RT-Cloud 2024

Third International Workshop on Real-Time Cloud Systems (RT-Cloud 2024)

Submission deadline: 9th May 2024

Held in conjunction with ECRTS 2024 in Lille, France

About

While most cloud services operate on a best-effort basis and provide no timing guarantees, there is a growing interest in cloud technologies for industrial and critical applications. Edge computing is a recent paradigm that brings processing and storage resources closer to the user. As a result, it provides benefits such as low latency and high bandwidth while still providing the benefits of cloud computing, making it lucrative for low-latency, real-time / safety-critical applications. However, a higher degree of determinism is desired for cloud and edge technologies to be fully embraced by the real-time / safety-critical industry. This calls for new techniques and methodologies to design predictable and reliable cloud/edge technologies and applications.

Real-time performance is required in all layers of the cloud/edge stack:

  • The compute virtualization layer must provide deterministic behavior.
  • Similarly, the network layer has to provide bounded and controllable communication latencies. For example, in time-sensitive networks, this implies a need for a higher-level controller integrated with the cloud orchestrator.
  • Data plane services, such as messaging and storage services, need to guarantee latency bounds.
  • The control plane services, e.g., scaling, resource management, and orchestration, must be aware of the real-time requirements and use appropriate techniques.

The 3rd International Workshop on Real-Time Cloud Systems (RT-Cloud) aims to bring together industrial and academic researchers and become a forum for discussing topics (including ideas, open and upcoming challenges, use cases, initiatives, calls to action, and projects, regulations and standards, future research directions, etc.) related to real-time cloud/edge/fog computing and virtualization techniques.

This year, the workshop will have a focus on industrial cloud use cases. The workshop also welcomes short and full papers that consider:

  • Innovative approaches/ideas including work-in-progress
  • Open problems and upcoming challenges
  • New technologies
  • Regulations and standards
  • Demos and tutorials, especially, for open-source projects
  • Call to actions
  • Experimental reports on existing technologies, including negative experiences

Following the success of the first and second editions, the third edition of the workshop will be held in Lille, France, on July 9, 2024, as one of the ECRTS 2024 workshops.

Call for Papers

Original full and short papers on all aspects of real-time/safety-critical cloud/edge/fog and virtualization are welcome. Researchers are encouraged (but not limited) to, submit papers regarding the following:

Use cases and applications for RT-cloud

  • Use of cloud computing principles to improve performance/safety/security in existing real-time use cases
  • Real-time cloud and edge applications and use cases
    • Real-time / safety-critical applications as a cloud-based service
    • Use case requirements, e.g., automation and cloud robotics systems
    • Experiments and experiences
    • Decomposition between the edge, fog, and cloud

Virtualization and cloud computing technologies/models for RT-cloud

  • Deterministic hypervisors and cloud execution environments, including containers and WebAssembly
    • Real-time extension to existing cloud-computing technologies, e.g., Kubernetes
  • Real-time Saas, Paas, Iaas, and XaaS (anything as a service model)
  • Execution and deployment models for RT-Cloud including serverless compute
    • Modeling of network and cloud, execution stacks, and applications
  • Microservices Architectures for real-time system
  • Development Operations (DevOps) for RT-cloud
  • Edge-cloud-IoT continuum and interaction/interfacing

Resource management (including monitoring, scheduling) and orchestration for RT-cloud

  • Predictable orchestration and cloud operation, e.g., how to allocate and configure cloud resources in a bounded time
  • Tools and techniques for resource sharing and isolation
  • End-to-end resource management and resource scheduling in the edge-to-cloud continuum
  • Co-scheduling of virtual network and compute resources
  • QoS mechanisms, isolation guarantees
  • Autonomous monitoring systems
  • Adaptive SLAs for RT-cloud

Safety and Security for RT-cloud

  • Assurance, deterministic scaling, fail-over, migration, etc.
  • Trusted RT-Cloud/edge environment
    • Considering security and privacy together with safety

The workshop also welcomes short and full papers that consider the following with respect to real-time/safety-critical cloud/edge/fog and virtualization:

  • Innovative approaches/ideas including work-in-progress
  • Open problems and upcoming challenges
  • New technologies
  • Regulations and standards
  • Demos and tutorials, especially, for open-source projects
  • Calls to action
  • Experimental reports on existing technologies, including negative experiences

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline: May 9, 2024 (AoE)
  • Acceptance Notification: June 6, 2024
  • Workshop: July 9, 2024

Information about early registration can be found at this link.

Submission Instructions

The RT-cloud workshop aims to bring together industrial and academic researchers and become a forum for discussing topics related to real-time cloud/edge/fog computing and virtualization techniques. This year, the workshop will have a focus on industrial cloud use cases. The workshop also welcomes short and full original papers that consider:

  • Innovative approaches/ideas including work-in-progress
  • Open problems and upcoming challenges
  • New technologies
  • Regulations and standards
  • Demos and tutorials, especially, for open-source projects
  • Calls to action
  • Experimental reports on existing technologies, including negative experiences

Manuscripts must present original work. They must be written in English, using the IEEE format, and submitted through easychair. There are no strict rules about the number of pages, but the recommended length for full papers is 6 to 8 pages, and for short papers is 3-4 pages.

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rtcloud2024

All submissions will be reviewed by the technical program committee members, and accepted papers will be included in the workshop proceedings, which will be available online on the workshop website. Papers will not be assigned a DOI to enable authors to submit a full/extended paper later on to a conference or a journal. For every accepted paper, at least one author is expected to register for the workshop and present the paper.

Program

The workshop program will include:

  • Presentation of accepted papers (with Q&A)
  • Invited talks by experts from academia and industry
  • Open discussion between a panel (consisting of industrial and academic experts) and the workshop’s audience on RT-cloud/edge-related topics, including the following:
    • Open research questions in designing a virtual real-time stack (kernels, hypervisors, orchestrators, execution environments, etc.)
    • Open-source and proprietary hardware/software solutions (and how to avoid tying yourself to proprietary solutions)
    • Building a community. How to organize attractive events and secure funding
    • Use cases, both short-term and long-term

Proceedings of the Previous Editions

Links to the Previous Editions’ Webpages

Workshop Chairs

  • Johan Eker (Lund University/Ericsson)
  • Luca Abeni (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna – luca.abeni@santannapisa.it)
  • Gautam Gala (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau – gala@eit.uni-kl.de)

Contact for general questions regarding the workshop: gala@eit.uni-kl.de

Publicity Chair

Technical Program Committee

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