The task to design and implement a middleware which provides real-time features to the user applications and in the same time is able to work on powerful systems (PC desktops) and moreover fit on small systems (embedded systems) represents a big challenge and requires a considerable effort.

This paper presents concepts and results of OSA+, a scalable middleware for embedded real-time systems which facilitates the development of distributed real-time applications in a heterogeneous environment. One goal of the architecture is to reduce as much as possible the overhead introduced by the middleware, in terms of memory footprint and computation time. Furthermore, the underlying hardware and operating systems should be used in an optimal manner.

The first results obtained and presented in the paper show that we are on the right way to reach our goals. Further improvements described later can even gain more performance for the OSA+ middleware.