A 3.6 M Euro research project could substantially reduce development costs for advanced computing

A recently granted 3.6 M Euro research project, funded by the European Commission, aims to transform new and existing computing applications for deployment to state-of-the art heterogeneous computing systems. The resulting parallel implementations offer significant benefits in performance, energy efficiency, and product development

The 3.6 M Euro REPARA project, supported with more that 2.6M Euros by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) for Research and Technological Development, the EU’s main instrument for funding research - will bring together expertise from academic institutions and industry specialists across five countries.

Starting in September 2013, the REPARA project will run for 3 years and will focus on deploying applications to parallel heterogeneous computing systems. The project aims to make the performance and energy efficiency benefits of such computers available to end users without the high development effort usually associated with such complex architectures. The automated tools and methodologies targeted by REPARA are designed to reduce time-to-market and development costs, leading to more competitive products.

The project involves five academic institutions: University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain, FHO HSR Rapperswil in Switzerland, Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany, University of Szeged in Hungary, and University of Pisa in Italy. In addition, two industrial partners play key roles in the project: Evopro Innovation in Hungary and Ixion Industry and Aerospace in Spain both contribute with their practical expertise across a broad spectrum of key applications.

FP7 is the short name for the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. This is the EU’s main instrument for funding research in Europe, running from 2007-2013. FP7 is also designed to respond to Europe’s employment needs, competitiveness and quality of life. FP7 has a total budget of e50 billion.

University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, participates through the Computer Architecture, Communications and Systems (ARCOS) research group and coordinates the REPARA project. The ARCOS team led by Prof. J. Daniel Garcia brings to the project their experience in high performance computing and embedded systems.

FHO HSR Rapperswil is a member of the University of Applied Sciences Eastern Switzerland (FHO). HSR participates with its IFS Institute for Software under the lead of Prof. Peter Sommerlad. IFS contributes its expertise in building refactoring tools for C++ in Eclipse CDT.

Technische Universität Darmstadt, in Germany, participates with its Embedded Systems and Applications Group (ESA), founded and lead by Prof. Andreas Koch. ESA contributes its specialized expertise in tools and architectures for application-specific reconfigurable computers.

University of Szeged, Hungary, participates with its Department of Software Engineering. The team participating in the REPARA project is led by Dr. Rudolf Ferenc and it contributes to the project by its expertise in static analysis, software quality assurance, energy measurement, and modelling.

University of Pisa, in Italy, participates with its Computer Science Department. They will be cooperating in the context of the REPARA project with University of Torino. The resulting team lead by Prof. Marco Danelutto, will bring to the project their experience in designing efficient structured parallel programming run-times.

Evopro Innovation Kft is an Hungarian professional services company in the Central-European region in the fields of mechanical and electrical design, and industrial automation. Evopro Innovation team lead by Dr. Zsolt Szepessy provides a large experience in real industrial applications and specific expertise in embedded DSP solutions.

Ixion Industry and Aerospace is Spanish company created with the objective of attending the necessity of automation in Society, reaching the highest efficiency in the processes by state of- the-art technological solutions. Ixion team lead by Dr. Jorge Villagrá provides experience with a range of industrial applications in robotics and industrial maintenance.

For more information:

Web: http://www.repara-project.eu

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/REPARA-Project-5183908

Twitter: http://twitter.com/reparaproject