For the third year running, INCHRON gathered professionals in embedded real-time development for a mutual exchange of experiences during the international Congress on Real-Time Development which was held in Munich from 28-29 June 2011. Once again, the event attracted over 80 decision makers, project leaders and developers of real-time critical applications intent on sharing expertise with high-profile keynote speakers, technical experts and exhibiting partner companies.

At the start of this year's industry gathering, attendants had the opportunity of participating in a full-day INCHRON Tool-Suite training course or a half-day introductory course at the INCHRON offices in Garching (near Munich).

This was followed by a well-attended Meet the Experts session. Enjoying the summery temperatures, developers and decision makers from TRW, Elektrobit, Valeo and Intel talked until late into the night to representatives from Robert Bosch, the technical universities and other participants in the beer garden of the Café Ludwig.

In a highly anticipated keynote, Meg A. Selfe, Vice President Complex & Embedded Systems at IBM Rational, that evening emphasized IBM's dedication to innovation and the company's roadmap to its consistent implementation. She spoke about the valuable contribution customer products are making to the generation of a "Smarter Planet", highlighting that software is the invisible thread that enables all these innovations.

On 29 June 2011 the intense exchange of experiences culminated in the actual Real-Time Congress. The day was packed with presentations by top speakers and a keynote by Giuseppe Mascolino, Head of Department for E/E Architecture and Processes at the BMW Group. He spoke about in- vehicle as well as vehicle-to-vehicle networking. In forward-looking examples, Mr. Mascolino described which real-time critical functions will soon be incorporated in cars. He also pointed to challenges in real-time development and revealed how BMW renders them in their processes.

The technical program included fascinating presentations which led to highly constructive discussions. Continental Automotive talked about the integration of functions of various safety levels in a system with the help of virtualization; the integration of functions of various control devices in a device at AUDI; and the trend towards greater integration of more functions on fewer control devices. Autoliv successfully tested this with the INCHRON tool chronSIM at various stages of the development process with regards to the real-time behavior. BMW asked who develops good software for modern cars and described what the challenges are. The answer lies in the proper division of responsibilities between OEM and suppliers.

During a short lecture IBM Rational stressed the benefits of the integrated solution from IBM and INCHRON over the highly fragmented development tools and toolsets that customers frequently use. For a secure and unified database, which all tools can access, IBM offers the Jazz platform plus tools and methodologies for specification management, modeling and quality assurance throughout the development process.

Siemens illustrated very clearly how increased demands call for multi-core processing in automation technology and how to avoid performance loss under these conditions.

The conference concluded with a joint presentation by Lear Corporation and Volkswagen. After describing the network architecture at Volkswagen and the importance of the central gateway for the next generation of vehicles, speakers Racu and Kessler touched on the dynamic requirements and tasks of the gateway. They finished with the analysis of the dynamic behavior which is necessary to investigate the specific functions of the gateway and to size it optimally.

Conclusion: A thrilling networking event which promoted an intensive exchange of ideas amongst real-time developers, experts and the exhibitors IBM Rational, ESG and INCHRON. We would like to thank all attendants, speakers and exhibitors for their participation!