Kevin Dankwardt submitted this brief report on the Embedded Linux Expo & Conference held this week in Milan Italy . . .

The Embedded Linux Expo & Conference, Real-Time & Embedded Computer Conference and the Third Real-Time Linux Workshop were combined in Milan for an exciting and educational event. The Conferences sported two full days of conference with 4 parallel tracks each day. The event was opened by Paolo Mantegazza, inventor of real-time Linux variant RTAI, who introduced the first keynote. The keynote, by Andrea Cuomo of ST Microelectronics, was well attended and quite interesting. One amusing graph he presented demonstrated that the heat density of recent microprocessors exceeds that of a hot-plate and the curve of heat density growth is targeted to surpass the heat density of nuclear reactors in just a few years.

The other two keynotes were by Satoshi Kagami of the Digital Human Laboratory, National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology, Japan, and Fred Proctor of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Proctor's keynote examined the measurement of latencies in real-time Linux. He even related that through a small amount of clever busy waiting one could even achieve sub-microsecond response latencies on a Pentium class PC.

Of course the Conference had embedded Linux topics in every corner. Projects discussed that were based on embedded Linux involved everything from Fusion reaction monitoring to Bluetooth with Linux. One common theme was that there were quite a number of talks about deployments of real-time Linux.

The Conference had a full complement of exhibitors, many of whom also gave talks. Some of these talks, such as the ones by OnCore Systems and Wind River were held to standing room only crowds. It was evident from the vendor interest that many attendees were poised and ready to move forward with commercial partners for their projects.

On the other hand, the Real Time Linux Foundation made their presence well known. They presented repeating two-hour hands-on “Kick-Start” sessions on both days. These sessions taught attendees to load and use RTLinux. Phil Daly, President of the Real Time Linux Foundation also gave a talk outlining the structure and goals of the foundation. He related that the Foundation is actively seeking volunteer and corporate sponsorship. Daly also outlined the by-laws and the structure they have in place to help to insure that the Foundation supports any and all variants of real-time Linux.

Finally, the Conference was preceded and succeeded by full day tutorials on embedded Linux presented by K Computing.

 
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