The last 10 years have seen significant advances in automotive electronics. The adoption of multiplex wiring enabled the integration of advanced features such as stability control systems, active suspension and hybrid drive-trains as well as advanced engine management and transmission control systems. These compute-intensive applications required the adoption of the latest high performance embedded microprocessors.

The high levels of safety and reliability required for many avionics applications means that the industry has traditionally focussed on building separate highly reliable Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) rather than fully integrated systems. The recent trend in avionics however is to adopt a different approach: Leading avionics companies, such as BAE Systems, Honeywell and Thales are now developing Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) systems that utilise powerful current generation microprocessors (like the MPC750).

Rapita Systems is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the EU-funded PEAL projects.

The initial PEAL project showed that cache effects are a major source of variability in the execution time of programs. The PEAL project identified patterns of program execution and code layout that result in cache risks, so called "cache killers", and quantified their impact.

Mobile phones are real-time systems, with timing constraints on network communication, audio and data encoding/decoding. Ensuring that the timing constraints are met is necessary for satisfactory operation.