North-Holland Mlcroprocessing and Mlcroprogramming 30 (1990) 1-2 1

Opening Address: Hardware and software in system engineering

D.Q.M. Fay Queen's University of Belfast Northern Ireland, U.K.

The Euromicro organisation welcomes the delegates to Amsterdam for the sixteenth

annual Symposium aimed at bringing together people from business, industry,

research, government and academia. The theme of Euromicro 90 is hardware and

software in system engineering, with sub-themes of the moving hardware/software

interface and system reliability. As usual there are a number of papers in the area

of real-time systems, a topic that has also been covered this year by a special

Euromicro workshop.

A good range of papers will be presented at this Symposium, from the most practical

to the more theoretical with authors from industry, Universities and elsewhere.

The choice of themes and topics for this symposium was made in part because of the

current interest in computing as an engineering discipline. The hardware side of

computing has always been accepted as falling within engineering, and the

reliability of computer hardware has been consistently good. On the other hand,

there is some resistance amongst programmers to think of themselves as engineers and

the quality and reliability of software often leaves much to be desired.

The migration of applications to hardware implementation, if only in ROM, has led

to some change in thinking about the differing roles of hardware and software. Also

the increased usefulness of the emerging theoretical foundations for software means

it is becoming possible to treat programming more like an applied science or

engineering disciple rather than an art. There are still many outstanding problems

with software, such as techniques for obtaining useful metrics of software quality,

which are being researched and need solutions. The keynote speakers will talk

about particular application areas where quality and reliability of of essential

importance.

Microprocessing and microprogramming or topics which now span the field of computing

from the smallest dedicated hardware through to the software of kernels for the

operation of the largest supercomputers. Increasingly advanced software concepts

are finding their place in the design of silicon and GaAs.

The call for papers for this symposium concentrated on four main tracks, which have

been maintained in the programme for the three days. There was an encouraging

response of papers submitted for all four tracks, which were~

Hardware and Architectures

Software

Systems

and Applications.

As progra~ne chairman, I am particular grateful to the four topic co-ordinators who

made an excellent contribution in organising the refereeing of papers, and during

the programme committee meeting. The four tracks have their own particular styles,

and should give the opportunity for conference delegates to choose suitable sessions

to attend from the parallel sessions which are provided.