The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) has founded the collaborative project "Software Platform Embedded Systems 2020" (SPES 2020). This large-scale research and development subsidy program will unite universities and and research centers (led by the University of Technology of Munich) with commercial industry players in an effort to combine competences and allow sygergetic effects. One of the goals of the collaboration will be the development of a uniform, domain-spanning method of designing embedded systems. An important step on the way to this goal is the switch from operating system-dependent individual programming to a model-based cross-platform workflow. This not only allows more flexibility in porting applications, but also significant cost and time reductions in code generation and quality control. Our member RST Industrie Automation GmbH offers a successful solution on this sector with its platform-independent development suite "GAMMA".

Through SPES 2020, RST Industrie Automation GmbH will be closely working with renowned  research centers like the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering and industry behemoths like Siemens, Bosch and EADS. The subsidized projects will mainly be concentrated in the avionics, automotive and medical technology sectors. The BMBF has vowed to provide a subsidy of approximately 23 million Euro over the course of three years.

Further information is available under the following links (German only): Press release by the Bavarian State Chancellary, press release by Fraunhofer IESE. SPES 2020 was also portrayed in the technical magazine "iX" published by Heise;  the article is available for download here (fee required).