Europe draws map for embedded systems and software

By Peter Clarke

 

MUNICH, Germany - A major European collaborative R&D program founded by many of the continent's leading systems companies has published a software road map that will be used to help direct approximately $3 billion in future spending and to build consensus in Europe on standards and preferred technologies over the next 10 to 15 years for embedded and distributed systems.

 

The ITEA (Information Technology for European Advancement) program intends to use the "Technology Roadmap for Software Intensive Systems" not only to direct collaborative research spending over the project's life span, but also to help attack a software productivity gap that is growing larger and is predicted to get much worse.

 

The road map touches on most aspects of electronic systems, including operating systems for cars and mobile phones, future programming and development languages, methods for peer-to-peer networking and agent-based network transactions.

 

Detractors are already saying that the road map is short on detail and does not make any choices between overlapping methods, protocols and applications, preferring instead just to list the many possible technologies. Although it does not contain a strict timetable and is considered more an expression of directions than a prediction of fact, the road map could still be significant because it shows a cooperative culture seeking to maximize European influence on component and tool suppliers in a number of areas.

 

ITEA was formed in July 1999 by Alcatel, Bosch, Bull, DaimlerChrysler, Italtel, Nokia, Philips, Siemens, Thales and Thomson Multimedia, and has so far committed about $500 million to about 30 multicompany projects. National governments typically fund half a project's cost, with companies paying the rest.

 

The road map's launching Wednesday (March 14) at the Design Automation and Test in Europe conference here was done in part to help coordinate its software-oriented activity with the hardware world, according to one of the authors of the road map. DATE organizers also chose as themes of the conference automotive electronics and telecommunications, two of the embedded systems categories at which European companies hold world-class sway.

 

One of the initiative's overall goals, perceived as being a key to creating jobs and economic power in Europe, is to limit the continent's reliance on U.S. software.

 

Paul Mehring, the head of telematics and strategic IT research at DaimlerChrysler AG, and chairman of the board at ITEA, said: "Even DaimlerChrysler is not big enough to push through new standards on its own," explaining why many leading European OEMs have banded together. "We are going to make a big effort to push this road map," Mehring said. "The Netherlands and Finland are going to build national road maps around this. We will push it through in every domain."

 

The road map classifies different types of software, said Eric Daclin, vice chairman of ITEA and a former senior researcher with Alcatel. "By tying things together we get a much better idea of what happens if a particular technology lags. There are rendezvous you need to meet certain goals. It's not a measuring tool but it tells us where to apply research."

 

Application domains

 

ITEA will try initially to pursue embedded and distributed systems in three applications domains — the home, the workplace, and mobile, with the latter covering both automotive applications and mobile communications.

 

Mehring said there had been some discussion about splitting mobile area into automotive and telephony domains, but that the convergence stimulated by the digitization of data was making such a move less necessary. Subsequent versions of the software road map could consider further domains, he said.

 

The road map core has been divided into four areas: content; infrastructure and basic services; human system interaction; and underlying engineering. To create the road map, about 120 discrete technologies or software approaches were reviewed and their position addressed with regard to various applications. The conclusion of the road map's authors is that the technological environment will become more networked, more autonomous and increasingly self-organizing. The authors also concluded that the volume of data will rise faster than the bandwidth capacity required to transport it, which will fuel the need for new compression algorithms and ubiquitous storage.

 

Mehring said he hoped software and systems professionals would read the 150-page road map document and provide feedback to the ITEA program. The road map may be downloaded for free as a PDF file from the ITEA Web site.

 

"ITEA is all about software, but systems are based on hardware and we have a natural complement in another [European] program: Medea-plus," said Mehling. "We are already working with Medea to have coordinated projects." Medea-plus is the Microelectronics Development for European Applications program, a follow-up to the Medea program and to JESSI, the Joint European Submicron Semiconductor Initiative, in the 1990s.

 

While engaging with other European research programs and industry consortia, Mehring said ITEA would try to engage with other regions as well.

 

"We don't think of a European citadel but we needed to have something to bring to them [other regions] before we could approach them," Daclin said.

 

Mehring said that one potential peer body could be the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Council in the United States, which was set up in 1999 by President Clinton.

 

Daclin said it was important for Europe to understand what it wants from technology and to start to set the global agenda. "If we don't stand up for ourselves we are beaten before we start," he said.