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 DPMP
Project Dependable Performance on Many-Thread Processors
Researcher (PI) Lieven Eeckhout
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Contemporary microprocessors seek at improving performance through thread-level parallelism by co-executing multiple threads on a single microprocessor chip. Projections suggest that future processors will feature multiple tens to hundreds of threads, hence called many-thread processors. Many-thread processors, however, lead to non-dependable performance: co-executing threads affect each other s performance in unpredictable ways because of resource sharing across threads. Failure to deliver dependable performance leads to missed deadlines, priority inversion, unbalanced parallel execution, etc., which will severely impact the usage model and the performance growth path for many important future and emerging application domains (e.g., media, medical, datacenter).
DPMP envisions that performance introspection using a cycle accounting architecture that tracks per-thread performance, will be the breakthrough to delivering dependable performance in future many-thread processors. To this end, DPMP will develop a hardware cycle accounting architecture that estimates single-thread progress during many-thread execution. The ability to track per-thread progress enables system software to deliver dependable performance by assigning hardware resources to threads depending on their relative progress. Through this cooperative hardware-software approach, this project addresses a fundamental problem in multi-threaded ad multi/many-core processing.
Summary
Contemporary microprocessors seek at improving performance through thread-level parallelism by co-executing multiple threads on a single microprocessor chip. Projections suggest that future processors will feature multiple tens to hundreds of threads, hence called many-thread processors. Many-thread processors, however, lead to non-dependable performance: co-executing threads affect each other s performance in unpredictable ways because of resource sharing across threads. Failure to deliver dependable performance leads to missed deadlines, priority inversion, unbalanced parallel execution, etc., which will severely impact the usage model and the performance growth path for many important future and emerging application domains (e.g., media, medical, datacenter).
DPMP envisions that performance introspection using a cycle accounting architecture that tracks per-thread performance, will be the breakthrough to delivering dependable performance in future many-thread processors. To this end, DPMP will develop a hardware cycle accounting architecture that estimates single-thread progress during many-thread execution. The ability to track per-thread progress enables system software to deliver dependable performance by assigning hardware resources to threads depending on their relative progress. Through this cooperative hardware-software approach, this project addresses a fundamental problem in multi-threaded ad multi/many-core processing.
Max ERC Funding
1 389 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-10-01, End date: 2016-09-30
Project acronym PROPHET
Project Simplifying Development and Deployment of High-Performance, Reliable Distributed Systems
Researcher (PI) Dejan Kostic
Host Institution (HI) KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), PE6, ERC-2010-StG_20091028
Summary Distributed systems form the foundation of our society's infrastructure. Unfortunately, they suffer from a number of problems. First, they are time-consuming to develop because it is difficult for the programmer to envision all possible deployment environments and design adaptation mechanisms that will achieve high performance in all scenarios. Second, the code is complex due to the numerous outcomes that have to be accounted for at development time and the need to reimplement state and network models. Third, the distributed systems are unreliable because of the difficulties of programming a system that runs over an asynchronous network and handles all possible failure scenarios. If left unchecked, these problems will keep plaguing existing systems and hinder development of a new generation of distributed services.
We propose a radically new approach to simplifying development and deployment of high-performance, reliable distributed systems. The key insight is in creating a new programming model and architecture that leverages the increases in per-node computational power, bandwidth and storage to achieve this goal. Instead of resolving difficult deployment choices at coding time, the programmer merely specifies the choices and the objectives that should be satisfied. The new runtime then resolves the choices during live execution so as to maximize the objectives. To accomplish this task, the runtime uses a groundbreaking combination of state-space exploration, simulation, behavior prediction, performance modeling, and program steering. In addition, our approach reuses the effort spent in distributed system testing by transmitting a behavior summary to the runtime to further speed up choice resolution.
Summary
Distributed systems form the foundation of our society's infrastructure. Unfortunately, they suffer from a number of problems. First, they are time-consuming to develop because it is difficult for the programmer to envision all possible deployment environments and design adaptation mechanisms that will achieve high performance in all scenarios. Second, the code is complex due to the numerous outcomes that have to be accounted for at development time and the need to reimplement state and network models. Third, the distributed systems are unreliable because of the difficulties of programming a system that runs over an asynchronous network and handles all possible failure scenarios. If left unchecked, these problems will keep plaguing existing systems and hinder development of a new generation of distributed services.
We propose a radically new approach to simplifying development and deployment of high-performance, reliable distributed systems. The key insight is in creating a new programming model and architecture that leverages the increases in per-node computational power, bandwidth and storage to achieve this goal. Instead of resolving difficult deployment choices at coding time, the programmer merely specifies the choices and the objectives that should be satisfied. The new runtime then resolves the choices during live execution so as to maximize the objectives. To accomplish this task, the runtime uses a groundbreaking combination of state-space exploration, simulation, behavior prediction, performance modeling, and program steering. In addition, our approach reuses the effort spent in distributed system testing by transmitting a behavior summary to the runtime to further speed up choice resolution.
Max ERC Funding
1 450 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-02-01, End date: 2016-12-31
Project acronym QUALIAGE
Project Spatial protein quality control and its links to aging, proteotoxicity, and polarity
Researcher (PI) Lars Bertil Thomas Nyström
Host Institution (HI) GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS3, ERC-2010-AdG_20100317
Summary Propagation of a species requires periodic cell renewal to avoid clonal senescence. My
laboratory has described a new mechanism for such cell renewal in yeast, in which damaged
protein aggregates are transported out of the daughter buds along actin cables to preserve
youthfulness. Such spatial protein quality control (SQC) is a Sir2p-dependent process and by establishing the global genetic interaction network of SIR2, we identified the
polarisome as the machinery required for mitotic segregation and translocation of protein
aggregates. In addition, we found that the fusion of smaller aggregates into large inclusion
bodies, a process that has been suggested to reduce the toxicity of such aggregates, requires
actin cables and their nucleation at the septin ring. Sir2p controls damage segregation by
affecting deacetylation and the activity of the chaperonin CCT, enhancing actin folding and
polymerization. Considering that CCT has been implicated in mitigating
aggregation/toxicity of polyglutamine proteins, e.g. huntingtin, and that actin cables is
affecting formation, fusion, and resolution of aggregates, we hypothesize that CCT
deacetylation may underlie Sirt1¿s (mammalian orthologues of Sir2p) documented beneficial
effects in several neurodegenerative disorders caused by proteotoxic aggregates. This project
is aimed at approaching this hypothesis and to elucidate, on a genome-wide scale, how the
cell tether, sort, fuse, and detoxify aggregates with the help of CCT, actin cables, and the
polarity machinery. This will be accomplished by combining the power of synthetic genetic
array analysis, high-content imaging, genome wide proximity ligand assays, and microfluidics.
Using such approaches, the project seeks to decipher the machineries of the spatial quality
control network as a means to identify new therapeutic targets that may retard or postpone
the development of age-related maladies, including neurodegenerative disorders.
Summary
Propagation of a species requires periodic cell renewal to avoid clonal senescence. My
laboratory has described a new mechanism for such cell renewal in yeast, in which damaged
protein aggregates are transported out of the daughter buds along actin cables to preserve
youthfulness. Such spatial protein quality control (SQC) is a Sir2p-dependent process and by establishing the global genetic interaction network of SIR2, we identified the
polarisome as the machinery required for mitotic segregation and translocation of protein
aggregates. In addition, we found that the fusion of smaller aggregates into large inclusion
bodies, a process that has been suggested to reduce the toxicity of such aggregates, requires
actin cables and their nucleation at the septin ring. Sir2p controls damage segregation by
affecting deacetylation and the activity of the chaperonin CCT, enhancing actin folding and
polymerization. Considering that CCT has been implicated in mitigating
aggregation/toxicity of polyglutamine proteins, e.g. huntingtin, and that actin cables is
affecting formation, fusion, and resolution of aggregates, we hypothesize that CCT
deacetylation may underlie Sirt1¿s (mammalian orthologues of Sir2p) documented beneficial
effects in several neurodegenerative disorders caused by proteotoxic aggregates. This project
is aimed at approaching this hypothesis and to elucidate, on a genome-wide scale, how the
cell tether, sort, fuse, and detoxify aggregates with the help of CCT, actin cables, and the
polarity machinery. This will be accomplished by combining the power of synthetic genetic
array analysis, high-content imaging, genome wide proximity ligand assays, and microfluidics.
Using such approaches, the project seeks to decipher the machineries of the spatial quality
control network as a means to identify new therapeutic targets that may retard or postpone
the development of age-related maladies, including neurodegenerative disorders.
Max ERC Funding
2 371 262 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-06-01, End date: 2016-05-31
