Overview

Over 90 percent of all microprocessors are now used for real-time and
embedded applications, and the behavior of many of these applications
is constrained by the physical world. Higher-level programming
languages and middleware are needed to robustly and productively
design, implement, compose, integrate, validate, and enforce real-time
constraints along with conventional functional requirements and
reusable components.

Designing real-time and embedded systems that implement their required
capabilities, are dependable and predictable, and are parsimonious in
their use of limited computing resources is hard; building them on
time and within budget is even harder. Moreover, due to global
competition for market share and engineering talent, companies are now
also faced with the problem of developing and delivering new products
in ever decreasing time frames. Embedded applications also include
mission-critical and safety-critical systems in which critical human
infrastructures and even human life is sometimes at stake. Therefore
it is essential that the production of real-time embedded systems take
advantage of languages, tools, and methods that enable higher software
productivity.

Ideally, developers should use a programming language that shields
them from many accidental complexities, such as type errors, memory
management, and steep learning curves. The Java programming language
has become an attractive choice because of its safety, productivity,
relatively low maintenance costs, and the availability of well trained
developers.

Although it has good software engineering characteristics, Java has
often been deemed unsuitable for developing real-time embedded
systems, mainly due to under-specification of thread scheduling and
the presence of garbage collection. Recently, to address these
problems, some significant advances have been made in real-time
garbage collection algorithms and a number of extensions to Java have
been introduced by such efforts as the Java Community Process Expert
Group for the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ). The intent of
these specifications is the development of real-time applications by
extending the Java memory model, providing stronger semantics in
thread scheduling, and so on.

Interest in real-time Java in both the research community and
industry, because of its challenges and its potential impact on the
development of embedded and real-time applications, has recently
undergone a significant increase. This industry interest in robust,
time-constrained computational platforms comes not only from
developers of traditional embedded applications such as industrial
automation, but also, for example, from developers of investment
trading applications.

The goal of this workshop, as for the past workshops in this series,
is to gather Java developers and researchers working on real-time and
embedded Java technologies to identify the challenging problems that
still need to be addressed to assure the success of real-time Java as
a technology, and to report results and experience gained by this
rapidly growing community.

Submission Requirements

Participants are expected to submit a position paper of at most 10
pages (ACM Proceedings Format templates are available at
http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates, two
columns and 10 point font). Accepted papers will be published in the
ACM International Conference Proceedings Series via the ACM Digital
Library.

Topics of interest to this workshop include, but are not limited to:
- New real-time programming paradigms and language features
- Industrial experience and practitioner reports
- Real-Time garbage collection for Java
- Real-time design patterns and programming idioms
- Formal models of real-time computation
- Extensions to the RTSJ
- Virtual machines and execution environments
- Memory management and real-time garbage collection
- Compiler analysis and implementation techniques
- Distributed real-time Java and Java-based distributed real-time middlewar\
e
- Scheduling frameworks, feasibility analysis, and timing analysis
- High-integrity and safety critical system support
- Java-based real-time operating systems and processors
- Exploiting multi-core systems and Java
- Direct device management in Java
- Transactional memory and Java

Important Dates
- Paper Submission (HARD DEADLINE): June 9, 2008
- Notification of Acceptance: July 21, 2008
- Camera Ready Paper and Copyright Form Due: August 18, 2008

Program Chair
Doug Locke, Locke Consulting LLC

Workshop Chair
Greg Bollella, Sun Microsystems, Inc.


Steering Committee
Angelo Corsaro, Prismtech
Greg Bollella, Sun Microsystems
Peter Dibble, TimeSys
Doug Lea, State University of New York at Oswego
Corrado Santoro, University of Catania
Jan Vitek, Purdue University
Andy Wellings, University of York

Program Committee
Greg Bollella, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Andrew Borg, University of York
Angelo Corsaro, Prismtech
Bertrand Delsart, Sun Microsystems
Peter Dibble, Timesys
Laurent George, Ecole Centrale Electronique, Paris
Chris Gill, Washington University
David Hardin, Rockwell Collins
Teresa Higuera, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
James Hunt, aicas
Douglas Jensen, Mitre
Kane Kim, University of California, Irvine
Doug Lea, SUNY Oswego
Kelvin Nilsen, Aonix
Federic Parain, Sun Microsystems
Peter Puschner, TU Vienna
Corrado Santoro, University of Catania
Douglas Schmidt, Vanderbilt
Martin Schoeberl, TU Vienna
Fridtjof Siebert, aicas
Tullio Vardanega, University of Padua
Jan Vitek, Purdue University
Andy Wellings, University of York