Embedded systems in automation — Commodities and challenges

Summary form only given, as follows. Automation is just one application field of embedded systems, but surely one of the most heterogeneous ones. Automation systems can be found in very different places like traffic control, home and building automation, but also in industrial scenarios like production of cars or petrochemical plants. The first part of the keynote will take the audience on a journey through this variety. Both real time requirements and applications of these domains will be presented. Furthermore, common trends like multicore processors enter the field of automation systems as well, but the consequences of using multicore processors in hard real time devices are not understood completely so far. The second part of the keynote will present a real life example of loosing performance by using two cores instead of one. The most important conclusion is that hardware and software have implicit dependencies, which have to be considered in the very early system design phase.