engineering, computing and technology: SANT'ANNA school RETIS lab. RESEARCHERS participate in eU-funded project AMPERE to develop EMBEDDED systems for automation and manufacturing of the future
The project AMPERE for A Model-driven development framework for highly Parallel and EneRgy-Efficient computation supporting multi-criteria optimization received funding for almost 5 million euro from the European Union. The goal of this three-year collaboration between the Sant’Anna School RETIS (Real-Time Systems) Lab., the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (as the Coordinator), ETH - Zurich, the Instituto Superior de Engenharia - Porto, in partnership with companies Bosch, Thales, Sysgo and Evidence, is to develop embedded systems for smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0..
The research team in Pisa is receiving one million for Real-time scheduling of embedded systems in applications such as automobiles, power grids, manufacturing and industrial control systems, which require real-time management of both the physical and computing components including energy, computers, and networks.
The AMPERE project aims at incorporating model-driven engineering as the key element for the construction of complex software architectures. The model-driven engineering enables the use of automotive and railway domains specific model-driven languages to refine the description of cyber/physical interactions. Complex software systems supported by computing platforms composed of parallel heterogeneous architectures need methods and techniques based on reliable standardized solutions that can be derived from existing architectural design. The research team will work on a high level of abstraction for heterogeneous executable units. The focus of their work will be on high performance computing and low-energy IoT devices for the smart manufacturing with real-time strict timing and safety requirements, reduced energy consumption and costs.
“AMPERE is a unique opportunity to expand unexplored embedded systems market that has a range of applications from image processing to audio analysis. Over the past 20 years, the RETIS Lab team has developed embedded devices with real-time properties. However, modern embedded and cyber-physical systems require these embedded devices to be connected to the Internet through stronger connectivity,” said Professor Giorgio Buttazzo, as one of the founders of the Lab. RETIS established in 1993.
Researchers at the RETIS Lab. are primarily focused on designing Communication Middleware for Multi-Core Architectures under the supervision of Professor Tommaso Cucinotta. They conduct the analysis of non-functional properties to optimize various communication protocols and new processor architectures leading to components parallelism. Expected outcomes are secure Real Time-IoT frameworks, collective communication and efficient high-performance systems. Performance, portability, and productivity for data-parallel computations on multi- and many-core architectures are the features to accelerate deep learning applications and AI concepts on the emerging heterogeneous systems.
The embedded systems industry key data and features:
The global market for the embedded systems industry was valued at USD 68.9 billion in 2017. Value is expected to rise to 105.7 billion by the end of 2025.
Improved Security - microcontroller security solutions;
Cloud Connectivity - cloud-based services by reducing the hardware complexities;
Reduced Energy Consumption - optimization of battery-powered devices, low energy monitors and visualizations, advanced Bluetooth and Wi-Fi modules;
Visualization Tools with Real Time Data - reviewing embedded software execution;
Deep Learning Applications – AI concepts, new range of applications from image processing to audio analysis.
