VtRES 2014 - Workshop on Virtualization for Real-Time Embedded Systems (VtRES 2014)

There is a growing interest in embedded real-time virtualization within the Industrial automation domain driven by the gradual shift to multicore processor and the more complex and inter-connected environment. Virtualization offer solutions for hardware consolidation, where multiple systems can be integrated onto a single multicore machine. Moreover, the ability offered to manage mixed criticality, including security aspects makes virtualization an attractive technology for future automation systems.
Virtualization is realized by creating a set of Virtual Machines (VM) that are dedicated to the applications for running them on the physical system in a controlled manner in terms of resources accesses. During runtime, a middleware is responsible for providing the required resources to VMs according to the specifications of their associated applications. This middleware is called Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) or hypervisor. By partitioning system resources among applications this technique ensures faults containment, i.e., it prevents a faulty application from misusing the system resources and thus preventing failure propagation between different applications.
However, using this technique for industrial real time systems might be challenging due to the following problems.
Virtualization may impose significant runtime overhead, which may affect the efficiency of its usage and degrade the system performance.
How to guarantee timing constraints, such as meeting deadlines and achieving required Quality of Service QoS, in the context of virtual environments.
The main focus of this workshop is on methods, techniques and mechanisms for efficient and predictable virtualization for real time embedded system applications.
The VtRES workshop provides a forum for researchers and technologists to discuss the state of the art, present their work and contributions, and set future directions in virtualization for real time embedded systems.
Topics of interest include, but not limited to:
Efficient design and implementation of VMM in terms of the timing constraint, QoS assurance, runtime overhead and energy consumption requirements.
Extending and optimizing non real time VMMs to support virtualization for embedded systems.
Supporting virtualization for advanced hardware technologies such as multi core/many core, GPU, DSP, FPGA, high speed network communication media and devices, etc.
VMM performance tuning based on applications’ load types and industrial requirements.
Virtualizing networks communication considering different network technologies e.g., Ethernet, CAN buss, FlexRay, ProfiNet etc.
Hardware device sharing between virtual machines, including e.g, I/O and field busses.
Methods for achieving advanced features found in server virtualization, such as live migration, with predictable real time performance.
Modeling and analysis of virtualized applications.
Fault tolerance techniques in virtualized environments.
Tools relevant to virtualization and monitoring.
Case studies of real industrial applications on virtualized platforms.
Deployment studies of virtualization technologies.
Novel use and application of virtualization for embedded real time systems.
System level virtualization solutions.
Supporting service level virtualization for distributed real time systems.
Submission of Papers
VtRES invites papers that present novel ideas in virtualization for real-time systems, survey the state-of-the-art, present work-in-progress, and discuss open issues. All papers should be formatted as single-space, double-column, in a 10 point font and max 8 pages (see the ETFA webpage). Manuscripts must be submitted electronically in PDF format. The accepted papers will be published in the ETFA'2014 conference proceedings online at IEEExplore.