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The Swedish National Real-Time Association

Preface to the Real-Time in Sweden 2001 Conference Guide

Sweden has a very strong industry and high competence in the area of real-time systems, spanning applications in telecom, industrial automation, vehicles including aircraft, and medical equipment. The formation of the Swedish National Real-time Systems Association, SNART, in the early 90's was therefore a strategic and important step. It is important to say that real-time is only one distinguishing quality in the above mentioned applications. Other issues ranging from system safety, real-time control, low power, systems integration, verification etc. are strongly related and important, and fit well within the SNART umbrella.

SNART was formed with the overall aim of supporting and promoting Swedish real-time systems research. An important aspect of this is to provide a forum for information exchange open for all interested parties. In particular it is important to provide a bridge between different disciplines, and between industry and academia.

To this aim, this sixth biannual SNART conference has a program that differs both from traditional academic conferences and industrial fairs (and there are plenty of each category). In contrast, this conference emphasizes the overall picture rather than specific research projects, and has a program built around six general topics with plenty of room for personal and/or more specialized discussions, meetings, and seminars. To further emphasize the novel focus with respect to the earlier SNART conferences, a new name - Real-Time in Sweden - was suggested by Jonas Vasell and introduced for this conference. The goal is to provide system designers, researchers and others with an interest in real-time issues with information about important real-time problems and solutions, ongoing research and development efforts in Sweden, trends and future prospects, and who is doing what. This year, the conference topics include operating systems and middleware, applications: vehicular systems, programming, communication, system design, and safety-critical systems. Each topic will be presented from both an industrial and an academic perspective by experienced and renowned researchers and developers. Another difference with respect to traditional conferences is that the call for papers invited projects and research groups from academia and industry to make presentations of their activities.

Today, Swedish research in real-time systems and related areas has come a long way since SNART was formed. SNART paved way for ARTES - the national Swedish strategic research initiative in Real-Time Systems supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF). More than 100 graduate students are today linked to ARTES, which has been a major boost to academic research and education in the area. For the benefit of Sweden, we hope that the forum established by SNART and RTiS2001 will be succesful.

We are glad to note that we with the new conference format have managed to attract a wide range of contributions to the conference. The result is a rich conference program that provides a good overview of Real-Time in Sweden. A large number of speakers with different backgrounds from industry and academia have been invited. Some 20 contributions encompassing presentations of research groups, research projects, and industry activities were also received.

Organizing this conference would have been impossible without the help of many people. Special thanks go to Eva Nestius, Roland Grönroos, Carl Bergenhem, and Magnus Jonsson who all have helped with the practical arrangements; the topic coordinators who have put together excellent and varied topic presentation; and the program committee for its reviews of contributions and suggestions for program improvements.

We hope that this new conference concept will be interesting and provide a basis for future conferences, and that you will all enjoy your visit to Halmstad!

Sweden, August 6, 2001