The editors (two of the Techniques of Informatics and Microelectronics for Computer Architecture Laboratory, France; one of the Interuniversity Electronics Center, Belgium; and one of the U. of Kaiserlautern, Germany) collect 37 contributions from the March 2003 Embedded Software Forum of the Design, Automation, and Test in Europe Conference, held in Munich Germany. Covering software related aspects of system-on-chip (SoC) design, the papers address embedded operating systems for SoC, operating systems abstraction and targeting, embedded software design and implementation, software optimization for embedded systems, energy aware software techniques, safe automotive software development, embedded system architecture, transformations for real-time software, and low power software.