerce applications. This session describes the security needs for these systems.

1030 -- Break

1100-1130 Keynote Speaker: Dr. Inder M. Singh , CEO and Chairman LynuxWorks

Dr. Singh founded Excelan, an early leader in local area networks in 1982 and served as its chairman, CEO and president until 1985. Excelan later merged with Novell. Dr. Singh was a co-founder of Kalpana, which pioneered Ethernet switching technology, and was one of Cisco's early acquisitions. Dr. Singh is a director of PacketStream and PocketPass, and has served on the boards of Mylex, Kalpana, Omnitel, Integrated Media Systems, Univation, Vivix, and Eon Systems. Dr. Singh is Board Chairman and ELC President for the Embedded Linux Consortium. In addition to his experience with high technology start up companies, Dr. Singh has prior management and technical experience with Zilog, where he headed the Networking and Advanced Systems Development Group. At Zilog, he was the architect of the Z8000 UNIX based product line. Dr. Singh has also held positions at Amdahl, where he was a Senior Computer Architect, Gartner Research, the Yale Computer Center, and Ontel.

Dr. Singh's Keynote will address trends in Embedded Linux.

1130-1215 Doing Real-Time with Java -- Kelvin Nilsen , NewMonics, Inc.

The Java platform is poised to displace a multitude of existing real-time development platforms. But there is considerable uncertainty as to what form a real-time Java platform might take. This talk surveys existing real-time Java products, the NIST-drafted requirements for real-time Java extensions, current draft specifications for real-time Java extensions from a standards-setting perspective, and Dr. Nilsen's own experiences bringing real-time Java technologies to the commercial marketplace. Based on the current state of affairs, Dr. Nilsen will offer his recommendations for standards-setting bodies and end users who seek to leverage the new technologies enabled by the emerging standards.

1215 -- 1245 Panel discussion

1245-1400 -- Lunch

1400 -- 1445 Real-Time Extensions to DII COE -- David Emery, Mitre Corporation.

This talk will provide an overview/update of the ongoing efforts to extend the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment (DII COE) to support real-time systems. A key goal for the RT Extensions is to be standards-based, supporting multiple commercial implementations, rather than to select a single commercial product. We will present the overall intent and structure of the DII COE, the RT extensions, and the current status of the effort. In particular, we will identify where we have been unable to find appropriate standards for adoption.

1445 -- 1530 Real-Time Application Development and Verification on the IRIX OS, Dan Stuart, SGI Federal

Developing and testing real-time applications is often done by trial and error. Many standard development and monitoring tools change the performance characteristics of the real time application being developed. Utilizing special hard real-time features often eliminates standard monitoring tools from consideration. Utilizing text output often takes more system resources and time than the work performed by the real-time task. Many times the failure to meet a real-time response requirement has misunderstood underlying causes.

SGI has historically delivered hard real-time support with its IRIX Operating system. This session discusses real-time design choices and performance verification with consideration for the development and monitoring tools available in the IRIX programming environment.

1530 -- 1600 Break

1600 -- 1630 Real-time and Embedded systems - the movement to standards based solutions, Raymond Richards, Rockwell-Collins.

Rockwell-Collins is a supplier of real-time and embedded systems in the Avionics and Communications industry. This session outlines their real-time and embedded products, and discusses their movement towards standards based solutions. Current barriers to adoption of standards based embedded solutions will be identified including proposed areas the forum should address.

1630 -- 1700 Panel Session

Closing

Thursday Morning (Open to non-members)

This session is a joint session with the Quality of Service Task Force

The Real-time and Embedded Systems Forum will be holding a joint session with the Quality of Service task force to look specifically at the Quality of Service aspects for Real-time and Embedded Systems. This will be held on the morning of Thursday February 8th.

The first hour and a half of the session will be presentations from customers who have QoS requirements and vendors who have QoS solutions in the Real-time and Embedded Systems marketplace. Following a break, the second hour and a half will be interactive/working discussions where the goal is to capture the QoS requirements and measurements associated with components or sets of components from within this marketplace.

9:00 - 10:30 Customer & Vendor Presentations

Presentation 1: QoS - Real-Time & Embedded Systems
Dynamic QoS for the Enterprise Norman Eaglestone , Sun Microsystems, Member of Strategic Markets and Industries group.

Presentation 2: QoS - Real-Time & Embedded Systems
Quality of Security Service Costing Framework Tim Levin and Evdoxia Spyropoulou , Naval Postgraduate School

Presentation 3: QoS - Real-Time & Embedded Systems
Timing Elements in Quality of Service Dock Allen, MITRE Corporation

10:30 - 11:00 Break

11:00 - 12:30 Working / Interactive Discussion Groups to Map Real-Time & Embedded Systems Requirements to Measurements

Thursday (Forum members only)

These sessions are for members only, or by invitation only and will comprise a single all day track.

These are working sessions of the Forum, with sessions on the following topics: Certification , Profiles, a Microsoft Windows Interest Group, and Security and Real-time and Embedded Systems.

The Profiles working group will meet for a 90 minute session. They expect to hear an update on profiling activities from other standards efforts in progress, such as IEEE PASC and the SAE, look at The Open Group's existing product standard for Real-time systems, with an eye to the next revision of that product standard and discuss possible additional API sets that are needed.