PRiME: Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded systems
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: Sch of Electronics and Computer Sci
Abstract
The microprocessor is one of the most significant scientific inventions of the 20th century, with over 10 billion processors sold in 2011, and forecasts predict over 40 billion processors will be sold by 2020. The global market is worth over 20 billion euro with annual growth rates of 14%. Microprocessors and computing systems have tremendous positive impact on everyday life, from the internet to consumer electronics, transportation, healthcare and manufacturing. In the future, embedded computing systems - many of which will be low-power mobile devices - will be amongst the most powerful tools for tackling global economic and societal challenges. Continuing advances in microprocessor and embedded system design are the key to achieving this. Computing systems, however, are facing a once-in-a-generation technical challenge: the relentless increase in processor speed to improve performance of the past 50 years has come to an end. As a result, computing systems are being forced to switch from a focus on performance-centric serial computation to energy-efficient parallel computation. This switch is driven by the higher energy-efficiency of using many slower parallel processor cores instead of a single high-speed one. This switch has attracted worldwide attention and the term "multi-core", and subsequently "many-core" came into widespread use to generally describe the vision of computing systems with 100s of processor cores. Today this is one of the most dynamic areas of computer science and electronics because of its huge potential commercial and academic impact. We already see processors with many-cores in high performance and cloud computing, examples are the Cisco 188-core Metro, Intel 80-core Terascale, and IBM 64-core Cyclops chips. While mobile and embedded devices are starting to emerge with dual- and quad-cores, such as the ARM Cortex-A7, these are only embryonic examples and we are yet to see the future of high performance mobile and embedded systems featuring many-core processors. The ability of these systems to compute, communicate, and respond to the real-world will transform how we work, do business, shop, travel, and care for ourselves, ultimately transforming our daily lives and shaping the emergence of a new digital society for the 21st century. We envisage the tremendous prospect of entirely new forms of high-performance embedded systems to complement, enhance and in some cases supersede existing systems in a wide range of applications such as telecommunications, consumer electronics, transport and medical systems, where energy and reliability are central.
Many-core technology has been viewed as a way to improve performance at the processor level, but its profound implications on the energy efficiency and reliability of future embedded systems with 100s or 1000s of cores has not been studied in depth. Our vision is to enable the sustainability of many-core scaling by preventing the uncontrolled increase in energy consumption and unreliability through a step change in holistic design methods and cross-layer system optimisation. Delivering this science is the core research objective of PRiME. In more detail, it seeks to establish the new science and engineering that is needed to design future high-performance, energy-efficient and reliable embedded systems with many-core processors. To this end, it brings together four groups with world-leading expertise in the complementary areas of low-power, highly-parallel, reconfigurable and dependable computing and verified software design. Four internationally renowned experts will also contribute to PRiME as Visiting Researchers: J. Henkel, Karlsruhe Uni., embedded systems, V. Betz, Uni. Toronto, FPGA/CAD, M. Kaaniche, LASS-CNRS, dependability, and T. Roscoe, ETH-Zurich, operating systems.
Many-core technology has been viewed as a way to improve performance at the processor level, but its profound implications on the energy efficiency and reliability of future embedded systems with 100s or 1000s of cores has not been studied in depth. Our vision is to enable the sustainability of many-core scaling by preventing the uncontrolled increase in energy consumption and unreliability through a step change in holistic design methods and cross-layer system optimisation. Delivering this science is the core research objective of PRiME. In more detail, it seeks to establish the new science and engineering that is needed to design future high-performance, energy-efficient and reliable embedded systems with many-core processors. To this end, it brings together four groups with world-leading expertise in the complementary areas of low-power, highly-parallel, reconfigurable and dependable computing and verified software design. Four internationally renowned experts will also contribute to PRiME as Visiting Researchers: J. Henkel, Karlsruhe Uni., embedded systems, V. Betz, Uni. Toronto, FPGA/CAD, M. Kaaniche, LASS-CNRS, dependability, and T. Roscoe, ETH-Zurich, operating systems.
Planned Impact
The UK electronics industry is worth £23 billion a year and is the fifth largest in the world. Within embedded systems, the UK is the world-leader, thanks to the presence of ARM and Imagination, both partners in this grant. However, this position is constantly under threat from the encroachment of non-embedded architecture leaders, who are primarily US-based. Architectures, software methods and tools, and highly-skilled scientists and engineers that will enable the design of future high-performance many-core embedded systems will be a huge part of future value and wealth creation. Electronics and software have a tremendous impact on life, from the internet to consumer electronics, healthcare and transportation. Embedded systems - many of which will be low-power mobile devices - will be one of the future's most powerful tools for tacking the world's societal challenges.
Specifically, this Programme (called PRiME) will:
- Produce novel technologies and demonstrators that will contribute to future wealth creation in showcasing the use of many-core processor systems in low-power and mobile devices. The UK is home to world-leading microprocessor and multimedia core providers (e.g. ARM and Imagination) at the heart of embedded systems, as well as software and systems companies (e.g. Microsoft Research, Freescale and Altera). This research is essential in enabling these industrial collaborators to compete in the future many-core market, and their collaboration with PRiME will provide commercial exploitation and facilitate knowledge transfer. Our collaborating partners will benefit from access to the leading researchers in this new area, the ability to shape the research, internships for researchers and PhD students, secondments in both directions between industry and academia, and the ability to demonstrate and evaluate the work in scenarios that closely align with their applications of interest.
- Develop the next generation of researchers and leaders by exposing investigators, research fellows and PhD students to a highly stimulating environment, in which research is expected to be both world-leading in terms of academic quality and also have industrial relevance. We will run an internship programme for the researchers to visit the collaborating visiting researchers' groups, to gain awareness of the international context of the research, and form links. The commercial sector will be impacted by the availability of highly qualified personnel. The universities of some of the investigators are members of the UK Electronics Skills Foundation, which promotes electronics and its value to society and the economy. PRiME will provide an excellent route to expose the next generation of young electronic engineers to PRiME's research challenges, findings and applications through activities and seminars.
- Deliver advances in knowledge of direct relevance to those involved, in understanding the design and implementation of energy-efficient and dependable embedded systems with many-core processors. These advances will be reflected in new concepts and theories, run-time management techniques and computing platforms. Our research results will be disseminated through high impact publications, organization of workshops, and giving invited talks at major international conferences. We will make available the tools, technology demonstrators and benchmarks developed to encourage usage and comparison among researchers worldwide. We will establish an annual UK Many-Core Symposium, showcasing our results and connecting with UK research groups working in the field.
- Inform the general public and policy makers in the demonstration of new technologies that showcase the latest developments in engineering and science. The general public will benefit from demonstrations showcasing the capabilities of future mobile devices. All partner Universities have mechanisms and experience in ensuring public engagemen
Specifically, this Programme (called PRiME) will:
- Produce novel technologies and demonstrators that will contribute to future wealth creation in showcasing the use of many-core processor systems in low-power and mobile devices. The UK is home to world-leading microprocessor and multimedia core providers (e.g. ARM and Imagination) at the heart of embedded systems, as well as software and systems companies (e.g. Microsoft Research, Freescale and Altera). This research is essential in enabling these industrial collaborators to compete in the future many-core market, and their collaboration with PRiME will provide commercial exploitation and facilitate knowledge transfer. Our collaborating partners will benefit from access to the leading researchers in this new area, the ability to shape the research, internships for researchers and PhD students, secondments in both directions between industry and academia, and the ability to demonstrate and evaluate the work in scenarios that closely align with their applications of interest.
- Develop the next generation of researchers and leaders by exposing investigators, research fellows and PhD students to a highly stimulating environment, in which research is expected to be both world-leading in terms of academic quality and also have industrial relevance. We will run an internship programme for the researchers to visit the collaborating visiting researchers' groups, to gain awareness of the international context of the research, and form links. The commercial sector will be impacted by the availability of highly qualified personnel. The universities of some of the investigators are members of the UK Electronics Skills Foundation, which promotes electronics and its value to society and the economy. PRiME will provide an excellent route to expose the next generation of young electronic engineers to PRiME's research challenges, findings and applications through activities and seminars.
- Deliver advances in knowledge of direct relevance to those involved, in understanding the design and implementation of energy-efficient and dependable embedded systems with many-core processors. These advances will be reflected in new concepts and theories, run-time management techniques and computing platforms. Our research results will be disseminated through high impact publications, organization of workshops, and giving invited talks at major international conferences. We will make available the tools, technology demonstrators and benchmarks developed to encourage usage and comparison among researchers worldwide. We will establish an annual UK Many-Core Symposium, showcasing our results and connecting with UK research groups working in the field.
- Inform the general public and policy makers in the demonstration of new technologies that showcase the latest developments in engineering and science. The general public will benefit from demonstrations showcasing the capabilities of future mobile devices. All partner Universities have mechanisms and experience in ensuring public engagemen
Organisations
- University of Southampton (Lead Research Organisation)
- UltraSoC Technologies Ltd (Collaboration)
- Arm Limited (Collaboration)
- Altera (Collaboration)
- Microsoft Research (Collaboration)
- Moortec Seminconductor Ltd (Collaboration)
- Freescale Semiconductors (Collaboration)
- Imagination Technologies (Collaboration)
- ESP Central (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- National Microelectronics Institute (Project Partner)
- Imagination Technologies (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Microsoft (United States) (Project Partner)
- Innovate UK (Project Partner)
- Freescale Semiconductor Uk Ltd (Project Partner)
- ARM (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Altera (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
Publications
Scarabottolo I
(2022)
A Formal Framework for Maximum Error Estimation in Approximate Logic Synthesis
in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Alexei Iliasov
(2015)
A formal specification and prototyping language for multi-core system management
Brisebarre N
(2018)
A High Throughput Polynomial and Rational Function Approximations Evaluator
Salehi Fathabadi A
(2018)
A model-based framework for software portability and verification in embedded power management systems
in Journal of Systems Architecture
Karkar A
(2016)
A Survey of Emerging Interconnects for On-Chip Efficient Multicast and Broadcast in Many-Cores
in IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine
Walker, Matthew
(2018)
Accurate and stable empirical CPU power modelling for multi- and many-core systems
Walker M
(2017)
Accurate and Stable Run-Time Power Modeling for Mobile and Embedded CPUs
in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Basireddy K
(2020)
AdaMD: Adaptive Mapping and DVFS for Energy-Efficient Heterogeneous Multicores
in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Das A
(2016)
Adaptive and Hierarchical Runtime Manager for Energy-Aware Thermal Management of Embedded Systems
in ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems
Shafik, Rishad Ahmed
(2015)
Adaptive energy minimization of OpenMP parallel applications on many-core systems
Mokhov A
(2015)
Algebra of switching networks
in IET Computers & Digital Techniques
Constantinides G
(2017)
Algorithms and Arithmetic: Choose Wisely
Mohammed A. Noaman Al-Hayanni
(2020)
Amdahl's Law in the Context ofHeterogeneous Many-core Systems - A Survey
in IET Research Journals
Graeme M. Bragg
(2018)
An Application- and Platform-agnostic Control and Monitoring Framework for Multicore Systems
Chatzianastasiou G
(2018)
An Efficient FPGA-based Axis-Aligned Box Tool for Embedded Computer Graphics
Y. Zhou
(2016)
An Efficient Implementation of Online Arithmetic
Leech, Charles R.
(2018)
Application control and monitoring in heterogeneous multiprocessor systems
Balsamo, Domenico
(2018)
Application- and platform-agnostic runtime power management of heterogeneous embedded systems
Davis J
(2016)
Applied Reconfigurable Computing
A Salehi Fathabadi
(2014)
Applying an integrated modelling process to run-time management of many-core systems
Bischoff S
(2013)
Applying of Quality of Experience to system optimisation
Scarabottolo I
(2020)
Approximate Logic Synthesis: A Survey
in Proceedings of the IEEE
Li H
(2020)
architect: Arbitrary-Precision Hardware With Digit Elision for Efficient Iterative Compute
in IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
Wickerson J
(2017)
Automatically comparing memory consistency models
in ACM SIGPLAN Notices
Vougioukas Ilias
(2018)
BRB: mitigating branch predictor side-channels
Chahal H
(2016)
BTI aware thermal management for reliable DVFS designs
Murray K
(2019)
Calculated Risks: Quantifying Timing Error Probability With Extended Static Timing Analysis
in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Singh A
(2020)
Collaborative Adaptation for Energy-Efficient Heterogeneous Mobile SoCs
in IEEE Transactions on Computers
Tenentes V
(2018)
Collective-Aware System-on-Chips for Dependable IoT Applications
Ramanathan N
(2018)
Concurrency-Aware Thread Scheduling for High-Level Synthesis
Winterstein F
(2017)
Custom Multicache Architectures for Heap Manipulating Programs
in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Davis J
(2013)
Datapath fault tolerance for parallel accelerators
Shi K
(2014)
Datapath Synthesis for Overclocking
Wang Erwei
(2019)
Deep Neural Network Approximation for Custom Hardware: Where We've Been, Where We're Going
in arXiv e-prints
Hung E
(2015)
Delay-Bounded Routing for Shadow Registers
Wong, Samuel Chang Bing
(2018)
Demo abstract: An energy-driven wireless bicycle trip counter with zero energy storage
Rykunov M
(2013)
Design-for-adaptivity of microarchitectures
Singh, AK., Dey, S., Basireddy, KR., McDonald-Maier, K., Merrett, GV. And Al-Hashimi, BM
(2020)
Dynamic Energy and Thermal Management of Multi-Core Mobile Platforms: A Survey
in IEEE Design and Test
Sliper, Sivert Tvedt
(2018)
Enabling intermittent computing on high-performance out-of-order processors
Leech C
(2014)
Energy Efficient Multi-Core Processing
in Electronics ETF
| Description | Machine Learning can be used for Run-Time Energy Optimisation in Many-Core Systems leading to more energy efficient computing. We have developed intelligent run-time algorithms which have been experimentally validated for managing energy and application performance in many-core embedded system. The algorithms are underpinned by a cross-layer system approach where the hardware, system software and application layers work together to optimise the energy-performance trade-off. We have shown how reinforcement learning algorithms that suitably select the appropriate voltage/frequency scaling (VFS) based on workload predictions to meet the applications' performance requirements. The adaptation is then facilitated and expedited through learning transfer, which uses the interaction between the application, runtime, and hardware layers to adjust the VFS. We show that with intra- and inter-application variations, our proposed approach can effectively minimize energy consumption by up to 33% compared to the existing approaches. Scaling the approach to multicore systems, we also demonstrate that it can minimize energy by up to 18% with 2× reduction in the learning time when compared with an existing approach. We have also developed algorithms motivated by the biological process of how a human brain (acting as an agent) interacts with the external environment (system) changing their respective states over time. This leads to a pay-off for the action taken, and the agent eventually learns to take the optimal/best decisions in future. In particular, our online approach uses a model-free reinforcement learning algorithm that suitably selects the appropriate voltage-frequency scaling based on workload prediction to meet the applications' performance requirements and achieve energy savings of up to 16% in comparison to state-of-the-art-techniques. Monitoring power consumption in embedded systems at runtime can have large overheads. We developed a statistically rigorous and novel methodology for building accurate run-time power models using Performance Monitoring Counters (PMCs) for mobile and embedded devices, and demonstrate how our models make more efficient use of limited training data and better adapt to unseen scenarios by uniquely considering stability. The methodology has been implemented in the PowMon tool supported with online resources including software tools, documentation, raw data and further results. A significant challenge is that RTM software can require laborious manual adjustment across different hardware platforms due to the diversity of architecture characteristics. We have demonstrated that model-driven development can simplify the management of platform diversity by shifting the focus away from hand-written platform-specific code to platform-independent models from which platform-specific implementations are automatically generated. We developed a formal framework for automatic generation of RTM implementations from platform-independent formal models. The methodology in designing the RTM systems uses a high-level mathematical language, Event-B, which can describe systems at different abstraction levels. A code generation tool is used to translate platform-independent Event-B RTM models to platform-specific implementations in C. Formal verification is used to ensure correctness of the Event-B models. The portability offered by our methodology is validated by modelling a Reinforcement Learning (RL) based RTM and generating implementations for three different platforms (ARM Cortex-A8, A7 and A15) that all achieve energy savings on the respective platforms. Please see Publications list for output and www.prime-project.org for activity. |
| Exploitation Route | Please see Publications list for output. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/ |
| Description | Employment of a dedicated Impact Manager was a key element of the programme's Pathways to Impact proposal. A successful recruitment process led to the employment of a full time impact manager from 1st September 2014. PRiME's impact strategy is modelled on academic and industrial best practice, with particular attention to the UK Research Councils' "pathways to impact" guidelines and REF's "impact of research". The programme's impact can be split into two broad areas: • Academic impact including skills development (for researchers and e.g. PhD students), development of innovative methodologies, academic publications, conference presentations, etc. • Economic & societal impact encompassing a wide range of activities from public engagement, through influence on policy makers, to collaboration with existing and new industrial partners. The main focus of PRiME's industrial impact activities is practical outcomes which will be relevant and useful to industry. For the purpose of this narrative, purely academic impact will be excluded. In the early phase of the project (years 1 and 2) economic and societal impact was achieved by starting to build networks outside academia, e.g. attending shows, conferences, exhibitions and using selected trade press and trade bodies for PR and general publicity (e.g., InnovateUK, the NMI, several relevant KTNs). The aim of these activities was to increase programme awareness in relevant companies/organisations, assess whether there were areas of mutual interest and then follow-up any interest arising. A significant number of engagements with industry have taken place, both through attending relevant events (including talks, presentations, posters), but also through specific company interaction via visits, seminars, conference calls and emails. Details of the most significant of these are separately listed in the "engagements" section. These interactions and relationship building are ongoing as the project evolves (years 3 and 4), and we plan for at least some of these to develop with tangible outcomes in the final year of the project (year 5). Some companies who were interested in PRiME's research and work in similar fields expressed a wish for a slightly more formal relationship with the project - not as closely involved with PRiME as the existing advisory board members, but an opportunity to develop better links to the research in the 4 PRiME institutes. Hence, in year 3 the "Programme Associate" scheme was launched. So far, three companies have become programme associates: Moortec Semiconductors of Plymouth, UltraSoC of Cambridge and Codeplay of Edinburgh. In the past year, the project has widened its impact focus to include general public engagement. The project has created practical project demonstrators based on the work on Research theme 2 around formal modelling, applied to simple and understandable use cases - drivers finding parking spaces and aeroplane pilots determining safe places to land. These engagement activities were staged at the 2016 University of Southampton Science Festival and at the schools day of the Farnborough International Airshow (also 2016). They were extremely well received, with very positive feedback from participants, together with many comments on how well the activities had communicated complex maths/modelling concepts in an engaging and understandable way. Two more public engagement activities are planned for the 2017 Southampton Science Festival - an evolution of the formal modelling activity plus an introduction to software run time power saving in an activity called "Same phone, same apps, more battery life". In year 2, a PRiME email circulation list was set up, to communicate project news to interested parties. Sign-up was available via the project web site. To date, the list has around 100 recipients and periodic news and event emails are sent out (via the Campaign Monitor tool). In the final 2 years of the project, it is anticipated that IP exploitation will become more of a focus, e.g. via technology transfer, licensing or open source - as most suitable. The plan is to build upon the networks developed earlier in the project to seek suitable partner/s for the project's technology outcomes. Indeed, IP exploitation in terms of open-source software has already taken place. Three software tools arising from PRiME research have been made available under Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) licences. See the separate "Software and Technical Products" section for details on these tools, together with metrics such as number of downloads, training seminars, etc. |
| Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics,Energy,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
| Impact Types | Societal,Economic |
| Description | Centre for Spatial Computational Learning |
| Amount | £1,211,768 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | EP/S030069/1 |
| Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2019 |
| End | 10/2022 |
| Description | A R M Ltd |
| Organisation | Arm Limited |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| Start Year | 2006 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | Altera |
| Department | Altera Europe |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | Arm Limited |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | Freescale Semiconductors |
| Department | Freescale Semiconductor UK |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | Imagination Technologies |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | Microsoft Research |
| Country | Global |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | Moortec Seminconductor Ltd |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | PRiME Programme Partners |
| Organisation | UltraSoc Technologies Ltd |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | Too follow |
| Collaborator Contribution | Too follow |
| Impact | Too follow. Please see www.prime-project.org for collaboration activity. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Title | GemStone |
| Description | PRiME project has released GemStone an innovative full system performance that consists of five software tools that, together, identify and evaluate the sources of error in gem5 models against a reference hardware (HW) platform by utilising statistical and machine learning approaches. Independently, the tools serve many purposes: Automating the running of experiments and collection of Performance Monitoring Counters (and temperature and power on supported platforms) on Arm-based devices (ARMv7 and ARMv8) Automating the running of gem5 simulations and aggregating the results Applying Powmon power models to the hardware results Applying Powmon power models to gem5 simulation data Combining the HW and gem5 model characterisations and applying statistical and machine learning techniques to identify and evaluate sources of error in the gem5 models Conducting power analysis to both the gem5 data and HW data and evaluating the performance, power and energy scaling across various DVFS level and different HMP core types. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Not known |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/gemstone-software-release/ |
| Title | PRiME Code Generation Tool |
| Description | Run-Time Management (RTM) systems are used in embedded systems to dynamically adapt hardware performance to minimise energy consumption. A significant challenge is that the RTM software can require laborious manual adjustment across different hardware platforms due to the diversity of architecture characteristics. Model-driven development offers the potential to simplify the management of platform diversity by shifting the focus away from hand-written platform-specific code to platform-independent models from which platform-specific implementations are automatically generated. The Event-B formal modelling language can be used for specification and modelling of platform-independent RTMs. The high-level platform-independent RTM models then can be translated to platform-dependent executable code automatically. PRiME Code Generation tool is a Rodin* plug-in that facilitates automatic code generation of Runtime Management software from verified Event-B formal models. The tool is an extension to the existing Rodin code generation plugin (Tasking Event-B). The tool has been tailored for generation of C/C++ code that is compatible with PRiME framework. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Not known |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/prime-code-generation-tool/ |
| Title | PRiME Framework Tool |
| Description | Prime Framework is a tool for application and platform agnostic runtime management that enables portability of runtime management approaches. This is achieved by considering a system as three distinct layers with abstracted communication between them. The PRiME Framework has two main features: It allows users, who are developing runtime managers for new systems, to directly compare different approaches to identify the best one or check how well their approach compares to the state of the art. It simplifies development effort as runtime managers don't need device or application specific code allowing the users to quickly prototype and test an idea in a few lines of code. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Not known |
| URL | https://www.prime-project.org/prime-framework-application-and-platform-agnostic-runtime-management-t... |
| Title | PRiME's automated tool flow for generating FPGA designs |
| Description | KOCL (KAPow for OpenCL) is PRiME's automated tool flow for generating FPGA designs capable of accelerating OpenCL kernel execution while reporting their own power consumptions. In a modern FPGA system-on-chip design, it is often insufficient to simply assess the total power consumption of the entire circuit by design-time estimation or runtime power rail measurement. Instead, to make better runtime decisions, it is desirable to understand the power consumed by each individual module in the system. KOCL is the first tool capable of generating hardware systems from OpenCL descriptions that are able to report their own kernel-level power consumption. The tool is general-purpose - it can be used with any OpenCL design that targets an Altera/Intel FPGA - and accessible thanks to its ease of application. While the principles of KOCL are generic, the current implementation is Altera/Intel-specific; it relies upon that vendor's compilation tools and features optimisations for their FPGAs. KOCL combines Altera's OpenCL compiler with a refined version of PRiME's existing KAPow ('K'ounting Activity for Power estimation) flow, which requires no user exposure to, or understanding of, hardware, and enables easy access to live kernel-level power consumption from OpenCL host code. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | Not Known |
| Title | Release of PRiME Performance, Energy and Reliability (PER) online modelling tool, 18/03/2016 |
| Description | Modelling the interplay between Performance, Energy and Reliability (PER) in multi- and many-core systems has been a major objective of the PRiME project. This has led to the development of the idea of representing PER interplay as a region of reliable operation in the throughput-voltage space. This region is defined by platform-specific constraints (minimum and maximum voltage, dynamic voltage-frequency scaling points), and also design requirements, such as maximum power consumption or minimum throughput. The concepts behind this approach can now be explored using our free online (web based) PER modelling tool. This allows users to explore the design space using a range of common embedded CPUs, together with the chosen number of cores and constraints such as power or throughput. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | None |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/per-tool/ |
| Title | Release of PRiME Stereo Matching computer vision algorithm as open source software release, June 2016 |
| Description | PRiME has made a free, open source release of its Stereo Match software - a heterogeneous and fully parallel stereo matching algorithm for video depth estimation, available in both OpenCL and C++. Stereo Matching is based on the disparity estimation algorithm. This is an algorithm which is designed to calculate 3D depth information about a scene from a pair of 2D images captured by a stereoscopic camera. The algorithm, which has been fully developed in both C++ and OpenCL, includes support for live video disparity estimation using the OpenCV VideoCapture interface as well as static image computation. Also included is embedded support for experimentation with the OpenCV standard Semi-Global Block Matching (SGBM) algorithm. |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The software has been downloaded from the GitHub repository by 34 unique users to date. |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/stereo-matching-algorithm-download/ |
| Title | Release of open source CPU power modelling tool "PowMon", March 2016 |
| Description | Accurately estimating CPU (Central Processing Unit) power consumption is a key requirement for controlling CPUs - e.g. for implementing energy saving techniques - and for exploring the CPU design space. PRiME researchers have developed a software tool , "PowMon", that uses models built and validated from real, measured data from an actual device. This means that the tool accuracy is known and therefore the power figures can be trusted. Obtaining accurate data from mobile devices can be challenging and more time-consuming than using a simulator or desktop/server devices. For this reason, PRiME is making PowMon freely available, allowing workloads to be automatically run on a mobile device. Metrics such as Performance Monitoring Counters (PMCs), temperature, CPU utilisation, CPU power and CPU voltage are collected and analysed to produce accurate power models. The PowMon software has two main features: It allows users to automate the model building methodology for their hardware of choice, producing accurate and stable models; It provides power models for specific CPUs, e.g. quad core Cortex-A7 and quad core Cortex-A15, which can be used as reference models for this hardware |
| Type Of Technology | Software |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | The research that led to the development of PowMon, together with information about the tool and how to use it, have been presented as full day, interactive tutorials at two major international conferences: the 48th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO-48) on December 5th 2015 in Waikik, Hawaii and the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS) on 17th April 2016 in Uppsala, Sweden. Attendees at these tutorials were a mix of academics and non-academics/industrialists. The tool has been downloaded 470 times from the PRiME powmon website (Google Analytics data). http://www.powmon.ecs.soton.ac.uk/powermodeling/index.htmlKnown institutions using it: National University of Singapore University of Chicago University of Applied Science (Germany) High Performance Computing Lab (POSTEH) Åbo Akademi University |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/powmon-tool-download/ |
| Description | ArchOn presentation and demo at ACSD 2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Conference |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Collaborating with ARM R&D Cambridge |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Researchers from PRiME's Theme 2 and 4 at Southampton visited ARM R&D to present and discuss progress. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018 |
| Description | International Symposium Workshop on Many-Core Computing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME International Symposium featured presentations from speakers from the UK, and overseas; presenting a rich selection of Computer Architecture and Software topics, ranging from modelling the human brain, over new ways of synthesizing hardware (logic in FPGAs) from Software-level descriptions, and new efficient neural network processors, to transformations of algorithms to be more energy efficient and higher performance. The talks were presented from a mixture of PRIME project members and external researchers from both academia and industry; and the latter complimented and extended the core of the PRIME project. The demonstrations lead by PRIME team showed their latest work on power awareness and efficiency as well as FPGA synthesis. Being able to effectively control energy efficiency and reliability at runtime is a key challenge of future high-performance many-core embedded systems. The team illustrated how contributions from the PRiME project integrate to enable application- and platform-agnostic runtime management that respects application performance targets. We achieve this by considering a system as three distinct layers with abstracted communication between them. This benefits researchers and developers by reducing the development overhead of runtime management research and enables the direct comparison of different approaches, without requiring specific application or platform knowledge. The symposium brought the scientific community together allowing the invited guests and PRiME members to have open discussions about application-agnostic runtime power and reliability management of heterogeneous embedded systems. It was clear from the different debates that we all shared a vision of continuing to push more compute into more devices more efficiently. PRiME achievements not only impacted the academic community, but also helped in shaping and building capabilities in the UK. With over 110 scientific publication and 8 internships with industry, PRiME set a great example of how research programme can influence our community through knowledge transfer and the exploitation of knowledge. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | News item in New Electronics magazine website about PRiME's free power modelling software, 26/04/2016 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME released a free, open-source software tool called "PowMon". This tool uses a novel approach to model the power consumption of embedded processors and is applicable to both academic research and industrial practitioners. The strategy to publicise the tool availability as widely as possible included targetting specialist electronics/software publications. In this case New Electronics magazine published a news item about PowMon, including links to the PRiME website and the PowMon tool download site. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics-news/free-tool-models-cpu-power-consumption/118497/ |
| Description | PRiME Collaborative Partners Meeting, Microsoft London, January 2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME held an "all-hands" meeting the day after its annual advisory board meeting. The aim of this day was to present the research in more detail to attendees from PRiME's advisory board member organisations and to receive input on the research direction. The following companies and organisations were represented: Microsoft Research, ARM Ltd, Imagination Technologies, Altera, Freescale Semiconductors, NMI, Knowledge Transfer Networks (ESP and ICT). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2015/01/15/prime-hands-collaborative-partners-meeting-microsoft-london/ |
| Description | PRiME Industry Day, 30/6/2015, London |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME's first "Industry Day" was held on 30 June 2015 at Imperial College, London. The aim was to attract attendees from companies, both those who already may have had dealings with the project, but also wider companies who may not be familiar with our research. We gave presentations on the overall project (introduction/overview/rationale), together with detailed presentations on each research theme. A major part of the day was the opportunity for attendees to see 7 demonstration systems which practically illustrated specific research areas and outcomes. There was also the opportunity to network with PRiME team members in an informal, interactive way. The day was widely advertised and marketed through PRiME emails, NMI and KTN newsletters and targetted websites (e.g. New Electronics magazine). There were over 25 attendees from industry, more than half of whom had no previous interaction with the project. The event was extremely useful in widening awareness and networks. One of the company attendees, UltraSoC, were so interested in the work that they subsequently became a PRiME Programme Associate and wish to work on collaborative research. Attendees also signed up to the PRiME newsletter email circulation list. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2015/07/10/prime-research-programme-industry-day-2015-imperial-college-... |
| Description | PRiME Research Featured in IEEE Computer Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | PRiME's collaborative research has been featured in the latest issue of the prestigious IEEE Computer Magazine (August 2017). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/08/09/prime-research-featured-ieee-computing-magazine/ |
| Description | PRiME Research Seminar at Altera Corporation, High Wycombe, 3/12/2014 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Six PRiME researchers visited Altera Corporation in High Wycombe for a full day presentation of PRiME's research work. Presented an overview and details on PRiME research. Followed by an extremely useful discussion with Altera on specific areas of interest, how the PRiME research would be helpful in those areas and possible future collaboration. The aim of the day was to share PRiME's research with a wider audience within Altera (Altera is a member of PRiME's advisory board, but usually repre |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | PRiME Research Seminar at Imagination Technologies, King's Langley, 22/09/2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | Twelve PRiME team members visited Imagination Technologies in King's Langley on 22nd September 2015 for a full day presentation of PRiME's research work. The day was split into three sessions: morning session 1 with a project overview and then presentations on themes 1 and 3, morning session 2 with an overview and presentations on themes 3 and 4, and finally an afternoon drop-in session where six PRiME demonstration systems were shown and smaller group discussions were held. The aim of the day was to share PRiME's research with a wider audience within Imagination (Imagination is a member of PRiME's advisory board, but usually represented by one person). The day was extremely successful in meeting this objective, with over 30 members of Imagination staff, from a variety of levels, attending different parts of the day. Specific break-out discussions on demonstrators and applications allowed Imagination to give their thoughts and wishes on suitable application areas for demonstration systems. This was extremely useful to the PRiME team in deciding the best strategy for PRiME demonstrators. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | PRiME article in NMI (National Microelectronics Institute) 2015 yearbook, Jan 2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | The PRiME project was featured in the 2015 NMI Yearbook as a supported activity in the NMI overview (page 55) and then in more detail on pages 75-76 as a featured project in the eFutures article. The NMI Yearbook is the annual publication sent to all NMI members - mainly companies but also some academic members. The article on PRiME serves as a useful introduction to the project, increasing general awareness in a non-academic audience. Support for the NMI has also led to closer relationships with key NMI staff, which has led to subsequent discussions about closer working between the NMI and one of PRIME's research institutes (University of Southampton) which later led to the creation of the "ImpacTech" academia/industry collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://nmi.org.uk/nmi-2015-yearbook-avaliable-now/ |
| Description | PRiME exhibited at Design and Test in Europe (DATE) conference, 10-12 March 2015, Grenoble |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | PRiME exhibited at the major international Design and Test in Europe (DATE) conference, 10-12 March 2015, Grenoble, in a European Project Booth. We shared research progress and applications via posters, presentations and three lunchtime demonstrations on specific areas of work. The conference has a mix of academic and non-academic attendees. The aim of attending DATE as an exhibitor was to widen awareness of the programme, particularly internationally, with the aim of improving possibilities of future collaboration and IP exploitation. This aim was met, with the location of the booth in the busy refreshment area meaning that it was highly visible during conference breaks, etc. There was a steady stream of visitors interested in finding out more detail about our work and interacting with the lunchtime demonstrations. An added bonus was networking with the other DATE exhibitors and non-academic attendees, and a number of useful contacts were made, specifically Methodics (a semiconductor data management company) and River Publishers (a European academic publisher). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2015/03/27/prime-research-impresses-date-2016/ |
| Description | PRiME exhibited at European Workshop on Microelectronic Education, 11-13/05/2016 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | PRiME research was exhibited as part of the "industry" exhibition at the 11th European Workshop on Microelectronics Education, 11-13 May 2016, Southampton. Although the majority of attendees were academic, there were also significant attendees from companies working in similar fields to PRiME (e.g. ARM, Imagination, Cypress, STFC, River Publishers, etc.). There was also a specific session on collaborating with industry. The event was a useful opportunity to share up to date research progress, particularly with company staff involved in university liaison, etc. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | PRiME exhibited at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) 7-11 June 2015, San Francisco |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME exhibited at the major international Design Automation Conference (DAC) 7-11 June 2015, San Francisco, in collaboration with Moortec Semiconductors (BOOTH #3308). Practical demonstration systems related to PRiME research Theme 3 were presented on the booth. DAC has mainly non-academic attendees, with some academic. Main aim was to increase project awareness, particularly to North American attendees for future possible collaboration or IP exploitation. Also to specifically demonstrate PRiME's on-chip timing analysis monitoring technique and flow. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | PRiME explains its research to the general public |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Explaining advanced electronics/computer science research to the general public can be challenging. Our talented PRiME researchers who managed to do this when taking part in the University of Southampton's annual Science & Engineering Day on Saturday 18th March. PRiME had two adjacent activity stalls:"Same phone, same apps, more battery life". This used a newly developed PRiME demonstrator board which allows users to monitor and set the frequencies of 4 embedded processor cores and observe effects on e.g. power consumption (shown as "battery remaining" for this activity). The second activity was called "Maths on the move - how to land safely with Rodin Maths", and was a continuation of the very successful outreach activities previously held at the 2016 Science & Engineering Day and the Farnborough International Airshow. The participants' challenge was to define rules to ensure that planes could land safely on the runway and move to a safe parking zone. This was done using simple rule definitions on paper, which were then transferred to Rodin formal models on computers to see whether the rules worked and planes landed and moved safely without crashing! It's an excellent, practical example of how maths is used in the context of formal modelling for safety critical systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/04/25/prime-explains-research-general-public/ |
| Description | PRiME front page feature article in New Electronics magazine, 14/10/2014 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRIME's research was the subject of a front page feature article in New Electronics magazine, 14/10/2014. The project featured as the full, front page photo in the print version of the magazine, but also a major article online on the New Electronics website. The article itself was three full pages and publicised the research background/rationale and progress to a wide, mainly non-academic audience. The print magazine has a verified circulation of over 16000. A tangible, specific impact/outcome of this article was that the UK based SME Moortec Semiconductor read about PRiME research in the article and were interested in finding out more. They contacted PRiME, which led to two phone call discussions about common areas of interest, followed by a visit to one of PRIME's participating institutes (Imperial College) for a detailed discussion about potential collaboration and common areas of interest. Subsequently Moortec became "Associate Programme Members" to reflect the closer links with the project and have attended further events, e.g. PRiME's Industry Day. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/P16-18.pdf |
| Description | PRiME leads session at UKESF workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Two of the PRiME team, Gerry Scott and Charlie Leech, attended the UKESF scholars' workshop at the University of York on Wednesday 6th September to present a session on UK research in general and the PRiME programme specifically.The UK Electronics Skills Foundation encourages young people to study electronics and pursue careers in the sector. As part of this, they connect the most capable electronics students at top UK universities with leading employers through their scholarship scheme. This includes a 4-day residential course, packed with professional and personal development sessions and networking with speakers from the wider electronics sector. Gerry and Charlie presented a session designed to inform the students about electronics and computer science research taking place in the UK, funded by both the public and private sectors. This included a detailed overview of the PRiME programme - who is involved, the research problem being addressed and the research themes, followed by a more detailed look at progress in theme 2 - Run-Time management software. 60 students attended the workshop and feedback on the session was very positive, with many of the attendees saying that it made them consider for the first time whether they should pursue a career in research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/09/15/prime-leads-session-ukesf-workshop/ |
| Description | PRiME makes an impact at DATE2017 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | PRiME was well represented at the event and made the most of opportunities to share research progress with a wide audience. Two specific areas of our research were demonstrated at the University Booths area. The demos showed our work in: 1) Power, Energy & Reliability (PER) interplay (PRiME research Theme 1) and 2) Runtime management of concurrent multi-threaded applications on multi-core systems (PRiME research Theme 2) In addition to the booth camp, PRiME researchers presented an invited paper and Dr Geoff Merrett also gave an invited "hot topic" talk on Energy Driven Computing: Rethinking the Design of Energy Harvesting Systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/04/05/prime-makes-impact-date2017/ |
| Description | PRiME presented at ICT Knowledge Transfer Network's Horizons 2020 topics pitch, 20/11/2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | PRiME's Impact Manager, Gerry Scott, presented a short pitch about PRiME research and its possible applications in ICT/HPC areas at the KTN Horizons 2020 ICT Topics pitch meeting in London on November 20th 2015. The focus of the event was cloud computing and software technologies. The audience was a mix of academic and non-academic and was aimed at building collaborations for future research proposals. The aim was to increase awareness of PRiME, particularly our work on software runtime management, and it's relevance to wider ICT domains such as high power computing (HPC). In this, it succeeded and some useful networks were developed with organisations working in this field (e.g. Enterprise Europe Network) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | PRiME presented at KTN Energy Efficient Computing Special Interest Group annual meeting, Manchester, 10 March 2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | PRiME Senior Lecturer, Dr Tom Kazmierski, presented PRiME research progress to a mixed audience of academic and industrial experts at the Energy Efficient Computing Special Interest Group Annual meeting held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on 10 March 2015. The aim was to widen the reach of the PRiME project into the field of High Power Computing and making specialist practitioners aware of the techniques being developed by PRiME for energy optimisation (which may be applicable to HPC as well as mobile devices) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/eec/events-view/-/events/21997273?_8_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fconne... |
| Description | PRiME presented at Research to Industry (R2I) Conference, 03/09/2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME's Impact Manager, Gerry Scott, attended the Research to Industry Conference (R2I), organised by IMAPS, on 3rd September 2015 at Sheffield University. PRiME was presented both in the exhibition/poster space, but also through a talk which gave an overview of the research aims and progress, together with examples of technology areas where the research could be applied and possible future collaboration opportunities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://efutures.ac.uk/event/r2i-electronics-conference-connecting-research-industry |
| Description | PRiME presented to Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), Qatar, October 2015 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | PRiME Director, Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, presented PRiME's across layer research approach to a mixed audience of academic and industrial delegates at QCRI in Qatar. The presentation was entitled "Hardware/software codesign of energy-efficient many-core embedded systems". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2015/10/14/prime-introduced-to-qatar-computing-research-institute-qrci/ |
| Description | PRiME research explained to school students at Farnborough International Air Show Futures Day, 15/07/2016, Farnborough |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Farnborough International Air Show "Futures Day" opens the Air Show Exhibition to schools and other youth organisations, with the objective of inspiring the younger generation to enter into a career in Aerospace. Over 5,000 children from the region attend the show and participate in a variety of talks and educational activities. PRiME researchers Dr Asieh Salehi, Dr Colin Snook and Dr Domenico Balsamo presented an interactive activity called "Rodin Maths", developed from the public engagement activity they had previously created for the University of Southampton Science and Engineering Day. The activity was adapted to focus on aeroplanes, showing how maths and formal modelling can be used to safely control manouvres and is based on PRiME research theme 2. A Rodin computer model was used to illustrate whether the participants' approach was successful. The format of the Farnborough exhibition allowed the PRiME researchers to spend more time with each participant, and allowed them to explain the concepts in more depth, particularly to the older children. Feedback was extremely positive and all of the participants said they came away learning more about safety and how maths can be used in safety critical systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2016/07/29/prime-researchers-exhibit-at-farnborough-international-air-s... |
| Description | PRiME research explained to the public at University of Southampton Science & Technology Day, 12/03/2016, Southampton |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The University of Southampton held its annual Science and Technology day on Saturday 12 March 2016, as part of British Science Week. This public engagement event opens up many parts of the University and its facilities and labs, with the aim of presenting the science and technology work being undertaken in an accessible way to members of the public of all ages. As part of the day, three PRiME researchers - Dr. Asieh Salehi, Dr. Domenico Balsamo and Dr. Colin Snook - prepared and presented a novel, interactive demo of PRiME's work with formal modelling techniques, in an activity called Maths on the Move. To illustrate their work with Event-B formal modelling and the use of related software tools like Rodin, the team focussed on a readily understandable area where safety is critical - in this case by working out how to safely navigate cars through hazards and obstructions to a safe parking position. Participants first used rules to define safe manouvres on paper for the cars, then this was translated into a Rodin based computer programme which showed whether the cars were successful in navigating the hazards and getting to the parking place. Successful participants were rewarded with a toy car to take away. The day was a great success and the team were very busy interacting with a large number of visitors (>100). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | PRiME research presented at TechWorks Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME researcher Dr. Fei Xia of Newcastle University gave an invited talk on "Parallelization and non-functional properties leading to the concept of real-power". Fei's talk centred around PRiME's theme 1 research on the trade-offs between performance, energy and reliability in the context of many-cored systems and the development of new models and modelling methods. Fei's talk was well received by the attendees - mainly representatives from industry, but also some academic - and led to some interesting subsequent discussions. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/09/15/prime-research-presented-techworks-conference/ |
| Description | PRiME research presented to Derek Boyd, CEO of the National Microelectronics Institute, 22/04/2016, Southampton |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | A presentation of the PRiME project was made to Derek Boyd (CEO) and Alastair McGibbon (VP Industry Technology Strategy) of the NMI. This explained the project together with examples of tangible research outputs which are relevant to industry. The aim was to show that PRiME research is practically focussed and potentially useful to companies working in the field, e.g. NMI members. The quality of the portfolio of technology projects presented to the NMI led directly to the formation of the collaborative partnership "impactech" between the NMI and the University of Southampton, with the aim of developing partnerships and collaborations between academia and industry. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| URL | http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/impactech |
| Description | PRiME research presented to Tony King-Smith, Director of Imagination Technologies, 17/02/2015, Southampton |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | PRiME research was explained to Tony King-Smith, Marketing Director of Imagination Technologies, through talks and practical demonstration systems. Imagination Technologies are partners in the project (usually represented by a technical member of staff), but this meeting gave the opportunity to disseminate the research to an executive level within the company. The aim was to show the relevance of PRiME's research to Imagination and offer opportunities for closer partnership. This aim was met, since Tony King-Smith was impressed by the research and requested that the PRiME team organise a visit to Imagination for a dedicated research seminar to a wider audience. This subsequently took place in September 2015. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | PRiME shares its research worldwide, India |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Amit visited the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India, where he was hosted by Prof Preeti Ranjan Panda in the Dept of Computer Science & Engineering. All these talks were well received and led to interesting discussion on research collaboration and possible student exchanges. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/07/04/prime-shares-research-worldwide/ |
| Description | PRiME shares its research worldwide, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | On 17th April, Amit visited Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, hosted by Assistant Prof Lam Siew Kei in the School of Computer Science & Engineering, to give a talk on PRiME's work entitled Discussions on Reliability in Run Time Management. The following day he was at the National University of Singapore's School of Computing to present on Energy Efficiency and Reliability in Many-Core Embedded Systems (host: Prof Tulika Mitra). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/07/04/prime-shares-research-worldwide/ |
| Description | PRiME shares its research worldwide, Technical University of Dortmund |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Researchers working on the PRiME project are always keen to share our research progress and latest findings with others, whether fellow academic researchers or industrialists. We believe that this helps to develop future collaborations as well as advancing the overall technical progress in our field of work. Prof Bashir Al-Hashimi visited the Technical University of Dortmund on June 22nd 2017, at the invitation of Prof Peter Marwedi, to give a talk on the PRiME framework for energy efficiency of many-core embedded systems. The talk was well received and led to further discussions including possible collaborations in machine learning algorithms in hardware and managing harvested energy in embedded systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/07/04/prime-shares-research-worldwide/ |
| Description | PRiME shares its research worldwide, UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Dr Asieh Salehi visited Prof Sven Schewe's verification group at the University of Liverpool on 15th June to talk about PRiME's work on formal methods - Applying Formal Methods and Verification in Embedded Power Management Software. Again, this led to interesting discussions, including the possibility of a visit to PRiME by a Liverpool post-doc researcher. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.prime-project.org/2017/07/04/prime-shares-research-worldwide/ |
| Description | PRiME videos explaining different areas of research available on PRiME website and YouTube Channel - ongoing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | PRiME has created short (3-4 minute) videos to explain, in a more accessible way, specific areas of our work plus wider outreach activities like public engagement. The videos are available on the front page of the PRiME website and on the PRiME YouTube channel. New videos are made available on an ongoing basis. The videos are now filmed and produced by professional video services at the partner universities, so the quality is good. All videos are correctly subtitled to improve accessibility. Viewing numbers are around 1000 for the more popular subjects. Video subjects to date: Performance, Energy & Reliability Interplay; PRIME Public engagement Activities; Automatic Run Time Management Code Generation; Thermal Management of Embedded Systems; Making Systems Self-Aware and Adaptive; Using Machine Learning to Dynamically Adjust the Voltage & Frequency; Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling Experiment; |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014,2015,2016,2017 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuRB4XkALCGmWL5YM87Xp7Q |
| Description | Presentation of PRiME work at STEM for Britain event at UK Parliament, 13/03/17 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | John WIckerson of Imperial College took part in the "STEM for Britain" poster competition for early-career researchers at the Houses of Parliament on 13th March 2017. Dr Wickerson presented a poster based on the publication "Automatically comparing memory consistency models", joint authored with Prof George Constantinides (PRiME Theme 3 lead). STEM for BRITAIN exists to raise the profile of Britain's early-stage researchers at Westminster by engaging Members of both Houses of Parliament with current science, engineering and mathematics research being undertaken in the UK, especially that by their local constituents and in their local University. Few of the Parliamentarians have science or technology degrees, but around 100 attend during the day. This is an opportunity to raise awareness of PRiME (and related) research to key decision makers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.setforbritain.org.uk/2017event.asp |
| Description | workshop at the HiPEAC 2018 Conference, Runtime Approaches to Power Management on Arm Platforms |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | We presented the work carried out by PRiME researchers at Southampton on several runtime management approaches. Our presentation was 1 of 4 that provided an introduction to the workshop by showing a selection of the research being done on Arm platforms.The workshop was more focussed towards HPC whereas most of the work carried out by PRiME team is on low power mobile systems. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://www.goingarm.com/ |