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SIGBED FY’04 Annual Report
July 2003 – June 2004
Submitted by: Janos Sztipanovits, SIGBED Chair
SIGBED was established in May 2003 and started operation as a provisional SIG.
During the past year, SIGBED achieved all its initial goals and started providing services for the
embedded computing community.
Embedded Computing
Embedded computing continues to be an extremely active area of information technology. It has
strategic importance for the future of systems industry from mobile to home systems and from
automotive, to avionics and manufacturing. Embedded computing technology transforms
products, creates new markets and disrupts the status quo. Embedded computing challenges the
research community with fundamental problems emerging from the integration of physical and
computational objects, and from the need of developing ever mode complex, interdependable,
secure systems.
The importance of embedded computing research has been widely recognized by
government and industry. Embedded computing was listed third in the overall research priorities
of the European Commission; it receives continued research support in the US from NSF and
other agencies and the industrial interest is demonstrated by the appearance of embedded
software and systems in the largest industry supported meetings such as DATE in Europe.
The primary challenge of SIGBED is to serve as an interface between the profession and the rest
of society: government, industry, and education.
Conferences
At the October 2003 meeting, the SIGBED Board accepted the following long-term
goals for embedded computing conferences:
1. Consolidation of smaller conferences to a Fall and Spring Joint Conference model.
2. Increasing industrial participation and involvement in conferences.
With the active participation and help of the SIGBED Board members, we established an initial
conference portfolio via sponsorship arrangements. After the first year of operation, the list of
SIGBED sponsored meeting is the following:
1. International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT)
The focus of EMSOFT is principles of embedded software development.
100% SIGBED Sponsorship.
2. International Conference on Hardware Software Codesign and System
Synthesis (CODES+ISSS)
The focus of the conference is in the design of embedded systems hardware, software and tools.
(10% SIGBED Sponsorship)
3. Compilers, Architecture and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES)
The CASES conference provides a forum for emerging technology in embedded
computing systems, with an emphasis on compilers and architectures for embedded
systems. (33% SIGBED Sponsorship)
4. International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN)
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The focus of IPSN covers physical device design, signal processing and
networking and middleware aspects of sensor network development. (50% SIGBED
Sponsorship)
5. Conference on Languages, Compilers and Tools for Embedded Systems (LCTES)
The focus of the conference is integrated hardware and software solutions for
achieving performance goals in resource limited embedded system platforms. (50%
SIGBED Sponsorship)
6. International Workshop on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control (HCSS)
The focus of the workshop is modeling, analysis, and implementation of dynamic
and reactive systems involving both discrete and continuous behaviors. (SIGBED
Sponsorship has been initiated)
During the last year, all of the meetings above reported increased number of submissions with
average acceptance rate of 25-35%. Our next step in moving toward the Fall and Spring Joint
Conference model will be the organization of a “Summit” for Steering Committee representatives
on discussing the feasibility of and the actual process for migrating toward the new model. We
have started preparations for the meeting, which is expected to be organized under NSF
sponsorship. At this point, the first concrete result is
the co-location of EMSOFT and CODES+ISSS in 2005.
We expect that the following development will foster increased interaction between the embedded
computing research community and industry:
1. DATE 2005, the largest design automation conference in Europe with very strong industrial
participation, established an Embedded Software Topic Area, where Janos Sztipanovits (SIGBED
Chair) and Joseph Sifakis (Member of the SIGBED Board) will serve as Program Committee cochairs. We expect that this meeting will significantly increase the industrial visibility of SIGBED in
Europe.
2. OMG has established the Model Integrated Computing PSIG for standardizing some aspects of
embedded software design and design tools. SIGBED members participate in this industrial
forum and help the establishment of technical interaction between research groups and major
end-user industry (automotive and avionics).
3. Under the sponsorship of US government agencies and industry, a new non-for-profit
organization, the ESCHER (Embedded System Consortium for Hybrid and Embedded Research)
Institute has been established for operating an open, quality controlled repository for the results of
government funded research.
Journals
The embedded computing community has two ACM transactions, where SIGBED members serve
in leadership role.
ACM Transaction on Embedded Computer Systems (ACM TECS)
Editor: Prof. Wayne Wolf (Member of the SIGBED Board)
ACM Transaction on Sensor Networks (ACM TOSN)
Editor: Dr. Feng Zhao (Member of the SIGBED Board)
The two transactions play fundamental role in building up a body of archival publications in the
emerging fields of embedded systems and sensor networks.
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Newsletter
SIGBED has started up the publication of a newsletter, the SIGBED Review. This
electronic newsletter, edited by Dr. Tarek Abdelzaher, Dr. Sandeep Neema and Dr. Oleg
Sokolsky, is a peer-reviewed quarterly publication, which provides a dissemination forum for
research on embedded computing.
Future Challenges
SIGBED is serving an extremely active technology area, which is, to a large extent, in the
formation phase to becoming a new discipline. The largest future challenges for the SIG are the
followings:
1. Accelerating the convergence toward the Joint Fall and Spring Conference model with strong
industrial participation.
2. Development of new services for SIG members beyond the SIGBED Newsletter and SIGBED
Web Portal.
3. Extending the Committee Structure of SIGBED and gradually assuming operation with a larger
volunteer group.
4. Preparation for the election of the new SIGBED leadership.