Project acronym CAC
Project Cryptography and Complexity
Researcher (PI) Yuval Ishai
Host Institution (HI) TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Modern cryptography has deeply rooted connections with computational complexity theory and other areas of computer science. This proposal suggests to explore several {\em new connections} between questions in cryptography and questions from other domains, including computational complexity, coding theory, and even the natural sciences. The project is expected to broaden the impact of ideas from cryptography on other domains, and on the other hand to benefit cryptography by applying tools from other domains towards better solutions for central problems in cryptography.
Summary
Modern cryptography has deeply rooted connections with computational complexity theory and other areas of computer science. This proposal suggests to explore several {\em new connections} between questions in cryptography and questions from other domains, including computational complexity, coding theory, and even the natural sciences. The project is expected to broaden the impact of ideas from cryptography on other domains, and on the other hand to benefit cryptography by applying tools from other domains towards better solutions for central problems in cryptography.
Max ERC Funding
1 459 703 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-12-01, End date: 2015-11-30
Project acronym CAP
Project Computers Arguing with People
Researcher (PI) Sarit Kraus
Host Institution (HI) BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2010-AdG_20100224
Summary An important form of negotiation is argumentation. This is the ability to argue and to persuade the other party to accept a desired agreement, to acquire or give information, to coordinate goals and actions, and to find and verify evidence. This is a key capability in negotiating with humans.
While automated negotiations between software agents can often exchange offers and counteroffers, humans require persuasion. This challenges the design of agents arguing with people, with the objective that the outcome of the negotiation will meet the preferences of the arguer agent.
CAP’s objective is to enable automated agents to argue and persuade humans.
To achieve this, we intend to develop the following key components:
1) The extension of current game theory models of persuasion and bargaining to more realistic settings, 2) Algorithms and heuristics for generation and evaluation of arguments during negotiation with people, 3) Algorithms and heuristics for managing inconsistent views of the negotiation environment, and decision procedures for revelation, signalling, and requesting information, 4) The revision and update of the agent’s mental state and incorporation of social context, 5) Identifying strategies for expressing emotions in negotiations, 6) Technology for general opponent modelling from sparse and noisy data.
To demonstrate the developed methods, we will implement two training systems for people to improve their interviewing capabilities, and for training negotiators in inter-culture negotiations.
CAP will revolutionise the state of the art of automated systems negotiating with people. It will also create breakthroughs in the research of multi-agent systems in general, and will change paradigms by providing new directions for the way computers interact with people.
Summary
An important form of negotiation is argumentation. This is the ability to argue and to persuade the other party to accept a desired agreement, to acquire or give information, to coordinate goals and actions, and to find and verify evidence. This is a key capability in negotiating with humans.
While automated negotiations between software agents can often exchange offers and counteroffers, humans require persuasion. This challenges the design of agents arguing with people, with the objective that the outcome of the negotiation will meet the preferences of the arguer agent.
CAP’s objective is to enable automated agents to argue and persuade humans.
To achieve this, we intend to develop the following key components:
1) The extension of current game theory models of persuasion and bargaining to more realistic settings, 2) Algorithms and heuristics for generation and evaluation of arguments during negotiation with people, 3) Algorithms and heuristics for managing inconsistent views of the negotiation environment, and decision procedures for revelation, signalling, and requesting information, 4) The revision and update of the agent’s mental state and incorporation of social context, 5) Identifying strategies for expressing emotions in negotiations, 6) Technology for general opponent modelling from sparse and noisy data.
To demonstrate the developed methods, we will implement two training systems for people to improve their interviewing capabilities, and for training negotiators in inter-culture negotiations.
CAP will revolutionise the state of the art of automated systems negotiating with people. It will also create breakthroughs in the research of multi-agent systems in general, and will change paradigms by providing new directions for the way computers interact with people.
Max ERC Funding
2 334 057 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-07-01, End date: 2016-06-30
Project acronym CODAMODA
Project Controlling Data Movement in the Digital Age
Researcher (PI) Aggelos Kiayias
Host Institution (HI) ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Nowadays human intellectual product is increasingly produced and disseminated solely in digital form. The capability of digital data for effortless reproduction and transfer has lead to a true revolution that impacts every aspect of human creativity. Nevertheless, as with every technological revolution, this digital media revolution comes with a dark side that, if left unaddressed, it will limit its impact and may counter its potential advantages. In particular, the way we produce and disseminate digital content today does not lend itself to controlling the way data move and change. It turns out that the power of being digital can be a double-edged sword: the ease of production, dissemination and editing also implies the ease of misappropriation, plagiarism and improper modification.
To counter the above problems, the proposed research activity will focus on the development of a new generation of enabling cryptographic technologies that have the power to facilitate the appropriate controls for data movement. Using the techniques developed in this project it will be feasible to build digital content distribution systems where content producers will have the full possible control on the dissemination of their intellectual product, while at the same time the rights of the end-users in terms of privacy and fair use can be preserved. The PI is uniquely qualified to carry out the proposed research activity as he has extensive prior experience in making innovations in the area of digital content distribution as well as in the management of research projects. As part of the project activities, the PI will establish the CODAMODA laboratory in the University of Athens and will seek opportunities for technology transfer and interdisciplinary work with the legal science community.
Summary
Nowadays human intellectual product is increasingly produced and disseminated solely in digital form. The capability of digital data for effortless reproduction and transfer has lead to a true revolution that impacts every aspect of human creativity. Nevertheless, as with every technological revolution, this digital media revolution comes with a dark side that, if left unaddressed, it will limit its impact and may counter its potential advantages. In particular, the way we produce and disseminate digital content today does not lend itself to controlling the way data move and change. It turns out that the power of being digital can be a double-edged sword: the ease of production, dissemination and editing also implies the ease of misappropriation, plagiarism and improper modification.
To counter the above problems, the proposed research activity will focus on the development of a new generation of enabling cryptographic technologies that have the power to facilitate the appropriate controls for data movement. Using the techniques developed in this project it will be feasible to build digital content distribution systems where content producers will have the full possible control on the dissemination of their intellectual product, while at the same time the rights of the end-users in terms of privacy and fair use can be preserved. The PI is uniquely qualified to carry out the proposed research activity as he has extensive prior experience in making innovations in the area of digital content distribution as well as in the management of research projects. As part of the project activities, the PI will establish the CODAMODA laboratory in the University of Athens and will seek opportunities for technology transfer and interdisciplinary work with the legal science community.
Max ERC Funding
1 212 960 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2017-03-31
Project acronym COMPCAMERAANALYZ
Project Understanding Designing and Analyzing Computational Cameras
Researcher (PI) Anat Levin
Host Institution (HI) WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Computational cameras go beyond 2D images and allow the extraction of more dimensions from the visual world such as depth, multiple viewpoints and multiple illumination conditions. They also allow us to overcome some of the traditional photography challenges such as defocus blur, motion blur, noise and resolution. The increasing variety of computational cameras is raising the need for a meaningful comparison across camera types. We would like to understand which cameras are better for specific tasks, which aspects of a camera make it better than others and what is the best performance we can hope to achieve.
Our 2008 paper introduced a general framework to address the design and analysis of computational cameras. A camera is modeled as a linear projection in ray space. Decoding the camera data then deals with inverting the linear projection. Since the number of sensor measurements is usually much smaller than the number of rays, the inversion must be treated as a Bayesian inference problem accounting for prior knowledge on the world.
Despite significant progress which has been made in the recent years, the space of computational cameras is still far from being understood.
Computational camera analysis raises the following research challenges: 1) What is a good way to model prior knowledge on ray space? 2) Seeking efficient inference algorithms and robust ways to decode the world from the camera measurements. 3) Evaluating the expected reconstruction accuracy of a given camera. 4) Using the expected reconstruction performance for evaluating and comparing camera types. 5) What is the best camera? Can we derive upper bounds on the optimal performance?
We propose research on all aspects of computational camera design and analysis. We propose new prior models which will significantly simplify the inference and evaluation tasks. We also propose new ways to bound and evaluate computational cameras with existing priors.
Summary
Computational cameras go beyond 2D images and allow the extraction of more dimensions from the visual world such as depth, multiple viewpoints and multiple illumination conditions. They also allow us to overcome some of the traditional photography challenges such as defocus blur, motion blur, noise and resolution. The increasing variety of computational cameras is raising the need for a meaningful comparison across camera types. We would like to understand which cameras are better for specific tasks, which aspects of a camera make it better than others and what is the best performance we can hope to achieve.
Our 2008 paper introduced a general framework to address the design and analysis of computational cameras. A camera is modeled as a linear projection in ray space. Decoding the camera data then deals with inverting the linear projection. Since the number of sensor measurements is usually much smaller than the number of rays, the inversion must be treated as a Bayesian inference problem accounting for prior knowledge on the world.
Despite significant progress which has been made in the recent years, the space of computational cameras is still far from being understood.
Computational camera analysis raises the following research challenges: 1) What is a good way to model prior knowledge on ray space? 2) Seeking efficient inference algorithms and robust ways to decode the world from the camera measurements. 3) Evaluating the expected reconstruction accuracy of a given camera. 4) Using the expected reconstruction performance for evaluating and comparing camera types. 5) What is the best camera? Can we derive upper bounds on the optimal performance?
We propose research on all aspects of computational camera design and analysis. We propose new prior models which will significantly simplify the inference and evaluation tasks. We also propose new ways to bound and evaluate computational cameras with existing priors.
Max ERC Funding
756 845 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-12-01, End date: 2015-11-30
Project acronym COMPMUSIC
Project Computational models for the discovery of the world's music
Researcher (PI) Francesc Xavier Serra Casals
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2010-AdG_20100224
Summary Current IT research does not respond to the world's multi-cultural reality. It could be argued that we are imposing the paradigms of our market-driven western culture also on IT and that current IT research results will only facilitate the access of a small part of the world’s information to a small part of the world's population. Most IT research is being carried out with a western centred approach and as a result, our data models, cognition models, user models, interaction models, ontologies, … are all culturally biased. This fact is quite evident in music information research, since, despite the world's richness in musical cultures, most of the research is centred on CDs and metadata of our western commercial music. CompMusic wants to break this huge research bias. By approaching musical information modelling from a multicultural perspective it aims at advancing our state of the art while facilitating the discovery and reuse of the music produced outside the western commercial context. But the development of computational models to address the world’s music information richness cannot be done from the West looking out; we have to involve researchers and musical experts immersed in the different cultures. Their contribution is fundamental to develop the appropriate multicultural musicological and cognitive frameworks from which we should then carry our research on finding appropriate musical features, ontologies, data representations, user interfaces and user centred approaches. CompMusic will investigate some of the most consolidated non-western classical music traditions, Indian (hindustani, carnatic), Turkish-Arab (ottoman, andalusian), and Chinese (han), developing the needed computational models to bring their music into the current globalized information framework. Using these music cultures as case studies, cultures that are alive and have a strong influence in current society, we can develop rich information models that can take advantage of the existing information coming from musicological and cultural studies, from mature performance practice traditions and from active social contexts. With this approach we aim at challenging the current western centred information paradigms, advance our IT research, and contribute to our rich multicultural society.
Summary
Current IT research does not respond to the world's multi-cultural reality. It could be argued that we are imposing the paradigms of our market-driven western culture also on IT and that current IT research results will only facilitate the access of a small part of the world’s information to a small part of the world's population. Most IT research is being carried out with a western centred approach and as a result, our data models, cognition models, user models, interaction models, ontologies, … are all culturally biased. This fact is quite evident in music information research, since, despite the world's richness in musical cultures, most of the research is centred on CDs and metadata of our western commercial music. CompMusic wants to break this huge research bias. By approaching musical information modelling from a multicultural perspective it aims at advancing our state of the art while facilitating the discovery and reuse of the music produced outside the western commercial context. But the development of computational models to address the world’s music information richness cannot be done from the West looking out; we have to involve researchers and musical experts immersed in the different cultures. Their contribution is fundamental to develop the appropriate multicultural musicological and cognitive frameworks from which we should then carry our research on finding appropriate musical features, ontologies, data representations, user interfaces and user centred approaches. CompMusic will investigate some of the most consolidated non-western classical music traditions, Indian (hindustani, carnatic), Turkish-Arab (ottoman, andalusian), and Chinese (han), developing the needed computational models to bring their music into the current globalized information framework. Using these music cultures as case studies, cultures that are alive and have a strong influence in current society, we can develop rich information models that can take advantage of the existing information coming from musicological and cultural studies, from mature performance practice traditions and from active social contexts. With this approach we aim at challenging the current western centred information paradigms, advance our IT research, and contribute to our rich multicultural society.
Max ERC Funding
2 443 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-07-01, End date: 2017-06-30
Project acronym COSYM
Project Computational Symmetry for Geometric Data Analysis and Design
Researcher (PI) Mark Pauly
Host Institution (HI) ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary The analysis and synthesis of complex 3D geometric data sets is of crucial importance in many scientific disciplines (e.g. bio-medicine, material science, mechanical engineering, physics) and industrial applications (e.g. drug design, entertainment, architecture). We are currently witnessing a tremendous increase in the size and complexity of geometric data, largely fueled by significant advances in 3D acquisition and digital production technology. However, existing computational tools are often not suited to handle this complexity.
The goal of this project is to explore a fundamentally different way of processing 3D geometry. We will investigate a new generalized model of geometric symmetry as a unifying concept for studying spatial organization in geometric data. This model allows exposing the inherent redundancies in digital 3D data and will enable truly scalable algorithms for analysis, processing, and design of large-scale geometric data sets. The proposed research will address a number of fundamental questions: What is the information content of 3D geometric models? How can we represent, store, and transmit geometric data most efficiently? Can we we use symmetry to repair deficiencies and reduce noise in acquired data? What is the role of symmetry in the design process and how can it be used to reduce complexity?
I will investigate these questions with an integrated approach that combines thorough theoretical studies with practical solutions for real-world applications.
The proposed research has a strong interdisciplinary component and will consider the same fundamental questions from different perspectives, closely interacting with scientists of various disciplines, as well artists, architects, and designers.
Summary
The analysis and synthesis of complex 3D geometric data sets is of crucial importance in many scientific disciplines (e.g. bio-medicine, material science, mechanical engineering, physics) and industrial applications (e.g. drug design, entertainment, architecture). We are currently witnessing a tremendous increase in the size and complexity of geometric data, largely fueled by significant advances in 3D acquisition and digital production technology. However, existing computational tools are often not suited to handle this complexity.
The goal of this project is to explore a fundamentally different way of processing 3D geometry. We will investigate a new generalized model of geometric symmetry as a unifying concept for studying spatial organization in geometric data. This model allows exposing the inherent redundancies in digital 3D data and will enable truly scalable algorithms for analysis, processing, and design of large-scale geometric data sets. The proposed research will address a number of fundamental questions: What is the information content of 3D geometric models? How can we represent, store, and transmit geometric data most efficiently? Can we we use symmetry to repair deficiencies and reduce noise in acquired data? What is the role of symmetry in the design process and how can it be used to reduce complexity?
I will investigate these questions with an integrated approach that combines thorough theoretical studies with practical solutions for real-world applications.
The proposed research has a strong interdisciplinary component and will consider the same fundamental questions from different perspectives, closely interacting with scientists of various disciplines, as well artists, architects, and designers.
Max ERC Funding
1 160 302 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2016-01-31
Project acronym CRIPTO
Project CRIPTO: Cryptography Research Involving Practical and Theoretical Outlooks
Researcher (PI) Nigel Smart
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2010-AdG_20100224
Summary In this project I will investigate four interrelated topics in cryptography from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Each topic is chosen such that it not only provides a testing ground for more general ideas, but it also is grounded in specific examples which can help guide the general principles. Each topic has the potential to make dramatic advances, both on the subject of cryptography itself and how it is used and deployed in the real world.
We will be investigating application domains as diverse as cloud computing, electronic voting, protocols for trusted computing and privacy preserving methodologies. Each topic will be tackled however with common tools of provable security, and testing via implementation. In addition we aim to extend the tool box of techniques available to the cryptographer in terms of analysis and development methodologies, by being guided by the above application domains.
This research will have a transformative affect on the subject of cryptography and how it is deployed in the real world. We aim to demonstrate that previous “blue-skies” research can have direct practical benefit in applications, by researching in a pipeline of theory-to-practice. In addition we aim to feed back the practical knowledge learned into new theoretical models which capture more realistically the scenarios faced in practice, thus making the pipeline two-way.
Finally, the proposal builds on a wealth of knowledge and experience built up at Bristol over the last ten years in these explicit sub-areas. My group at Bristol is not only the best place to execute this ambitious programme of work, but, due to the unique combination of theoretical and practical perspectives we offer, possibly the only place capable of working on these interrelated fronts.
Summary
In this project I will investigate four interrelated topics in cryptography from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Each topic is chosen such that it not only provides a testing ground for more general ideas, but it also is grounded in specific examples which can help guide the general principles. Each topic has the potential to make dramatic advances, both on the subject of cryptography itself and how it is used and deployed in the real world.
We will be investigating application domains as diverse as cloud computing, electronic voting, protocols for trusted computing and privacy preserving methodologies. Each topic will be tackled however with common tools of provable security, and testing via implementation. In addition we aim to extend the tool box of techniques available to the cryptographer in terms of analysis and development methodologies, by being guided by the above application domains.
This research will have a transformative affect on the subject of cryptography and how it is deployed in the real world. We aim to demonstrate that previous “blue-skies” research can have direct practical benefit in applications, by researching in a pipeline of theory-to-practice. In addition we aim to feed back the practical knowledge learned into new theoretical models which capture more realistically the scenarios faced in practice, thus making the pipeline two-way.
Finally, the proposal builds on a wealth of knowledge and experience built up at Bristol over the last ten years in these explicit sub-areas. My group at Bristol is not only the best place to execute this ambitious programme of work, but, due to the unique combination of theoretical and practical perspectives we offer, possibly the only place capable of working on these interrelated fronts.
Max ERC Funding
2 102 041 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-10-01, End date: 2016-09-30
Project acronym CRYSP
Project CRYSP: A Novel Framework for Collaboratively Building Cryptographically Secure Programs and their Proofs
Researcher (PI) Karthikeyan Bhargavan
Host Institution (HI) INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE ENINFORMATIQUE ET AUTOMATIQUE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary The field of software security analysis stands at a critical juncture.
Applications have become too large for security experts to examine by hand,
automated verification tools do not scale, and the risks of deploying insecure software are too great to tolerate anything less than mathematical proof.
A radical shift of strategy is needed if programming and analysis techniques are to keep up in a networked world where increasing amounts of governmental and individual information are generated, manipulated, and accessed through web-based software applications.
The basic tenet of this proposal is that the main roadblock to the security verification of a large program is not its size, but rather the lack of precise security specifications for the underlying libraries and security-critical application code. Since, large-scale software is often a collaborative effort, no single programmer knows all the design goals. Hence, this proposal advocates a collaborative specification and verification framework that helps teams of programmers write detailed security specifications incrementally and then verify that they are satisfied by the source program.
The main scientific challenge is to develop new program verification techniques that can be applied collaboratively, incrementally, and modularly to application and library code written in mainstream programming languages. The validation of this approach will be through substantial case studies. Our aim is to produce the first verified open source cryptographic protocol library and the first web applications with formal proofs of security.
The proposed project is bold and ambitious, but it is certainly feasible, and has the potential to change how software security is analyzed for years to come.
Summary
The field of software security analysis stands at a critical juncture.
Applications have become too large for security experts to examine by hand,
automated verification tools do not scale, and the risks of deploying insecure software are too great to tolerate anything less than mathematical proof.
A radical shift of strategy is needed if programming and analysis techniques are to keep up in a networked world where increasing amounts of governmental and individual information are generated, manipulated, and accessed through web-based software applications.
The basic tenet of this proposal is that the main roadblock to the security verification of a large program is not its size, but rather the lack of precise security specifications for the underlying libraries and security-critical application code. Since, large-scale software is often a collaborative effort, no single programmer knows all the design goals. Hence, this proposal advocates a collaborative specification and verification framework that helps teams of programmers write detailed security specifications incrementally and then verify that they are satisfied by the source program.
The main scientific challenge is to develop new program verification techniques that can be applied collaboratively, incrementally, and modularly to application and library code written in mainstream programming languages. The validation of this approach will be through substantial case studies. Our aim is to produce the first verified open source cryptographic protocol library and the first web applications with formal proofs of security.
The proposed project is bold and ambitious, but it is certainly feasible, and has the potential to change how software security is analyzed for years to come.
Max ERC Funding
1 406 726 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-11-01, End date: 2015-10-31
Project acronym CSP-COMPLEXITY
Project Constraint Satisfaction Problems: Algorithms and Complexity
Researcher (PI) Manuel Bodirsky
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET DRESDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary The complexity of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) has become a major common research focus of graph theory, artificial intelligence, and finite model theory. A recently discovered connection between the complexity of CSPs on finite domains to central problems in universal algebra led to additional activity in the area.
The goal of this project is to extend the powerful techniques for constraint satisfaction to CSPs with infinite domains. The generalization of CSPs to infinite domains enhances dramatically the range of computational problems that can be analyzed with tools from constraint satisfaction complexity. Many problems from areas that have so far seen no interaction with constraint satisfaction complexity theory can be formulated using infinite domains (and not with finite domains), e.g. in phylogenetic reconstruction, temporal and spatial reasoning, computer algebra, and operations research. It turns out that the search for systematic complexity classification in infinite domain constraint satisfaction often leads to fundamental algorithmic results.
The generalization of constraint satisfaction to infinite domains poses several mathematical challenges: To make the universal algebraic approach work for infinite domain constraint satisfaction we need fundamental concepts from model theory. Luckily, the new mathematical challenges come together with additional strong tools, such as Ramsey theory or results from model theory. The most important challgenges are of an algorithmic nature: finding efficient algorithms for significant constraint languages, but also finding natural classes of problems that can be solved by a given algorithm.
Summary
The complexity of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) has become a major common research focus of graph theory, artificial intelligence, and finite model theory. A recently discovered connection between the complexity of CSPs on finite domains to central problems in universal algebra led to additional activity in the area.
The goal of this project is to extend the powerful techniques for constraint satisfaction to CSPs with infinite domains. The generalization of CSPs to infinite domains enhances dramatically the range of computational problems that can be analyzed with tools from constraint satisfaction complexity. Many problems from areas that have so far seen no interaction with constraint satisfaction complexity theory can be formulated using infinite domains (and not with finite domains), e.g. in phylogenetic reconstruction, temporal and spatial reasoning, computer algebra, and operations research. It turns out that the search for systematic complexity classification in infinite domain constraint satisfaction often leads to fundamental algorithmic results.
The generalization of constraint satisfaction to infinite domains poses several mathematical challenges: To make the universal algebraic approach work for infinite domain constraint satisfaction we need fundamental concepts from model theory. Luckily, the new mathematical challenges come together with additional strong tools, such as Ramsey theory or results from model theory. The most important challgenges are of an algorithmic nature: finding efficient algorithms for significant constraint languages, but also finding natural classes of problems that can be solved by a given algorithm.
Max ERC Funding
830 316 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31
Project acronym DAL
Project DAL: Defying Amdahl's Law
Researcher (PI) Andre Seznec
Host Institution (HI) INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE ENINFORMATIQUE ET AUTOMATIQUE
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), PE6, ERC-2010-AdG_20100224
Summary Multicore processors have now become mainstream for both general-purpose and embedded computing. Instead of working on improving the architecture of the next generation multicore, with the DAL project, we deliberately anticipate the next few generations of multicores.
While multicores featuring 1000's of cores might become feasible around 2020, there are strong indications that sequential programming style will continue to be dominant. Even future mainstream parallel applications will exhibit large sequential sections. Amdahl's law indicates that high performance on these sequential sections is needed to enable overall high performance on the whole application. On many (most) applications, the effective performance of future computer systems using a 1000-core processor chip will significantly depend on their performance on both sequential code sections and single thread.
We envision that, around 2020, the processor chips will feature a few complex cores and many (may be 1000's) simpler, more silicon and power effective cores.
In the DAL research project, we will explore the microarchitecture techniques that will be needed to enable high performance on such heterogeneous processor chips. Very high performance will be required on both sequential sections -legacy sequential codes, sequential sections of parallel applications- and critical threads on parallel applications -e.g. the main thread controlling the application. Our research will focus on enhancing single process performance. On the microarchitecture side, we will explore both a radically new approach, the sequential accelerator, and more conventional processor architectures. We will also study how to exploit heterogeneous multicore architectures to enhance sequential thread performance.
Summary
Multicore processors have now become mainstream for both general-purpose and embedded computing. Instead of working on improving the architecture of the next generation multicore, with the DAL project, we deliberately anticipate the next few generations of multicores.
While multicores featuring 1000's of cores might become feasible around 2020, there are strong indications that sequential programming style will continue to be dominant. Even future mainstream parallel applications will exhibit large sequential sections. Amdahl's law indicates that high performance on these sequential sections is needed to enable overall high performance on the whole application. On many (most) applications, the effective performance of future computer systems using a 1000-core processor chip will significantly depend on their performance on both sequential code sections and single thread.
We envision that, around 2020, the processor chips will feature a few complex cores and many (may be 1000's) simpler, more silicon and power effective cores.
In the DAL research project, we will explore the microarchitecture techniques that will be needed to enable high performance on such heterogeneous processor chips. Very high performance will be required on both sequential sections -legacy sequential codes, sequential sections of parallel applications- and critical threads on parallel applications -e.g. the main thread controlling the application. Our research will focus on enhancing single process performance. On the microarchitecture side, we will explore both a radically new approach, the sequential accelerator, and more conventional processor architectures. We will also study how to exploit heterogeneous multicore architectures to enhance sequential thread performance.
Max ERC Funding
2 398 542 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-03-31
