The 41st IEEE Real-Time System Symposium RTSS 2020

Not able to organize an in-person conference during COVID-19, does not mean that the online conference cannot be an interactive, social, and a wholesome experience. RTSS 2020 – the flagship conference in real-time systems – intends to change your perception about that. RTSS 2020 organizers are focused on making this conference a unique experience, not only in the technical but also in the social and networking aspects of the program. Just join with an open mind and allow yourself to explore new ways to engage.

Let’s first start by summarizing the top-of-the-line technical program of RTSS 2020. The conference packs the best of two years in one event. Although RTSS 2019 was canceled due to COVID fears, the best parts are brought back to life in RTSS 2020. Prof. Wang Yi from Uppsala University received the IEEE TCRTS Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement and Leadership in 2019. His award talk will feature along with the award talk of Prof. Reinhard Wilhelm from the University of Saarland, who is the winner of this year’s award. The program also features two sessions of outstanding papers from RTSS 2019 and 2020. These are the crème-de-la-crème of the RTSS conference and a definite must-attend.

RTSS has always been a very selective conference with low acceptance rates, but 2020 is poised to set a new record. Despite the pandemic of COVID-19, RTSS 2020 received 140 complete submissions, and out of them, 28 full-length papers were selected to appear at the conference, with an acceptance rate of 20%. The accepted papers are organized in 8 technical sessions by their themes. These themes are broad and cover almost all aspects of real-time system theory and design. “Mixed criticality systems”, “From soft to hard real-time”, Multi-processor scheduling”, Real-time communication: wired and wireless”, “CPS and autonomous systems”, Predictability and verification of existing systems”, and “Energy optimization and multicore systems” are all the session’s topics.

The conference program includes an industrial panel, and a panel on a survey of the industry practice of real-time systems. Sessions for brief presentations by works in progress, and RTSS@Work demonstrations are also scheduled.

Though the conference formally starts on Dec 02, 2020, the popular “Hot Topics Day” will be organized the day before. The 2020 Hot Topics Day will feature two workshops, one on Mixed Criticality Systems (WMC 2020), and another one on the application of DARPA Assured Autonomy Program Technologies to Autonomous Learning-Enabled Real-Time Systems. Additionally, a tutorial on Formal Analysis, Verification, and Design of Safety-Critical CPS will be held.

The RTSS technical program is interlaced with social events and breaks. The conference will take place on the virtual platform – Underline. On entering Underline, go to the “main stage” to see the current “live” program. To take a break, just click on “lounge”, and enter as an avatar in the virtual conference venue. Viewing posters, joining icebreaking sessions, and chatting with others by accosting them are just some of the activities available in the virtual venue.

RTSS organizers are not leaving all the socialization to yourself. The scheduled ice-breaking sessions, specially designed for first-timers, will have conference volunteers moderating the tables. They will also be available for mentoring participants about the different aspects of RTSS. Don’t miss the online RTSS trivia Q&A (on Kahoot) planned during the banquet. “Physical prizes” will be distributed to the winners of the “virtual contest”.

The reduced cost of the organization of the virtual event is the silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has made it possible for the organizers to allow free registration for non-speakers. This provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all to discover what goes on inside the top conference of the field. What are the cutting-edge issues, the latest inventions, and the discoveries in the domain? Recorded presentations of all the technical papers will be available for viewing starting Nov 24, 2020.

To get the most value out of the conference watch the pre-recorded videos before and post questions. Witness the live event, get your questions answered by the authors, engage with the top minds in the field, enjoy the interactions in the lounge, and most importantly — find the beach.

Authors: Aviral Shrivastava is a Professor in the School of Computing Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering at the Arizona State University, where he has established and heads the “Make Programming Simple (MPS)” lab. He received his Ph.D. and Masters in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine, and bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is a 2011 NSF CAREER Award Recipient, and recipient of 2012 Outstanding Junior Researcher in CSE at ASU. His works have received several best paper nominations, including at DAC 2017, and a best student paper award at VLSI 2016. Prof. Shrivastava’s research lies in the broad area of “Software for Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems.” More specifically, Prof. Shrivastava is interested in topics around i) Accelerated computing, ii) Resilient Computing, and iii) Time-sensitive Computing. His research is funded by NSF, DOE, NIST, and several industries including Microsoft, Raytheon Missile Systems, Intel, Nvidia, etc. Prof. Shrivastava has served as the program chair of CODES+ISSS 2017 and 2018, and LCTES 2019, track chair of RTSS 2020, and virtual conference chair of ESWEEK 2020. He is currently serving as the general chair of ESWEEK 2021, deputy editor in chief of IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, associate editor for ACM Transactions Embedded Computing Systems (ACM TECS), IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design (IEEE TCAD), and Springer International Journal on Parallel Processing (Springer IJPP), and Springer Design Automation for Embedded Systems (Springer DAEM).

Jian-Jia Chen is a professor at Department of Informatics in TU Dortmund University in Germany.  His research interests include real-time systems, embedded systems, energy-efficient scheduling, power-aware designs, temperature-aware scheduling, and distributed computing. He received the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Award in 2019. He is the TPC chair of IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) in 2020.

X. Sharon Hu is a professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Her research interests include low-power system design, circuit and architecture design with emerging technologies, real-time embedded systems and hardware-software co-design. She has published more than 350 papers in these areas. She was the General Chair of Design Automation Conference (DAC) in 2018 and was the TPC chair of DAC in 2015. She is the Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, and has also served as Associate Editor for a number of other ACM and IEEE journals.  She was the TPC chair of IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) in 2019 and is the General Chair of RTSS in 2020. X. Sharon Hu is a Fellow of the IEEE.