Guest editorial: embedded and real-time computing systems and applications

Abstract

Real-time computing systems are those systems in which correctness of the system depends not only on the logical result of computation but also on the time at which the results are produced. This implies that, unlike more traditional information and communication systems, where there is a separation between correctness and performance, in real-time computing systems correctness and performance are very tightly interrelated. Only a few decades ago, real-time computing systems were an important but narrow niche of computer systems, consisting mainly of military systems, air traffic control and embedded systems for manufacturing and process control. This association caused that real-time systems problems did not attract widespread interest from the computer community. Meanwhile, the emergence of large scale distributed systems, enabled by advances in networking technology, has broaden real-time concerns into a mainstream enterprise, with clients in a wide variety of industries and academic disciplines. Terms such as “Cooperating-Objects”, “Cyber-Physical Systems” or “Internet of Things” have come to describe the research and technological effort that will ultimately efficiently allow interlinking the real world physical objects and cyberspace. The integration of physical processes and computing is however nothing dramatically new: embedded systems have been in place since a long time to denote systems that combine physical processes with computing. The revolution is coming from extensively networking embedded computing devices, in a blend that involves sensing, actuation, computation, networking, pervasiveness and physical processes. And interaction with the physical world always implies timeliness as a main concern in the design process. This tendency has been establishing real-time technology as a priority for commercial strategy and academic research for the foreseeable future and also for a wider