Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

Number 79, October 2009 ERCIM NEWS European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics www.ercim.org

Special theme: Towards Green ICT

Also in this issue:

Keynote: by Mazin Yousif

Joint ERCIM Actions: 2009 Cor Baayen Award to Teemu Roos

R&D and Technology Transfer: A 3D Event-Based Silicon Retina Stereo Sensor Editorial Information

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Next issue: January 2010, Special theme: “Digital Preservation”.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Keynote

Towards Green ICT

After years of token recognition, green Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is beginning to gain significant traction. In fact, the association of ‘greenness’ with technology has become so fashionable that companies are now trying to ‘out-green’ each other. The main catalyst for this change is the realization that energy consumption is Mazin Yousif, PhD growing at a staggering rate, far beyond that for which we CEO, Avirtec Corporation and chair of the ERCIM Advisory Committee. have prepared. The corollary for ICT is that as an industry, it is responsible for significant environmental impact. For example, it is not uncommon for newly constructed data cen- 3. Improving the efficiency of ICT operations by, for exam- tres to consume more power than the cities they are located ple, using advanced cooling technology and power gener- in, forcing data centre deployment decisions to be driven by ation equipment; adopting best practices and known meth- the availability of either cheap electrical power or a natural ods for operating ICT deployments such as physical layout means of cooling (eg data centres are being built in Iceland to reduce internal/external heat; and optimizing physical for its low average ambient temperatures). Further, electrical placement of resources. bills to power ICT infrastructure are reaching billions of US 4. Encouraging conservation: here end-users and consumers dollars, and represent a big percentage of the operational of ICT must be motivated to conserve energy through expenses of ICT. schemes such as placing energy caps on consumption, devising systems of rewards/penalties, and possibly estab- The impact of ICT on the Earth’s climate and its dwindling lishing a trading market for energy or emission certifi- resources is another major concern. Recent studies found cates. For example, if a company exceeds its emission lim- that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from data centres alone its, it can buy unused certificates from companies that surpass emissions from many individual countries (note that have succeeded in cutting their emissions. It would also be this does not include CO2 emissions from other global ICT appropriate to hold IT accountable for the cost of operat- infrastructure). This is in addition to the fact that much ICT ing ICT infrastructure, as it encourages them to improve equipment contains toxic substances such as lead and mer- efficiency and turn off machines that are not in use. I cury, much of which enters the environment via the dumping would even recommend making productivity a function of of obsolete equipment. consumption: ie greater consumption must be associated with higher productivity. Given the above, serious collaboration between technolo- 5. Increasing social awareness through policies and commu- gists, developers, researchers, consumers and politicians is nications to explain the urgency of the issue and urge con- needed to achieve green and sustainable ICT. The ramifica- servation. tions of failing to act would be devastating to the environment, and will lead to electricity bills eating up ever-larger The above efforts require that quantifiable benchmarks and chunks of ICT investment. metrics be developed to gauge their effectiveness and ensure progress towards established goals. As technologists, we have recognized that no single effort is effective enough to make a big dent in ICT energy consump- Another important effort is recycling programs along the tion, mainly due to its extensive and diverse footprint. A ‘reduce-recycle-reuse’ theme. Most computer manufacturers combined effort is required, including inter-disciplinary have established plans to take back their obsolete products research, industry-wide collaboration and extensive social for free and have devised ways to reduce their footprint on awareness. The whole fabric of society must be involved, not the environment. These manufacturers have also been lim- simply technologists and researchers. Examples of efforts iting the amounts of toxic substances like lead and mercury include, but are not limited to: in their products.

1. Improving the efficiency of ICT infrastructure through, for In summary, an energy consumption crisis is looming on the example, the use of energy-efficient resources and equip- horizon. Immediate action is demanded, involving inter-dis- ment, allocating the right set of resources to execute work- ciplinary research, industry-wide collaboration, policies and loads given their Service-Level Agreements and deploying social awareness. My message to ICT companies is “Learn technologies such as virtualization and autonomic power how to profit from consumers without harming the environ- optimizations. ment, as it is more rewarding.” And to the research commu- 2. Developing new technology, such as new materials, nity “Embark on more effective inter-disciplinary research lower-voltage equipment, increased integration (eg sys- developing green sustainable ICT technologies.” tem-on-a-chip) and power-aware ICT (both hardware and software). Mazin Yousif

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 3 JointContents ERCIM Actions

2 Editorial Information SPECIAL THEME

KEYNOTE Towards Green ICT coordinated by Laurent Lefèvre, INRIA and University of 3 Towards Green ICT Lyon, France; and Jean-Marc Pierson, IRIT, Université Paul by Mazin Yousif Sabatier, Toulouse, France

Introduction to the Special Theme 10 Towards Green ICT JOINT ERCIM ACTION by Laurent Lefèvre and Jean-Marc Pierson

6 Two New ERCIM Working Groups Formed General, Strategy, Rising Awareness 12 ICT and Energy: Some Methodological Issues 7 2009 Cor Baayen Award to Teemu Roos by Bernard Aebischer

8 EUROINDIA International Events 13 Key Challenges for Green Networking by Ashok Kar, Nick Ferguson and Florence Pesce by Ulrich Barth, Patty Wong, Didier Bourse

9 D4Science-II - An e-Infrastructure Ecosystem 15 Design for Energy Awareness for Science by Christina Öhman

16 Who Makes IT Professionals Environmentally Aware? by Andy Phippen

17 Combine Cost Optimization and Energy Efficiency Targets in your IT Strategy: The Going Green Impact Tool Supports You by Hannes Engelstaedter

18 The Norwegian Green IT Project Focuses on Green Data Centres and Video Conferencing by Benedicte Fasmer Waaler

Electronics 20 MicroPower: Towards Low-Power Microprocessors with Reversible Computing by Holger Bock Axelsen, Robert Glück, Alexis De Vos and Michael Kirkedal Thomsen

21 Boosting Research in Electronics Enabling Efficient Energy Usage by Erich Prem

Data Centres and Clusters 23 Using Waste Heat from Data Centres to Minimize Carbon Dioxide Emission by Gerhard Ingmar Meijer, Thomas Brunschwiler, Stefan Paredes, and Bruno Michel

24 Nautilus - A Testbed for Green Scientific Computing by Bartosz Borucki, Maciej Cytowski and Maciej Remiszewski

4 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 R&D AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER Computer Science 26 ÏANOS: How to Do More Science with Less Energy 42 A 3D Event-Based Silicon Retina Stereo Sensor by Vincent Keller and Wolfgang Ziegler by Christoph Sulzbachner, Jürgen Kogler, Wilfried Kubinger and Erwin Schoitsch 27 Creating Power-Aware Middleware for Energy- Efficient Data Centres 43 CoMem-XML: Exploring Context in Repositories of by Eduard Ayguadé and Jordi Torres Construction Management Data by Peter Demian and Panos Balatsoukas 29 Green Building Blocks - Software Stacks for Energy- Efficient Clusters and Data Centres 45 Route Optimization: How Efficient will the Proposed by Dimitrios S. Nikolopoulos North Dublin Metro Be? by John R. Walsh 30 Evaluating the Energy Consumption of Enterprise Storage 46 Energy-Optimized Electrical Systems for Land by Doron Chen, Ronen I. Kat and Kalman Meth Transport Using Batteries and Supercapacitors: TRANS-SUPERCAP 31 Energy-Aware Storage Benchmarks by Paul Borza, Ana Maria Puscas and Marius Carp by Roger Kahn, Ronen I. Kat and Carlos Pratt 48 SensorWeb-Based Prototype for Air Quality 33 Power-Efficient Packet Classifier for Reporting Systems Next-Generation Routers by Katharina Schleidt and Denis Havlik by Zhen Liu, Alan Kennedy, Olga Ormond and Xiaojun Wang 49 New Technologies Provide Overview@aGlance at Large Music Festivals 34 EcoNets: Economic and Energy-Efficient Bandwidth by Preben Holst Mogensen and Marlene Nybro Thomsen Allocation in Future Networks by David Hausheer EVENTS 35 A BitTorrent Proxy for Green Internet File Sharing by Giuseppe Anastasi, Marco Conti 51 Out of the Ether: Information Management and Andrea Passarella for Archaeologists by Martin Newman Reducing and optimizing energy consumption with ICT 37 Interactive Energy Management System in 51 13th European Conference on Digital Libraries Households by Giannis Tsakonas and Christos Papatheodorou by Tuan Anh Trinh and Sándor Plósz 52 Cross Language Evaluation Forum Celebrates Tenth 38 Intelligent Systems for Green Developments Birthday by Han La Poutré, Wil Kling and Sjef Cobben by Carol Peters

39 Computational Science for Future Energy 53 ACM Europe Launched Production by Barry Koren 54 Second ENISA-FORTH Summer School on Network and Information Security 40 ENERPLAN - Green Logistic Solutions by David Pisinger 55 Excitement from the ITU TELECOM WORLD 2009 Conference by Harry Rudin

55 Celebration of Ten Years W3C Greece Office

56 Announcements

59 In Brief

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 5 Joint ERCIM Actions

Two New ERCIM Working Models and Logics Groups Formed for Quantitative Analysis

To new ERCIM Working Groups have been established A new ERCIM Working Group on Models and Logics for recently: The Working Group “Social Network Analysis” Quantitative Analysis (MLQA) was officially established in focusing on algorithmic aspects of network data September 2009. The remit of the Working Group is to analysis and the Working Group “Models and Logics for explore and develop methods for formal verification of Quantitative Analysis” exploring and developping modern advanced software systems. Such methods have methods for formal verification of modern advanced already been successfully applied to self-contained and rela- software systems. tively simple systems. The group will develop new methods and expand the applicability of previous methods in order to Social Network Analysis formally verify the functionality of complex interacting modern software systems. This will be done by combining The ERCIM working group on Social Network Analysis recent theory and methods from computer science and math- (SNA) has recently been formed in 2009 with a view to ematical modelling. foster European collaboration in research on data analysis for social networks. The main objective of the SNA group is to A large fraction of contemporary Information Technology build a strong network of researchers with expertise on algo- systems are either Embedded Systems (offering autonomous rithmic aspects of network data analysis. The first action will and intelligent control of complex physical systems) or be to foster collaboration through the organisation of scien- Service-Oriented Architectures (providing Web services tific meetings with the medium-term objective of collabo- designed to support machine-to-machine interaction over a rating on funded research programmes in this area. network). This tendency will greatly increase in what will become the Internet of the Future, an integrated system com- Research in network data analysis is being transformed by prising telecommunications, the Internet, and small systems access to large-scale data resources. The availability of this embedded in domestic appliances. Cutting-edge examples data in electronic format presents some interesting chal- include intelligent vehicles that actively prevent accidents, lenges and opportunities for data analysis. In particular, intelligent homes that actively support your lifestyle, and social networking sites are prominent sources of such data. services for handling electronic shopping and secure pay- Given that the defining characteristics of social networks are that at least some of the nodes in the network are human actors, the analysis of such networks can be used to provide useful insights into how people interact. However, fundamental research problems exist, and many of these problems are common among several research domains.

Areas of interest include: • Algorithmic aspects of large-scale networked data analysis • Information retrieval over social media Figure 1: The research challenges of MLQA. • Data mining and semantic web approaches for social media enrichment ments. On a larger scale, the future integration of medical The SNA working group sees significant synergies with equipment, emergency support systems, electronic hospital existing ERCIM working groups such as Computing and records and next-generation communication technology are Statistics & Data and Information Spaces (DIS). examples pointing towards the trend of Service-Oriented Systems incorporating a number of embedded components. The initial meeting of the SNA WG attracted 29 participants On an even larger scale, we begin to see IT Guided Workflow from nine universities and two industry partners with a Systems where the humans mainly play the role of domain keynote lecture from Prof. Barry Smyth of UCD, Dublin. experts (eg a doctor who is an expert in a given treatment) The meeting led to agreement on the name and scope of the rather than being in charge of the overall workflow (eg mon- working group with a follow-up meeting to be held in Italy in itoring the treatment history from the point of view of the November during ERCIM fall meetings. patient). Outside the traditional domains of IT systems, the use of computer science modelling and analysis techniques is also growing in the life sciences, in particular the modelling Link: of components of biological systems. http://wiki.ercim.org/wg/SNA The need for stability in the IT infrastructure of our future Please contact: society demands that a number of fundamental properties be Pádraig Cunningham validated for the IT systems of interest. This spans properties SNA Working Group coordinator related to security (eg ‘no virus can allow outsiders to get University College Dublin, Ireland access to my Internet banking account’), performance/ E-mail: [email protected] dependability (eg ‘my critical Internet service will be avail-

6 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 able 99.99% of the time’) and resource usage (eg ‘the control 2009 Cor Baayen Award system rotates and adjusts the windmill such that at least 60% of the potential wind energy is utilized’). Even the for- to Teemu Roos mulation of these properties becomes nontrivial when addressing IT Guided Workflow Systems that have humans In a tight competition, the ERCIM Executive Committee as ‘subsystems’ and when addressing the description of has chosen Teemu Roos from the Helsinki Institute for three-dimensional behaviour in biological systems. Information Technology HIIT as the winner of the The challenge in the modelling and validation of embedded 2009 Cor Baayen Award and service-oriented systems is that due to their interaction for a promising young with the surrounding physical environment, they must researcher in computer include aspects that are discrete (eg providing security guar- science and applied antees), stochastic (eg dealing with performance) and contin- mathematics. uous (eg providing measurements of resource usage). A shift is required in the development of IT systems from the study Teemu Roos received his of discrete properties to also include stochastic and contin- PhD degree from the uous properties, not least when addressing IT Guided University of Helsinki, Workflow Systems. The use of stochastic and continuous Finland, in September properties is equally important in the life sciences. 2007. The title of his thesis Teemu Roos. is “Statistical and To meet the above challenge we need powerful modelling Information-Theoretic methods and algorithms for the analysis of discrete, sto- Methods for Data chastic and continuous properties. The aim of this Working Analysis”. During and after his postgraduate studies, Teemu Group is to create both a venue for knowledge sharing in this Roos, has performed groundbreaking research by combining exciting area and a network for young researchers; further- advanced theoretical reasoning with innovative technical more to share tools for performing analyses and to create solutions in the fields of information theory, data analysis joint European research projects on quantitative analysis. and machine learning. He has attacked and solved practical problems of utmost importance in an unusually wide range The Working Group was created following a meeting/work- of applications. His two equivalence results that establish shop during the ETAPS 2009 conference held in York in formal connections between Bayesian network classifiers March, where 33 participants enjoyed six invited talks and and logistic regression, and between regularized Haar twelve short presentations. wavelets and so called variable length Markov chains, can be considered theoretical as well as practical breakthroughs. The activities of the ERCIM Working Group on Models and Logics for Quantitative Analysis (MLQA) will study process Teemu also stated and proved a theorem about the possibility models that are appropriate for describing the behaviour of of inductive generalizations to as yet unseen cases under a systems and logics that are suitable for describing their quan- certain mild stationarity assumption, a result that was for- titative properties. merly claimed, and generally believed, to be impossible in its present form. For this work, he received the best paper award The activities will: at the Belgian-Dutch Conference on AI in 2005. His highly • model behaviour of processes by means of transition sys- cited work in mobile device positioning - he has several tems, automata or process calculi papers in the field with total citation count exceeding 450 - • model quantitative properties using logics for expressing has been patented and successfully commercialized in the not only discrete but also stochastic and continuous prop- award-winning spin-off company Ekahau Inc. (Frost & erties Sullivan Technology Leadership Award, European Union • focus on algorithms, theory and tools Information Society Technology Prize, Software Industry • study applications with particular emphasis on embedded Summit Best Commercialized Innovation in Finland, etc.). systems and service-oriented systems, but aim also to As an another example, in collaboration with historians, treat IT Guided Workflow Systems and biological sys- Roos has gained significant advances in the study of the tems. “evolution” of ancient manuscripts by unprejudiced application of state-of-the-art information-theoretic methods to Link: stemmatology, a long-standing problem in textual criticism. http://wiki.ercim.org/wg/MLQA Teemu Roos has already at this phase of his career demon- Please contact: strated capability for independent, multifaceted, creative, and Flemming Nielson highly original work, producing both theoretical and practical MLQA Working Group coordinator solutions of undisputable societal and commercial value. The DTU Informatics, Denmark positioning techniques, some of which he introduced already E-mail: [email protected] in his MSc thesis, are being used every day in more than 150 hospitals around the world, and numerous other locations in ERCIM Working groups are open to any researcher in the specific government, military, and industry. Teemu’s interdisciplinary scientific field.Scientists interested in joining the Working Group work on stemmatology, introducing exact mathematical and should contact the coordinator. computational tools in an area where they have been largely

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 7 Joint ERCIM Actions

unused, has lead to a prolific collaboration rousing both domestic and international interest. This work has already EUROINDIA contributed to historical research as reported in at least three books and academic dissertations. International Events

He has also been active in making his scientific work known by Ashok Kar, Nick Ferguson and Florence Pesce to the public: he has appeared in the press and television in connection with the stemmatological work. As a young The Euro-India ICT Cooperation Initiative (‘EUROINDIA’) is researcher, Temu Roos is already a regular invited speaker a Support Action under the Seventh Framework and organizer in various scientific workshops. He works flu- Programme. This initiative aims to reinforce collaborative ently with the leading figures in his field, including Prof. research and innovation activities between Indians and Peter Grünwald (Amsterdam), Prof. Bin Yu (UC Berkeley), Europeans in ICT domains and challenges targeted in the and the information-theoretist, Prof. Emeritus Jorma EU’s FP7. EuroIndia organized a series of events in India Rissanen (IBM Research), the originator of the minimum during August and was also invited to conduct a thematic description length (MDL) principle and the recipient of the session within the eIndia Conference. 2009 IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award, with whom Temu Roos has co-authored several publications. Information Days The first Information Day was held in Chennai on 25 August Teemu Roos was awarded the Junior Researcher Prize of the at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki in Madras) campus, with participants hailing from 2006, and his dissertation was shortlisted for the 2008 North- academia/research. The second was on 26 August in the American Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) premises in Award. Hyderabad, and catered mainly for participants from industry. Both events offered participants a comprehensive 2009 Finalists understanding of FP7 (2007-2013) and the ICT Work pro- From the 36 candidates nominated for the 2009 Cor Baayen gramme 2009-10, with a particular focus on the Call 5 and award, the ERCIM Executive Committee has accepted 20 how Indians can engage in research projects alongside finalists (in alphabetical order): European partners. EuroIndia representatives were also on • Ira Assent, Denmark hand to respond to specific individual questions. • Balazs Csaji, Hungary • Jan Bender, Germany Chennai Brainstorming Session • Sameh Elnikety, Switzerland A brainstorming session was held in Chennai on 25 August at • Beat Fluri, Switzerland the IIT campus with the support of the Humanities and Social • Ali Ghods, Sweden Sciences Department. The discussion topic for participants – • Jakob Gorm Hansen, Denmark who were mostly academics and researchers – was • Charles B Haley, United Kingdom e-learning, which is emerging as an innovative research area • Gwenaël Joret, Belgium for ICT in India. • Kristian Kersting, Germany • Freddy Lecue, France Professor Hema Murthy from the TeNet Lab at IIT Madras, • Anders Lindgren, Sweden who has pioneered rural ICT innovations through a combi- • Costas Panagiotakis, Greece nation of cutting-edge technology and creative content • Rodrigo Roman, Spain development, shared with participants her extensive experi- • Teemu Roos, Finland ence of e-learning. Professor Murthy, despite having cre- • William Smith, United Kingdom ated a robust and scalable e-learning tool of immediate rele- • Oscar Deniz Suarez, Spain vance to rural students, nevertheless painted a picture of dis- • Manuel Wimmer, Austria appointment. She lamented the absence of physical infra- • Tom Van Cutsem, Belgium structure to provide access to computers and communica- • Akrivi Vlachou, Greece. tion equipment, and of a viable and scalable business model to enable rural youth to enter the mainstream equipped with The winner, Teemu Roos, was selected by the ERCIM education and employability. Executive Committee on advice from the ERCIM Advisory Committee. The session closed after a rich debate on societal priorities and the consequent focus of e-learning innovations across About the Cor Baayen Award the complementary objectives: curriculum-based learning, The Cor Baayen Award is awarded each year to a promising knowledge acquisition and employability. young researcher in computer science and applied mathematics. The award was created in 1995 to honour Cor EuroIndia Session at eIndia, Hyderabad Baayen, the first president of ERCIM and the ERCIM 'presi- EuroIndia-ICT was a supporting partner of India's largest dent d'honneur'. The award consists of a cheque for 5000 ICT Event, eIndia2009, held in Hyderabad, India, 25-27 Euro together with an award certificate. August 2009. During the past twenty months, EuroIndia has developed a knowledge-mapping study methodology and More information: has catalogued publicly reported ICT innovations in India http://www.ercim.org/activity/cor-baayen-award over the period 2003-2007.

8 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 D4Science-II - An e-Infrastructure Ecosystem for Science

D4Science-II started on 1 October 2009 as one of the main European e-Infrastructure projects, involving ten participants including the European Organisation for From left: Nick Ferguson, Ashok Kar, Sudhanshu Rai, Florence Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Food and Agriculture Pesce, John Bosco Lourdusamy, Mogens Kuehn Pedersen at the Info Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Co-funded by Day Chennai on 25 August 2009 at the Indian Institute of Technology. the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, the D4Science-II project held its kick-off Prof. Mogens Kuehn Pedersen from the Copenhagen meeting 13-16 October 2009 in Pisa, Italy. Business School opened the session, which deliberated on the results of the mapping modules, focusing on key D4Science-II aims to continue the path that the GEANT, emerging trends and putting them in perspective with the EGEE, DILIGENT and D4Science projects have initiated EU’s research and innovation trends in ICT. Dr. Sudhanshu towards establishing networking, grid-based and data-centric Rai, Copenhagen Business School, then led a discussion on e-Infrastructures. The ultimate goal of this chain of work is to the management of innovation. Raj Datta, CKO Mindtree provide scientists with virtual research environments for Consulting, shared his insights on challenges surrounding unlimited generation and dissemination of scientific and innovation in India, while innovation in the e-learning sector technical knowledge. and views on integrating ICT technology into education in India were presented by Ashish Garg, Asia Regional The project will bring together several scientific Coordinator - Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative. e-Infrastructures established in the areas such as biodiversity, Finally, Ranjan Malik, partner in Erehwon Innovation fishery and aquaculture resources management, and high Consulting, presented the challenges and opportunities in energy physics, to set up a prototypical instance of an managing innovation in ICT firms in India. These presenta- e-Infrastructure ecosystem. tions are available on the EuroIndia portal. The workshop was attended by over 30 participants. According to Donatella Castelli, scientific coordinator, CNR, “Individual resources will be harnessed and aggre- Upcoming Events: EuroIndia International Conference gated for a multiplicative effect on information availability, The final EuroIndia International conference will be hosted processing power, and more importantly scientific perspec- by the International Management Institute on 10-11 tive: the much desired Knowledge Ecology finally obtains December 2009 in New Delhi . The event will be divided life within and is fed by e-Infrastructure ecosystems”. into three sections: • Presentation of the findings of the two-year extensive map- The D4Science-II ecosystem will include among others, the ping conducted across India. Thematic strengths and trends GENESI-DR and DRIVER repository e-Infrastructures, and will be developed by experts from India and Europe. important thematic repositories maintained by international • Presentation of international academic papers on ICT inno- organisations, e.g. INSPIRE and AquaMaps. The project will vations, focusing on collaborative endeavours between the create Virtual Research Environments that will offer signifi- EU and emerging economies, especially India. cantly enhanced services to scientists without incurring high • An exhibition in which some of the Indian enterprises and development and maintenance costs. organizations revealed through the EuroIndia knowledge mapping will showcase their innovations and seek to The primary clients of these Virtual Research Environments develop collaborative ventures and projects with the EU. serving specific scenarios will be researchers, decision- makers, international and government officers, and non-gov- While participation is free of charge, online registration is ernmental organisations worldwide. mandatory. The agenda and registration form will be available on the EuroIndia and ERCIM Web portals. If you would Scientific coordination of D4Science is headed by CNR like to participate, please contact [email protected]. while the management of the project is ensured by ERCIM.

The EUROINDIA project is coordinated by the Department of Informatics at the Copenhagen Business School, Link: Denmark. ERCIM is a partner in this project. http://www.d4science.eu

Link: http://www.euroindia-ict.org/ Please contact: Donatella Castelli Please contact: D4Science II scientific coordinator Florence Pesce, ERCIM Office ISTI-CNR, Italy E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 9 Special Theme: MathematicsTowards Green for ICT Finance and Economy

Introduction to the Special Theme Towards Green ICT: Energy Savings in ICT and ICT for Energy Savings

by Laurent Lefèvre and Jean-Marc Pierson

Energy concerns have been developing now for several years, and the ICT domain cannot escape from this trend. As the title of this special issue suggests, we have gathered here articles reflecting two aspects of the links between energy and ICT.

On the one hand, ICT plays a daily part in the production and use of electricity, from the operation of power plants to electricity transport. More interestingly, ICT is used to model, simulate and optimize these processes. The use of ICT to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs is the subject of a number of papers in this special theme.

On the other hand, ICT itself uses a lot of electricity, and work has begun on reducing the consequent economic and ecological costs. It is estimated that the 1.5 billion computers in the world consume about 90 000 MW of electric power, which is about 10% of global consumption. Some surveys commissioned by the European Union in 2006 on energy use and the efficiency of equipment in buildings tell of a continuous growth in recent years in energy consumption of computer end-use equipment (amongst others). Additionally, energy consumption for servers worldwide has doubled over the period from 2000 to 2005. Recent estimates at the CeBit forum 2008 in Hanover, the world’s largest technology fair, proclaimed that worldwide Internet usage, via the necessary computers and servers, needs the equivalent of fourteen power stations and produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as the entire airline industry.

As an example, an operational Grid such as EGEE (Enabling Grid for E-sciEnce) consists of around 150 000 cores distributed over 54 countries and 267 sites (www.eu-egee.org, October 2009). The world’s 500 most powerful machines (top500.org, June 2009) have more than 3.1 million processors. Number one on the list (RoadRunner from the United States Department of Energy) con-

10 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 sumes 2483 KW of electricity while number two (Jaguar However, the energy theme is concerned with energy con- from Oak Ridge National Laboratory) consumes 6950 KW! sumption and production, and has several projects that use With new Petaflop data centres in the offing, these energy ICT. In the ICT theme, Challenge 1 on pervasive and trusted costs are expected to increase significantly. network and service infrastructure and Challenge 6 on mobility, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency As large-scale distributed systems reach enormous sizes, the address this question. These programmes have at least issue of energy consumption is becoming one of the primary raised a number of projects with some eco-awareness. For challenges for large-scale integration. example, the Virtual Home Environment (VHE) project, a specific subproject of the European Network of Excellence There has traditionally been a dearth of eco-awareness in the Euro-FGI is looking at energy-efficient home networking, computing industry. Moore’s Law has not led to the overall and the AIM and BE-AWARE projects (answers to the ICT- power savings that miniaturization should allow. Instead, 2007.6.3 ICT call for environmental management and greater capacity and capability have invariably taken prece- energy efficiency) are investigating complementary dence over eco-concerns. Despite the fact that it has now approaches with different perspectives for eco-awareness. been several years since makers of mobile and embedded National research initiatives (like EcoGrappe or GreenNet systems began to take energy use into account, ecological projects in France) also address the issue of energy savings concerns have not been prioritized in assessing the total col- in ICT. lective costs of large-scale distributed technology. Constructors have worked on addressing individually the Recently, the European COST Action IC0804 (Energy effi- numerous components of computer architecture, but usage ciency in large-scale distributed systems) is giving a voice (in networking, storage and computing) has long been to this theme (http://www.cost804.org/). The aim of this ignored. action is to encourage researchers in this field to cooperate and build on common research topics. Ecological impacts constitute a silent cost which until recently received little attention. However, new studies com- The papers presented in this special issue are divided into missioned by government institutions will consider energy five groups. The issue begins with (1) some general consid- efficiency procedures for servers and data centres. White erations, strategic issues and the rise of eco-awareness (six papers exist to establish better use of ICT infrastructure. papers), followed by a (2) couple of papers on efforts in Strategic issues in the management of such infrastructure electronics, and on (3) data centres and clusters (two and the benefits to economy and enterprise image are being papers). A significant number of contributions represent (4) investigated. Another aspect is the continuous raising of advances in IT methodologies and developments towards public consciousness of the need to save energy and reduce eco-friendliness (eight papers), especially in large-scale dis- global consumption. Exposing electricity consumption visu- tributed systems. Finally, the issue closes with four papers ally to consumers (including by marketing) is an objective dealing with (5) the usage of ICT as a means of saving targeted by several projects. energy.

Interest in the energy-saving theme from both governments Please contact: and researchers has increased exponentially in recent years. Laurent Lefèvre In early 2000, work done in the USA (Green Destiny) and INRIA, University of Lyon, France Japan launched sparked initial interest in energy-aware com- E-mail: [email protected] puting. Recent initiatives such as Green Internet and Green500 have addressed this problem. The Green Grid, a Jean-Marc Pierson non-profit trade organization involving over fifty major IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse 3, France companies (including Intel, AMD, Dell, IBM and VMWare) E-mail: [email protected] is dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems. It develops standards, metrics, processes and technology to improve performance, and promotes their widespread adoption. Additionally it investigates approaches that rely most of the time on more energy-efficient hardware and electronics (in particular “Green ICT” Conferences power supplies). A list of relevant conferences focused on green computing Surprisingly, European environmental research themes are and energy-aware computer and network architectures and not yet investigating the issues related to electricity con- technologies, or containing tracks on these topics is sumption in IT. The environment theme of the FP7 maintained by Jordi Torres and Josep Lluís Berral García, (Framework Programme 7) focuses its actions on environ- Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) at mental issues and climate change, but ignores ICT. http://www.greenit-conferences.org/

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 11 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

ICT and Energy: Some Methodological Issues

by Bernard Aebischer

Technological innovations have wrought many transformations on society. The steam engine opened the way to the industrial society and the aeroplane revolutionized travel. Now, from the telephone to the internet, ICT is putting us on the path to a fully interconnected and radically different world.

However, with the advent of climate ICT and essential for evaluating the ices, dematerialization of the econo- change, the next transformation to impact of ICT on society’s energy my, and society may be driven by environmental requirements. And whenever invest- • acceleration of economic growth considerations and the need to reduce ment figures for ICT are quoted, the cat- thanks to better productivity and energy consumption. Determining the egories of ICT included in these invest- rebound effects. contribution of ICT to global energy use ments should be clearly stated. is complex and difficult. The present There are two approaches to studying article considers several ways of Direct electricity demand of ICT the effect of ICT on energy demands. approaching an answer. Taking into account the end-use equip- One is a microeconomic approach con- ment described above and its related sisting of a bundle of case studies, What does ICT comprise? infrastructure (servers, routers, switches where the impact of ICT on specific ICT is usually thought of simply as end- for the Internet, base station switching services and on the energy intensity of use devices such as computers, other units and others for telecommunica- each service is analysed. The other is a office equipment, entertainment election), typical calculations for an indus- macroeconomic approach, where the tronics and telephones, with the infra- trialized country suggest ICT accounts impact of ICT on the economic growth structure required by this equipment for about 5% of total electricity and on the energy intensity of the being neglected. But this hidden infra- demand. economy is investigated. structure (eg the servers that provide Internet services and the radio antennas Knowing that the majority of micro- Most of the case studies to date investi- necessary to make mobile phone calls) processors are in applications other than gate one of the following fields: now represents a significant and this equipment, we assume a doubling • manufacturing or technical processes increasing fraction of ICT electricity of the electricity demand for ICT. The • building automation and intelligent consumption. resulting 10% is of the order of 1 mega homes watt hour (MWh) per capita and year. 1 • traffic management Even all this end-use equipment and MWh/year is a considerable amount of • e-economy with e-commerce, e-work, related infrastructure represents only a electricity in an industrialized country e-learning and e-governance. small fraction of the microprocessors and it is more than what is used in many produced and used in industrial countries in the southern hemisphere. The domain of manufacturing and tech- processes, buildings, appliances or cars. This is of course a very rough estimate, nical processes is the only one in which Rejeski (Anticipations. In but we believe its accuracy to be suffi- most studies agree that ICT substan- “Sustainability at the speed of light”, ciently good for us to use it as a basis for tially reduces energy input. 2002) said that “…only 2 percent of the the qualitative considerations in this approximately 8 billion microprocessor paper. Automation in buildings clearly has units produced last year ended up in great potential to reduce energy use, computers.” And “…there could be as Impact of ICT on energy demand particularly in large and complex build- many as 10,000 telemetric devices per As well as measuring the direct energy ings in the service sector. Information person in the industrialised countries by demands of ICT equipment, it is also systems are implemented and used in 2010.” And “Within a decade more necessary – though much more complex modern buildings, but we know of things will be using the internet than – to determine the indirect impact ICT many examples where the many thou- people. As Michel Mayer, the head of has on the overall energy demand of a sands of data gathered and stored by IBM Pervasive Computing recently country. To do so, one must consider: these systems are not exploited to opti- noted”. Turley (Motoring with micro- • energy demand over the life cycle of mize energy use. In single family processors, 2003) wrote that “…the different types of equipment, ie in houses, ‘intelligent systems’ tend to average middle-class American house- addition to the direct energy demand lead to an increase in energy services hold includes over 40 embedded proces- discussed above, the energy for pro- and to a corresponding increase in sors. About half are in the garage…. ducing, distributing and refurbishing energy demand (Aebischer and Huser, Your transportation appliance probably or recycling this equipment 2000, 2003). has more chips than your internet appli- • efficiency improvements as a result of ance… New cars now frequently carry the ICT in technical and economic Much time and energy is wasted in 200 pounds of electronics and more than processes; of vehicles and mobility in traffic jams. ICT can make traffic more a mile of wiring”. general; and of buildings, appliances fluid but at the same time it increases and other energy-consuming activities traffic flow – as when building a new These observations are important for the • structural changes of and within the road in order to decongest an existing estimation of the energy demands of economy, substitution between serv- one.

12 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Most of the case studies investigate the Figure 1: The time-energy- Time = 0 (Industrial man) impact of increased use of ICT in spe- information triangle (Spreng, 1993). cific sectors of the economy. New orga- nizational forms (e-work, e-commerce) and new products (e-paper, e-gover- Maximung available information nance) are compared to traditional services and processes. Most of the studies do not question whether there is really a substitution between the traditional and the new service, and/or whether time and money saved by these new processes and services may lead to new Maximung available energy energy consumption that balances or Energy conservation even negates the original savings.

An alternative approach: Spreng’s triangle Information = 0 Maximung Energy = 0 (primitive man) available time (starving philosopher) An alternative conceptual framework with which to examine the question of the impact of ICT is Spreng’s triangle (Spreng, 1993). Spreng describes all Spreng writes: “The importance of new Link: economic activity in terms of time, information technology, NIT, in respect A more comprehensive and detailed energy and information. The precondi- of future energy use can hardly be over- essay “ICT and energy: tion is that there is perfect substi- stated. However, NIT can do two things. methodological Issues and Spreng’s tutability between the three factors. It can be used to substitute time by triangle” with illustrations and Then information can be used to replace information or to substitute energy by literature references can be found in time, accelerating innovation cycles and information. NIT can, in other words, "The European e-Business Report increasing productivity without both be used to speed up the pace of life 2008“, p. 265: increasing energy demand. Information (work and leisure), thus promoting a http://www.ebusinesswatch.org/ can just as easily substitute for energy society of harried mass consumers, or it key_reports/documents/ EBR08.pdf (or natural resources) without can be used to conserve precious natural increasing the time, labour or capital resources (energy and non-energy) by Please contact: input. In reality however, a saving of doing things more intelligently and Bernard Aebischer time (or increased productivity) through improving the quality of life without CEPE, ETH Zurich, Switzerland more information tends to increase adding stress to the environment. It is Tel: +41 44 632 41 95 energy demand, whereas more rational up to the society as a whole, politics of E-mail: baebischer@ ethz.ch use of energy thanks to information may course included, to decide which of the demand more time (see Figure). two roads are taken.” (Spreng, 1993).

Key Challenges for Green Networking by Ulrich Barth, Patty Wong, Didier Bourse

As a leader in telecommunications, Alcatel-Lucent recognizes the important role our industry must play in the global effort to address environmental issues such as climate change. This article highlights some of the corporation’s major research and development initiatives.

Alcatel-Lucent products are thoroughly ronmental benefits in a variety of busi- and environmental benefits, including evaluated for energy efficiency to ensure ness sectors, including smart metering, dramatically reducing their electricity they support service providers’ efforts to smart buildings, smart transport and bills, minimizing their carbon footprint, reduce the carbon emissions of new and tele-working. developing new revenue-generating existing networks. As part of its efforts opportunities through the availability of to create exceptional value for its cus- Alcatel-Lucent uses an end-to-end affordable alternative energy, and tomers, Alcatel-Lucent committed itself approach to energy efficiency in access, potentially expanding their business to improving the energy efficiency of transport and core networks. For opportunities with carbon-reducing key products by at least 20% by the end example, solutions for eco-sustainable communication services. of 2010 compared with 2008. In addi- wireless networks address all hardware, tion, Bell Labs scientists and engineers software, site and subsystem levels. As In February 2009, Alcatel-Lucent are creating innovative solutions and a result of this holistic strategy, cus- announced the Dynamic Power Save services that provide significant envi- tomers benefit from tangible business feature on its GSM/EDGE mobile net-

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 13 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

working portfolio. This new feature worldwide deployment, these hybrid volume signals and by promoting the reduces power consumption when stations powered by wind, solar and exploitation of sources of renewable traffic drops, with real-time reactivity bio-fuel cells will be available as energy and the development of a distrib- that guarantees no impact on service turnkey offerings, with faster delivery uted generation model. quality. This reduces average power times and a higher return on investment consumption by 25-30% and can be than can be achieved with the frag- Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs is currently installed on all of the 500,000 Alcatel- mented, site-by-site solutions currently coordinating the preparation of the Lucent base stations deployed since available on the market. The pro- major EC FP7 EARTH IP, (EARTH: 1999, thus protecting mobile operators’ gramme brings together the benefits of Energy Aware Radio and neTwork investments and making existing net- Alcatel-Lucent’s experience in integra- tecHnologies) addressing ‘Green works more energy efficient. tion and implementation, the power Networking’. The target of the project is to cut the energy use of mobile cellular Alcatel-Lucent pioneered the com- networks by a factor of at least two. The bining of different types of wireless project will investigate the energy effi- base stations to help customers save ciency limit that is theoretically and energy. The arrays of small coverage practically achievable whilst providing area (pico) base stations, strategically high capacity and uncompromised combined with a few large coverage quality of service. The project is prima- area (macro) base stations in mixed rily focused on the future 3GPP mobile deployments can be significantly more cellular systems LTE and LTE-A (Long energy efficient than networks based on Term Evolution-Advanced), where the a single technology. Researchers have potential impact on standardization is determined that the total network envisaged, but will also consider cur- energy consumption can be reduced by rently deployed 3GPP technologies up to 60% in urban areas for high data- (UMTS/HSPA) for immediate impact. rate user demand based on today's tech- The project will mobilize a consortium nology. Benefits could be as high as a of major stakeholders to develop a new 70% reduction in energy consumption generation of energy-efficient products, as both technologies mature and the components, deployment strategies and demand for high data rates increases. energy-aware network management Alcatel-Lucent alternative energy pilot site in solutions. In July 2009, Alcatel-Lucent introduced Villarceaux, France. the industry’s first 100 Gigabit Ethernet The tangible results of the research service routing interface for the edge, to project will include (i) energy-efficient help service providers around the world deployment strategies, (ii) energy-effi- meet massive bandwidth demands. efficiency of its base stations and its cient network architectures, (iii) new Service providers must minimize space professional services. The operational network management mechanisms that and power requirements if they are to launch of the world’s first alternative adapt to varying loads, (iv) innovative contain costs and maintain an environ- energy laboratory and pilot site, located component designs with energy-effi- mentally friendly operation. Alcatel- on the Bell Labs research site in cient adaptive operating points, and (v) Lucent’s FP2 silicon innovations and Villarceaux, France, was announced in new radio and network resource man- improvements in thermal efficiency June 2009. agement protocols for multi-cell coop- reduce power consumption to levels erative networking. The new techniques approaching four watts per gigabit with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs is also will be validated using sophisticated the new 100 Gigabit Ethernet interface researching new ways to improve simulation tools and in a mobile net- modules, a significant improvement thermal management performance work test plant. The project will provide compared to the 10 Gigabit and 40 while reducing the energy required to valuable and timely contributions to Gigabit alternatives widely deployed cool the equipment. These include standardization and regulations today. thermal interface materials to conduct processes. heat, vapour chambers to spread heat With 300 solar-powered wireless sites, and heat sinks to dissipate heat into the Alcatel-Lucent has established an air stream. industry-leading Alternative Energy Link: Programme. The programme’s goal is to Through its participation in the http://publications.epress.monash.edu/ develop the world’s first integrated, European research cooperation frame- doi/pdf/10.2104/tja09004 mass-produced, alternatively powered work, Alcatel-Lucent is a key partner in wireless base stations, making it pos- the EC FP7 ADDRESS Integrating Please contact: sible for operators to extend the reach of Project (IP). This project is working on Didier Bourse their wireless services to access a huge a technical and economic solution to Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, France population of potential new subscribers ‘active demand’, which means enabling Tel: +33 1 3077 6087 for its customers – the more than one consumers to proactively interact with Email: billion people living in areas not served the power system market, by means of Didier_Arnaud.Bourse@alcatel- by an electrical grid. Intended for real time interaction based on price and lucent.com

14 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Design for Energy Awareness by Christina Öhman

The development of new solutions for better energy use often starts with technology rather than the perspective of the user. Researchers at the Interactive Institute in Sweden do the opposite and look at design which supports awareness and behavioural changes – both important factors with high potentials.

Interactive Institute is an experimental of choices available to them and pro- petition. The most widely published and IT research institute which combines viding them with immediate feedback. acknowledged project is Static!. This expertise in art, design and information In such studies, researchers explore project developed ways of experiencing technology with a user-oriented focus. users’ behaviour, attitudes and lifestyles energy that involve all the senses, Several projects in the area of energy in relation to energy use. allowing people to reflect on their and design have generated results that energy use and behaviour by creating are acknowledged worldwide. “Today most arrangements are focused alternative designs that in various ways on technology. But actually, the user is expose and provoke questions related to Energy is an increasingly valuable more interesting! The potential is energy. The studies have resulted in a resource. However, in the design of tremendous if we can act, buy and sup- series of examples of how everyday everyday domestic environments, build- port energy smart,” states Kenneth Asp, products may be designed to stimulate ings and products, electricity and energy specialist at the Swedish Agency of reflection on daily or long-term patterns use is seldom made explicit. On the con- Energy which supports the research of of energy use. For example, the ‘Power- trary, wiring, electrical meters, outlets Interactive Institute. “A multidiscipli- Aware Cord’ is an electrical power strip and batteries are hidden away as much nary approach with a human perspec- in which the cord is designed to show as possible inside walls, in elegant cas- tive is needed in order to develop new the energy rather than hiding it. The more energy that passes through the cord, the more it glows! It is beautiful and it is a constant reminder that energy is being spent. Another example is bath- room tiles which are decorated with patterns in a thermo-chromatic ink that reflects hot-water use by fading away when hot water is splashed on it. The ‘Energy-Aware Clock’ centrally placed in the kitchen gives intuitive feedback on the electricity load of the house. The clock draws a graphic pattern in real time comparable to yesterday’s use.

The plan for future extended studies is to look further into behaviour at work and in shops. In these spaces people report that they need help to reflect on their environmental impact. We know that both consumers and companies are The ‘Energy Aware Clock’ gives intuitive feedback on the electricity load of the house. interested in services and tools that help to decrease emission, energy use and ecological footprints. We believe user- oriented design and interaction designs ings and in distant basements. The trend and better technology design. have great potential for such applica- is to fill the home with smart technology Engineers, architects, behavioural sci- tions. and appliances for communication and entists and designers are working entertainment with no concerns in rela- together. Prototypes and scenarios of Links: tion to energy. How can consumers various use concepts are evaluated by http://www.tii.se/static become more engaged and less wasteful users and designers, to develop a pro- http://www.tii.se/energydesign in this environment? We think the found understanding for, and awareness http://www.tii.se/dru answer lies in design that makes energy of, design issues related to energy use.” use visible in an attractive fashion! Please contact: Projects in this area at the Interactive Christina Öhman The overall goal in our projects is to Institute cover energy studies relating to Interactive Institute, Sweden empower people in their use of products teenagers, products, neighbourhoods, Tel: +46 8 6331751 and services by increasing the visibility social status, mobile phones and com- E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 15 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

Who Makes IT Professionals Environmentally Aware?

by Andy Phippen

Research at the University of Plymouth has shown encouraging indications that the next generation of IT professionals is willing to take environmental responsibility seriously. With awareness and the opportunity to reflect, it would seem that students are ready and willing to engage with the sustainability agenda. However, the research also highlights the responsibility of higher education institutions to provide a computer science curriculum that addresses more than simply technical and theoretical knowledge.

The IT industry is, quite rightly, criti- years’ learning in IT-related subjects, how they could contribute to the cized for its contribution to carbon most of which had been technical. In green IT agenda. emissions and for not taking its respon- addition, many had been on industrial 4. They can see the PR potential in sibility to the environment seriously. placements, so had first-hand experi- green IT. Demonstrating awareness The sector contributes around 2% of ence of the sector. of the value of good PR, some stu- global greenhouse gas emissions, a dents felt that knowledge of green IT similar proportion to the aviation The students were given lectures on might be good in order to make them industry, and its contribution is sustainability in general, considering more attractive to potential clients. growing and will continue to increase the implications of carbon emissions as the world's industries become and climate change, and then on the The results of the work show some very increasingly reliant on large-scale data responsibility of the IT sector, encouraging implications for the future centres and outsourced services. Yet including issues such as power con- IT workforce, in that once made aware green IT still seems to be a minority sumption and the impact of waste elec- of environmental issues, they are keen interest in corporate IT. trical equipment. They were then set to engage. However, it also places the that task of writing a reflective report onus very much on educators to ensure However, the fault may not lie with on their own career aspirations within this awareness is promoted at an early practitioners but with educators. Until the sector, by drawing on recent news stage. At Plymouth there is a strategy to recently education and recruitment into stories from the industry press that bring ethical considerations and profes- the IT sector has been based solely on made them consider issues of sustain- sional practice into the curriculum at an technical ability and problem-solving ability. early stage, and to ensure there is conti- skills. Only in the last few years has the nuity of education around social visibility of the sector been such that Content analysis of the reports showed responsibility and the means to develop social responsibility has become an a number of encouraging issues these concepts alongside more complex important issue. This is partly the result emerging from the students’ reflections technical issues. However, in com- of the widespread social and corporate on their role in the future IT sector: paring the computer science curricula adoption of ICT. at other institutions, we find this seems 1. There is a lack of awareness of the to be the exception rather than the One might argue, therefore, that the cur- sustainability issues associated with norm. rent generation of IT professionals was IT. The most frequently recurring not equipped by their professional theme was that students had never If we are to generate widespread development to effectively reflect upon really considered the environmental change within the IT workforce, social the social implications of the tech- implications of their chosen career responsibility and ethical practice nology and services they develop. The path during their degree and work to needs to lie at the heart, rather than at next generation will not have this date. the periphery, of the computer science excuse. Given that IT is now arguably a and IT curriculum. Encouragingly, it graduate-level profession, it should fall 2. Students are environmentally aware seems that if their institutions give to the universities to take responsibility and can relate green IT to their own them the opportunity, students are for educating their students not just in feelings of social responsibility. A willing to engage. the technical and theoretical aspects of number of students stated that they the subject, but also the wider issues of would think carefully about working professional practice and social for a company without a green IT accountability. policy now they had become aware of the importance of these issues. In early 2009, a study at the University of Plymouth, UK, evaluated the willing- 3. They view green IT as a problem that Please contact: ness of final-stage IT students to engage can only be solved by hardware. Sev- Andy Phippen with environmental issues. These stu- eral students commented that, School of Management, University of dents were coming to the end of their because they wished to become soft- Plymouth, UK studies and had at least two and a half ware developers, they could not see E-mail: [email protected]

16 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Combine Cost Optimization and Energy Efficiency Targets in your IT Strategy: The Going Green Impact Tool Supports You by Hannes Engelstaedter

The Going Green Impact Tool (GGIT) provides a fast and comprehensive insight into the key environmental and economical aspects of data centres, allowing executives to make faster and better decisions on cost-saving potentials, business continuity and long-term IT strategies. The tool allows different dynamic scenarios to be run, which include simulating various business risks and visualizing the impact of green solutions on energy efficiency, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and business continuity.

In times of economic crisis, IT execu- because of the diversity of design and the issues, one must choose from a long tives must deal with severe organiza- requirements of data centres, there is no list of possible solutions, which vary by tional budgetary cuts while trying to single perfect strategy. Depending on impact, cost and sustainability. While manage their business portfolios. At the same time, concerns about rising energy demands, escalating electricity prices and greenhouse gas emissions are lim- iting growth of information technology (IT) business areas and IT service providers. Up to this point, the focus has been on meeting the rapidly increasing computing demand. New high-performance and high-density IT equipment has been deployed, doubling the energy consumption of data centres between 2000 and 2005. However, this development is accompanied by urgent new concerns: rising energy consumption and electricity costs will cause operating expenses to exceed server capital expenses by 2009. According to research studies, power and cooling limits were reached in 50% of the world’s data centres by the end of 2008. Governments, in particular in the EU and the US, are working on new legisla- tion for environmental protection, affecting all operations – including IT products – that cause emissions of CO2 or other greenhouse gases. Furthermore, because of the prominence of global warming concerns, green IT is becoming part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for any company. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and other executives therefore face the challenge of developing an IT strategy to minimize those risks, to become more energy efficient, and to reduce operating and investment costs to ensure the company’s growth.

Fortunately, there already exist solutions to improve the energy efficiency of data centres and reduce risks, while enabling CIOs to meet expanding business needs on a shrinking budget. However, Screenshot of the Going Green Impact Tool.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 17 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

there are tools to aid this choice, most first recommendations to executives. mine the overall cost. This analysis pro- are either too technical or too special- The tool is particularly intended to vides information on the return on ized to assist the CIO or other execu- address energy-related issues from an investment, cash flow, net present value tives in mastering the challenges of economic point of view. and payback period. becoming energy efficient. On the one hand, it allows the important As the tool was developed to support To determine the most effective holistic assessment to be made in tech- executives in developing strategies for strategy, CIOs need to develop a holistic nical and economic terms. On the other green data centres, the underlying prin- view. They must not only focus on hand, it supports the process of finding ciple is the Pareto principle, also known energy-related issues but also assess the the right green solutions and of priori- as the 80-20 rule. This avoids excessive situation from an economic point of tizing their realization correctly. The complexity, ensures that the important view and with a long-term perspective. energy-related issues of data centres are holistic view is applied and provides Some green solutions are only useful as assessed, and the impact of green solu- results within days rather than weeks or quick fixes, whereas other, more com- tions on energy efficiency and the Total months. plex solutions requiring upfront invest- Cost of Ownership (TCO) is quantified. ment will eliminate energy issues and The green solutions currently included The ‘Going Green Impact Tool’ pro- emerging business risks. A holistic in the tool’s calculations are virtualiza- vides the right support for mastering assessment thus has the advantage of tion, IT equipment refresh, decommis- energy-related issues in data centres. It finding the ideal mix of solutions with sioning of unproductive IT equipment, ensures the necessary holistic view and an optimum return on investment. power management, direct liquid includes economic aspects through a cooling, free cooling, and the reuse of TCO analysis and business case. Perhaps the primary difficulty for CIOs waste heat; and the list is growing con- Furthermore it provides a solid founda- is where to begin. Selecting solutions, stantly. tion to maintain business continuity, to setting priorities and determining the prevent being trapped by new environ- level of accuracy of the assessment are The key differentiator of the ‘Going mental regulations, and to ensure all nontrivial tasks to perform in- Green Impact Tool’ is the ability to acceptable operating costs in the long house,.and calling in consultants has its compare a variety of potential energy- term. While data centres will soon face own problems. For instance, consulting efficient solutions with business as many budgetary and energy-related offers based on significant data gath- usual. To ensure that the most important challenges, now is the right time to start ering and analysis without the necessary business risk factors are taken into dealing with these challenges by using tool support lead to high costs. account, it is possible to simulate IT the ‘Going Green Impact Tool’. Furthermore, it is questionable whether equipment growth, the increase of elec-

such offers are truly objective or are tricity prices, a CO2 tax, data centre influenced by the consultants’ partners. power supply limitations and cooling system limitations. In response to these problems, the Please contact: ‘Going Green Impact Tool’ was devel- Finally, having decided which energy Hannes Engelstaedter oped to reveal existing issues, to pro- efficient solutions will be realized and IBM Deutschland, Germany vide a quick assessment within dynamic when, the user can run a financial Tel: +49 175 4361 777 scenario calculations, and to provide analysis of the green project to deter- E-mail: [email protected]

The Norwegian Green IT Project Focuses on Green Data Centres and Video Conferencing

by Benedicte Fasmer Waaler

In September 2007, fourteen members of the trade organization ICT Norway joined forces in a project named ‘Green IT’. The goal of this project, which has grown to include 35 members, is to raise awareness of the link between climate change and the use of ICT.

The project is not simply a buzzword We strongly advise our members to cer- inform our customers of best practice in that aims to market energy-saving tify themselves, either through ISO procurement, use and end-of-life. We

devices. We see IT as a source of CO2 14001 or as Norwegian ‘Eco-beacons’ work closely with our Danish and pollution, but also as an opportunity to (a Norwegian method for environ- Swedish sister organizations to spread make large gains. We believe that we mental certification of businesses with best practice across the borders, as well must take responsibility for the prob- less than 300 employees). We work as with Elretur, a very effective recy- lems we create if we wish to credibly closely with the authorities responsible cling and reuse program for ICT equip- claim to be ‘part of the solution’. for ‘green procurement’. We aim to ment.

18 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Photo: Siemens press picture.

Installation of a floating wind turbine in Norway. The country’s goal is to produce and export more renewable energy.

Our project has chosen to focus on best use of video conferencing. Its experi- Data centres need stable electricity, and practice in the use of ICT, since both ences of the potential gains as well as alternative power sources such as wind European and Norwegian authorities what is necessary to reap these gains, and solar will not be stable enough in have documented the potential for ICT are valuable – not only to other govern- the foreseeable future. Norway also has solutions to reduce CO2 emissions by mental agencies, but to other potential ambitions to produce and export even 15 percent (see link below). We see users. The Green IT project believes more renewable energy. As of today, many ways in which ICT can make a that the large public sector in Norway however, the power grids are not sturdy significant contribution to European can and should reduce use of air travel enough to enable us to transport more

CO2 levels, such as smart Grids, smart by as much as 20 percent. power, and several areas have had to buildings and smart transportation. In reduce their production of hydroelectric addition to these three sectors, which Another excellent example of power because it was difficult to trans- are ripe for the use of smart ICT, we see Norwegian use of video conferencing is port it out of the region. Moreover, there two areas in which the Norwegian use telemedicine in the north of Norway, is always a loss of at least 7 % in the of ICT can make a difference to CO2 where doctors use the new technology grid. levels in Norway and Europe: video to meet patients virtually rather than conferencing to reduce travel, and green physically. Researchers in Tromsø esti- Instead, we propose to add value to the data centres. mate that the equivalent of eight and a clean energy by transforming it into bits half planes full of Norwegian patients and bytes. The EU used an estimated 34 Norway: Clean Electricity fly each day to doctors’ appointments Twh of electricity in their data centres in and Long Distances (planes used in the north are generally 2007. We believe that moving some of Norway’s electricity is 99 percent small with only a few seats). An esti- this activity to Norway, where the hydroelectric and our goal is to produce mated 80 percent of these appointments energy is green, could benefit the cli- and export more renewable energy. The are planned check-ups for chronically mate. country’s vast coastline and sparse pop- ill patients, many of whom could easily ulation mean that travel and transporta- replace their plane ride with a virtual tion – which use fossil fuels – account meeting. for a huge proportion of the country’s

CO2 accounting. Green Data Centres Norway has, as previously stated, an Link: The smart use of ICT to replace and abundance of stable, ‘clean’ electricity http://ec.europa.eu/information_societ/ reduce travel and transportation will from 160 hydroelectric power plants . activities/sustainable_growth/docs/ help Norway meet its Kyoto goals. But Norway is economically, geologically com_2009_111/com2009-111-en.pdf it also important because we can set a and politically stable and the broadband good example and inspire others to use capacity within and out of Norway is Please contact: the technology in the same way. good. We thereby fulfill many of the cri- Benedicte Fasmer Waaler teria used by large international compa- Project Manager, ICT Norway The Norwegian governmental agency nies in deciding where to locate their Tel: + 47 45 00 21 06 NAV, for example, has made extensive modern ‘cloud’ data centres. E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 19 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

MicroPower: Towards Low-Power Microprocessors with Reversible Computing

by Holger Bock Axelsen, Robert Glück, Alexis De Vos and Michael Kirkedal Thomsen

Physics tells us that at the microscopic level the evolution of a (micro-) state is reversible, ie deterministic both forward and backward in time. In contrast, our best models of computation are usually not reversible at the microscopic level, and this carries over to actual implementations in computers. As a consequence of basic thermodynamics, this irreversibility directly contributes to heat dissipation, and therefore power consumption. However, there is nothing inherently irreversible about computation, and using reversible computation models could therefore lead to lowered power consumption. In the new MicroPower project, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen is collaborating with the University of Ghent and the hearing-aid company Oticon, to advance the theory and practice of reversible computing at the language, logic and circuit level.

Figure 1: Irreversible and reversible computation paths. Red states show where the computations are irreversible.

The fundamental assumption about the- been lost in the computation process zepto-Joules, 10-21 Joules, per erased bit oretical computation models (eg Turing (see Figure 1). at room temperature) the actual dissipa- machines, random access machines) is tion is usually much higher, and propor- that they fundamentally reflect how the When we build a computer based on a tional to the signal energy of the erased computations we make take place in fundamentally irreversible model (eg information. In fact, this is now a cen- nature, be it on paper or in a computer. using irreversible logic gates such as the tral problem of modern microprocessor However, our best physical under- ubiquitous NAND-gate) this informa- design, and such power issues have standing of nature reveals a striking dis- tion loss carries over into the implemen- effectively prevented clock speeds from parity between computation models and tation (the physical layout of the rising in the last several years. physics models. While physical models processor). Thermodynamics tells us of nature are reversible at the micro- that such irreversible machines neces- However, there is nothing about compu- scopic level, our computational models sarily dissipate heat (and consume tation that actually requires irre- are not. In computing, we usually cannot power) proportional to the information versibility. Basic theoretical results determine a unique predecessor to any erased. While the lower limit on this show that any computation can be per- given state: the information to do so has heat dissipation is tiny (measured in formed both reversibly and irreversibly;

Figure 2: A fully reversible computing system must be reversible at every layer from program to circuit level.

20 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 if we build a reversible computing of power. For example, reversibility is a taking us one step closer to an actual, device however, it does not need to dis- useful property in static timing analysis reversible microprocessor. sipate energy due to (irreversible) infor- for programs, reliability analysis for mation loss, because nowhere in the embedded systems, quantum computing, A fundamental challenge in this setting computational process is any informa- and bidirectional model transformations is that every abstraction layer must be tion erased. Of course, in practice there in connection with the view-update reversible (see Figure 2). We cannot are many other factors that contribute to problem for databases. expect to reap the full benefits of power dissipation, so we do not actually reversibility if we run, say, a reversible expect any reversible computing system At the Department of Computer Science program on an irreversible architecture to be dissipation-free. The hope is at the University of Copenhagen (even though significant benefits are simply to reduce (rather than eliminate) (DIKU), we study reversible computing still possible in this case; eg automatic power consumption, by using reversible models from the perspective of pro- program inversion, simple debugging). computing principles. gramming languages and logic design. Thus, understanding how the different In the new MicroPower project sup- layers of reversible computing systems Historically, the incentive to develop ported by the Danish Council for interact is a central goal of our research. reversible computing systems has been Strategic Research, DIKU has set up a limited, since it is really only in the last collaboration with the Electronics and Links: decade that power issues have become Information Systems Department at DIKU: http://www.diku.dk such a dominant factor. As a conse- Ghent University (ELIS, a leading ELIS: http://www.elis.ugent.be/en quence, reversible computing is seri- centre for reversible microelectronics) Oticon: http://www.oticon.com ously underdeveloped at this point. This and the international hearing-aid com- gap in our knowledge of computing has pany Oticon. The purpose of this basic Please contact: become much more apparent in recent research project, which will run from Robert Glück years, because reversibility has turned up 2009 to 2012, is to advance and develop Dept. of Computer Science, University in some completely different areas of the theory and practice of reversible of Copenhagen, Denmark computer science with advantageous computing at the programming lan- Tel: +45 35321400 properties unrelated to the original issues guage, logic and circuit-design level, E-mail: [email protected]

Boosting Research in Electronics Enabling Efficient Energy Usage by Erich Prem

The first results of the E4U initiative to develop a new ‘electronics for energy efficiency’ research agenda are now available.

Today, 40% of energy consumed is elec- nology make them crucial to harvesting enabled by power electronics in four trical energy, and this share is forecast to the enormous potential to save electrical areas of application: grow to 60% by 2040. Much of this is energy in households, transportation, • Buildings account for more than 40% wasted, and if Europe is to reach its industry and consumer products. of energy use in developed countries. ambitious goals for the reduction of Applying existing energy-efficient greenhouse gases, it is essential that Power Electronics is a cross-functional technology it is possible to achieve electrical energy be used more effi- technology covering the high gigawatt energy savings of between 40% (for ciently. This is all the more necessary (GW) power in energy transmission heating, ventilation and air condition- because of the need to remain competi- lines down to very low milliwatt (mW) ing) and 80% (for lighting, by com- tive internationally. If Europe wishes to power needed to operate a mobile bining efficient sources with intelli- reap the enormous potential of new tech- phone. It is responsible for the relia- gent control). nologies for energy efficiency, it must bility and stability of the whole power • Power supplies process the energy not only invest in its excellent research supply infrastructure in Europe from the required to operate almost all elec- and technology base but also improve its sources, the transmission and distribu- tronic equipment. According to the strategies for research in this area. tion, up to the broad variety of applica- International Energy Agency, resi- tions in industry, transportation systems dential appliances account for over These are the aims of the initiative E4U and the home. Power electronics is the 30% of electricity consumption in (‘Electronics Enabling Efficient Energy key to precisely controlling the flow of most countries and represent one of Usage’) which is devising a strategic electrical energy from the source to the the fastest growing energy loads. It is action plan for power electronics load according to the requirements of estimated that at least one-third of research in Europe. Recent advances in the load. The E4U initiative sets the this could be saved cost-effectively power electronics and information tech- focus on the huge energy savings by 2030.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 21 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

• In the industrial manufacturing area, tools, in bringing device and component Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and electric drives account for around costs further down, and in improving the Tyndall Institute in Cork. E4U 65% of electricity consumption. Cur- the use of wide bandgap semiconductor receives funding from the European rently, the vast majority of these materials. Commission’s ICT programme of FP7. motors do not have electronic con- trols. By converting all such simple It will be vital for Europe’s success in Link: electric motors to variable speed, it is this field to foster a more coherent http://www.e4efficiency.eu possible to cut power consumption by research landscape. Today, with very almost half. few exceptions, power electronic topics Please contact: • Power electronics will also play a key are spurious in public research pro- Erich Prem role in future smart electricity net- grammes. Europe needs many more eutema Technology Management works. The smart grid is a combina- explicit actions targeting electronics GmbH, Austria tion of information, communications research for energy efficiency. It also Tel: +43 1 5245316 and power electronics that improves needs to focus on key industrial and E-mail: [email protected] all the elements of the electricity technical challenges such as reducing chain from generation and transmis- the cost of components and systems, sion to distribution and consumption, improving reliability, fostering modu- in order to improve the efficiency, larity and standardization, and pushing reliability and security of supply and efficiency even further. It is also neces- cost. sary to dramatically improve the visibility of this kind of research through E4U will foster world leadership in demonstrations and coordinated large- electronically enabled energy efficiency scale initiatives. This will not only help in the EU. Based on an analysis of the to overcome the current fragmentation European research scene in this field of the research scene, but will also and following discussions with attract more young researchers to a European experts and the industry, E4U research field that is vital for Europe’s has created a strategic roadmap. This future. roadmap starts from specific European strengths such as the electronics The E4U initiative is coordinated by industry and our high-quality research eutema Technology Management. groups. It also acknowledges the Further partners are the European improvements to be made in software Centre for Power Electronics, the

Figure 1: Typical power losses in a radio base station.

22 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Using Waste Heat from Data Centres to Minimize Carbon Dioxide Emission by Gerhard Ingmar Meijer, Thomas Brunschwiler, Stephan Paredes, and Bruno Michel

‘Zero-emission’ data centres require 40% less energy than existing data centres, and by using their waste heat for purposes such as space heating their effective carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 85%. Payback for heat and improvements in efficiency can cut energy costs by a factor of two, with a return on investment in under two years.

The IT industry accounts for 2% of Up to 50% percent of the energy con- more efficiently than air. If high-per- global carbon emissions, as much as is sumption and carbon footprint of an air- formance liquid coolers are used, water released by air traffic. This figure dou- cooled data centre is caused not by com- with temperatures up to about 60°C bled in the past five years, and the puting but by powering the cooling sys- would keep the processors at operating worldwide electricity consumption of tems needed to keep the microelectronic temperatures well below the maximally data centres now equals the energy pro- components from overheating. As allowed 85°C. This eliminates the need duced by fourteen large (1 GW) power energy efficiency is arguably the pri- for today’s energy-hungry chillers in the plants. Large (cloud) data centres con- mary challenge faced by humanity in data centre. Moreover, the high-grade sume up to 200 MW of electrical power, the 21st century, we can no longer heat at the output can be reused, for with all the excess heat produced being afford to design computer systems example, for space heating. dissipated into the environment. At the based solely on the criteria of computa- same time, our society still uses high- tional performance. The new target We have built a small-scale prototype value primary energy sources, such as must be high performance and low net system at IBM as a testbed for a new gas and oil, for space heating. Our power consumption (and, concomi- water-cooled supercomputer that will research group has developed an innova- tantly, low net carbon footprint). This be delivered to the Swiss Federal tive concept that brings together the heat requires high-performance liquid Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) producer and the heat consumer to make cooling. later this year. With its innovative waste heat productive: an attractive water-cooling system, the energy con- prospect from both an economic and an Water is an excellent coolant which is sumption of this new supercomputer is ecological perspective. able to capture heat about 4,000 times expected to be reduced by 40% and its

Figure 1: Schematic concept of the zero-emission data centre. Heat is collected from the individual microelectronic components and transferred via a heat exchanger to a district heating system to be used for space heating.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 23 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

carbon footprint by 85% compared to computer system, we intend to demon- systems using today’s air-cooling tech- strate that using high-performance com- nology. The low carbon footprint is pos- puting to address challenges in science sible because the excess heat will be need not have an adverse effect on energy used to heat the university buildings consumption and the environment. (Figure 1). (Note: elimination of the carbon emission caused by combustion IBM and BladeCenter are trademarks of processes for space heating can, International Business Machines according to rules defined in the Kyoto Corporation in the United States, other Protocol, be credited against the carbon countries, or both. Other company, emission of the data centre). product, or service names may be trade- Figure 2: Prototype of water-cooled blade marks or service marks of others. The water-cooled supercomputer will with two high-performance micro-channel consist of 33 IBM BladeCenter® QS22 liquid coolers that remove heat from the (6 DP TFlop/s) and 9 IBM processors. BladeCenter® HS22 and will have an Links: efficiency of more than 500 MFlop/s per http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/ Watt. The blades will be equipped with rd/533/brunschwiler.pdf high-performance micro-channel liquid the microelectronic components and cir- coolers, and can easily be connected to culated through a passive heat http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en and disconnected from the system (see exchanger. In the heat exchanger, the /pressrelease/ 27816.wss Figure 2). The fluid loops of the indi- excess heat is removed and fed directly vidual blades link to the larger network into the heating system of the ETH. Please contact: of the server rack, which in turn is con- Gerhard Ingmar Meijer nected to the main water transportation This project is a significant step towards IBM Research GmbH, Zurich Research network. The cooling system is a closed energy-aware, emission-free computing Laboratory, Switzerland circuit: The cooling water is heated by and data centres. With this new super- E-mail: [email protected]

Nautilus - A Testbed for Green Scientific Computing

by Bartosz Borucki, Maciej Cytowski and Maciej Remiszewski

The Nautilus supercomputer is a development system for hybrid computing. It is the result of a deep technology collaboration between IBM and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling (ICM) at the University of Warsaw, and is looking at the future of adaptive computing and high-performance computing systems. Nautilus is a testbed for new programming frameworks that will help harness the power and efficiency of next-generation processors and accelerators for a wide variety of scientific applications. Approaching the first anniversary of its initial installation, the system has already made several significant achievements.

Though the two-rack cluster was con- June 2009 edition of the top500 list system used a fully non-blocking ceived as a small prototype system, the able to improve on it. double data rate InfiniBand fabric sheer compute power of the (DDR IB) directly interconnecting all PowerXCell8i CPUs meant it was listed Nautilus was developed, installed and QS22 blades. Throughout the installa- in the November 2008 edition of the tuned under close collaboration with tion and tuning process, new drivers and Top500 list of the world’s fastest super- IBM Development. The project patches had to be developed to achieve computers. In fact, at one point it ranked involved specialists from Poland, the best performance and stability from as high as #220, with a LINPACK result Germany and the US working both on- the system. These software components of over 18 TFlops. It now stands at site and remotely on the machine have eventually made it to the official #421. Even more impressive is the installed at an IBM data centre in software stack, which was released at a power consumption of the system rela- Warsaw. The project schedule for later stage together with official support tive to its performance. With 536 meeting the Top500 submission dead- for DDR IB adapters for the QS22 MFlops/Watt, it has set a new world lines was very tight and at that point, blades. record in supercomputer efficiency and several parts of the solution were still was officially ranked #1 on the not officially supported while others Another example, which demonstrates Green500 list. This record still holds, were attempted for the first time. One the unique nature of this system, is the with none of the new systems in the example was the cluster network. The CPU clock speed. After successfully

24 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 completing the LINPACK runs at the collaboration with IBM. Medical standard frequency of 3.2 GHz, the images are first analysed and processed system achieved 530 MFlops/Watt, by ICM’s visualization system called breaking the previous record of 488 VisNow, which produces high-resolu- MFlops/Watt as well as the magical 500 tion 3D models. Those models are later MFlops/Watt barrier for the first time in rendered on part of the Nautilus system history. Thanks to the strategic relation- using an interactive ray-tracing tool ship between ICM and IBM, the compa- called iRT, designed and developed by nies have decided to use this prototype IBM Research Laboratory in Austin, system to demonstrate the capability of USA. The resulting framework enables the PowerXCell8i CPUs to operate at 4 researchers and medical doctors to visu- GHz. This involved changing the blade alize and handle medical data at firmware and increasing the frequency unprecedented levels of detail and of several components, including not image quality. only the CPUs but also memory, which has been clocked at 1 GHz. This could Short descriptions of all these projects only be done under the close supervi- are available online (see link below). sion of IBM Development engineers Figure 1: The Nautilus system. who were closely monitoring the The collaboration between IBM and system hardware. The procedure turned ICM goes back several years. Initial dis- out to be a great success: the system cussions around hybrid computing delivered stable LINPACK results and than a few months. The lessons we started in late 2006 with the introduc- was able to further improve its power learnt from porting and optimizing the tion of the Cell Broadband Engine efficiency to 536 MFlops/Watt, setting a scientific application for the OGLE processor. As both companies were new world record a few days before the project enabled us to select other classes interested in forming a strategic partner- final submission deadline. of scientific computing code that could ship, the discussions quickly evolved benefit from the Nautilus design. These into a continuous collaboration The Nautilus system is dedicated to the classes range from bioinformatics, involving several specialists and span- scientific projects of ICM's high-per- molecular dynamics and epidemiology ning multiple departments on both formance computing centre users. The to scientific visualization, number sides. In 2008, a formal collaboration first project began over two years ago. theory and optimal control problems, agreement was signed establishing the A periodicity searching application and we hable to achieve similar per- Joint Cell Competence Centre as the used by scientists from the formance results in those disciplines. first teaming initiative. Several other Astronomical Observatory of The Nautilus system is also available collaborative activities based on IBM University of Warsaw in the OGLE for computer science students. Their Deep Computing technology are project (Optical Gravitational Lensing work is additionally supported on the emerging, as the partnership between Experiment) was ported to the Cell basis of the IBM Faculty Award that the two companies continues to deliver architecture with great success. It ICM received last year. value to the scientific community. achieved a greater than 9x speedup compared to the initial implementation. One of the very promising applications Links: This enabled the whole computation to of the Nautilus supercomputer is the ICM: http://www.icm.edu.pl be finished in less than two weeks rather visualization system developed in deep ICM & IBM Joint Cell Competence Centre: http://cell.icm.edu.pl Nautilus projects: http://cell.icm.edu.pl/index.php/Projects VisNow visualization system: http://visnow.icm.edu.pl

Please contact: Bartosz Borucki, Maciej Cytowski Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling (ICM), University of Warsaw, Poland E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Maciej Remiszewski Deep Computing Leader, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) IBM Poland E-mail: Figure 2: One of the high-resolution images generated by VisNow and iRT. [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 25 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

ÏANOS: How to Do More Science with Less Energy

by Vincent Keller and Wolfgang Ziegler

Intelligent ApplicatioN-Oriented Scheduling (ÏANOS) is a framework built atop a Grid middleware that uses resources in an energy-efficient manner. ÏANOS selects appropriate resources for a given application, chooses the most energy-efficient one, and turns off the unused parts of the selected resource if not needed.

You are a computational scientist using two decades earlier: 1-5 MW is the The first original concept of ÏANOS is high-performance computing (HPC) common energy consumption for a that the applications are parameterized, resources. Maybe you are an adminis- Top10 system, compared with the 200- the needs of the applications are charac- trator or a manager of an HPC centre 300 KW needed by a Cray-2 twenty terized, and the resources are also para- providing resources to multiple commu- years ago. In addition, applications are meterized so that the resource broker nities of users working on different sci- now less efficient: today, an efficiency knows what each resource provides entific areas, or you are simply inter- of 50% is considered good, whereas in (computing power, network perform- ested in how to efficiently use a Grid of 1985 codes performing at over 90% ance or memory bandwidth for each HPC resources and applications. Do you efficiency were common. node, for instance). These parameteriza- think it is possible to do more science tions are used to predict the execution while using the resources in a more Energy-hungry resources are thus being time on a given resource of a given energy-efficient way? Is it possible to used in a non-efficient manner, effec- instance under its input data (such as the predict a better set of resources based on tively meaning that less and less com- size of the problem, a previous stage of the needs of your users' applications? puting power is at the disposal of scien- a simulation or a given accuracy for cer- Can a system give you hints and tips to tists. The final consequence is that the tain numerical simulation). improve the implementation of your resources are over-booked. applications? If your answer is “no” to The brokering algorithm is the second these questions, take five minutes. After ÏANOS is a framework built atop a original concept of ÏANOS: it is the reading this article your ideas will be Grid middleware (UNICORE or matching function between what the quite different, because these are the Globus) but agnostic to that middle- application requires and what the goals of Intelligent ApplicatioN- ware. It consists of (i) an information resource provides under a user's request Oriented Scheduling (ÏANOS). system that stores information relating for QoS. It is based on a cost function. to the applications and resources; (ii) a All the costs of an application's submis- In 2009, HPC resources worldwide are Grid-level resource broker that decides sion are computed: execution cost, consuming approximately the energy which resources are the most appro- waiting-time cost, licence cost, ecolog- produced by fifteen 2GW power plants. priate for a given application under a ical cost and data transfer cost. Note Is all that energy used in an efficient user's request for quality of service that the execution cost includes all the manner? If it were possible to talk about (QoS) at a given time; (iii) a meta- fixed costs of the usage of a resource a metric 'science per watt', its value scheduler that interacts with the under- within a data centre. We propose a today would surely be far less than lying Grid middleware and collects model which includes: investment, per- twenty-five years ago. There are many information on the status of the sonnel, maintenance fees, interest to be reasons for this. For instance, high-end resources; and (iv) a monitoring system paid to the bank, infrastructure, man- resource consumption today is an order that records the behaviour of the appli- agement, overhead, insurance fees and of magnitude greater than what it was cations during their execution. margin costs. This information is stored

Images of flow simulation created with SpecuLOOS, one of the first applications of the testbed used to validate the IANOS-prototype. Pictures courtesy of Roland Bouffanais, PhD. Massachusset Institute of Technology (MIT), MA, USA.

26 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 in the information system and entered based on the needs of the applications, ISS project, a prototype of ÏANOS was once by the system administrator ie from the available resources it developed, implemented and in mid- through a Web interface. The QoS spec- selects the set that will execute the 2008 tested on an international testbed ified by the user can be: “I want my application with the highest efficiency across Switzerland and Germany. We results as soon as possible regardless of and the lowest execution time. Second, plan to develop and deploy the ÏANOS the cost”, or “I want my results for the ÏANOS chooses and schedules the services for the European smallest amount of money, regardless application on the most energy-effi- e-Infrastructure through a new of the time”, or a mix of both. At sub- cient resource (from the previously European project. mission time, the status of all the selected set) according to the QoS resources is gathered by the meta- specified by the user. Third, ÏANOS scheduler. The overall cost is then com- goes even further: knowing in advance puted by a minimization process for all what the application needs, it is pos- Link: the resources, and the job is assigned to sible to modify the target architecture, http://www.ianos.org/ the best and most energy-efficient for instance by switching off a resource. The Grid of resources is thus processor to increase energy efficiency Please contact: better used and the metric 'science per without reducing performance. As an Vincent Keller watt' increases. The process is com- additional benefit, by comparing the Fraunhofer SCAI, Germany pletely automatic: the user need only actual runtime of the application with a Tel: +49 2241 14 2280 choose the application, select the QoS prediction based on the theoretical E-mail: Vincent.Keller@scai- and hit the 'submit' button. behaviour of the application, the user extern.fraunhofer.de can detect problems in the implemen- With ÏANOS therefore, energy effi- tation of the application and pinpoint Wolfgang Ziegler ciency is achieved through three mech- flaws in the code. Fraunhofer SCAI, Germany anisms based on different stages of Tel: +49 2241 14 2248 running an application. First, ÏANOS In the context of the CoreGRID E-mail: selects the most appropriate resources Network of Excellence and the Swiss [email protected]

Creating Power-Aware Middleware for Energy-Efficient Data Centres by Eduard Ayguadé and Jordi Torres

Self-managed middleware should be able to manage resources transparently and cost-effectively, while hiding the underlying complexity from users. Our group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) and Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) has strengths in a diverse set of research areas, and through cross-disciplinary studies is building middleware that has the additional crucial feature of intelligent power management.

Because of the escalating price of tive ways to save power. Server consoli- middleware that can manage the power, energy-related costs have dation involves combining workloads resources transparently and in the most become a major economic factor for IT from separate machines and different cost-effective way. To build this mid- infrastructure and its host data centres. applications into a smaller number of dleware with more intelligent power In addition to improving energy effi- systems. This is done using virtualiza- management will require cross-discipli- ciency, companies are facing increasing tion technology that allows the consoli- nary studies over a diverse set of pressure to reduce their carbon footprint dation of applications, multiplexing research areas. It is a complex end-to- due to EU regulations and campaigns them onto physical resources while sup- end problem, requiring an intricate demanding greener businesses. porting isolation from other applica- coordination of hardware, operating tions sharing the same physical systems, virtual machines, middleware The research community is therefore resources. This approach solves some and applications. being challenged to rethink data centre interesting challenges: less hardware is strategies, adding energy efficiency to a required, less electricity is needed for The team at the Barcelona list of critical operating parameters that server power and cooling, and less Supercomputing Center (BSC) is already includes service availability, physical space is required. working on these topics (see link reliability and performance. While a below). Our research demonstrates how large variety of power-saving proposals The success of the consolidation consolidation with energy efficiency has been presented in the literature, strategy requires that the underlying goals still has a long way to go beyond workload consolidation and powering complexity be hidden from users, and the use of virtualization. We have iden- off spare servers are obvious and effec- this is done by building self-managed tified new opportunities to improve the

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 27 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

energy efficiency of systems, reducing are addressing the problem of pre- running in third-party providers such as the resources required without nega- dicting and managing the performance Amazon EC2 to be managed in a feder- tively affecting performance or user sat- of MapReduce applications, trying to ated environment. These functionalities isfaction. For instance, request discrim- meet performance goals while consid- of the EMOTIVE framework ease the ination is introduced to identify and ering several high-level objectives such development of new resource manage- reject those requests that consume as energy saving, and without wasting ment proposals, thus contributing to the system resources but have no value for physical resources. Obviously, we are innovation in this research area. an application (eg requests coming from also looking at multi-core processors content-stealing Web crawlers). with better performance and the energy The research community must continue Memory compression is another efficiency necessary to meet these to find ways to ensure that performance example, converting CPU power into demands in years to come. improvements are accompanied by cor- extra memory capacity to overcome responding improvements in energy system underutilization scenarios BSC and the Technical University of efficiency. The next generation of com- caused by memory constraints. Our Catalonia (UPC) are contributing to the puting systems must achieve signifi- results show that considering these research community with the EMO- cantly lower power needs, higher per- techniques during placement decisions TIVE (Elastic Management of Tasks in formance/watt ratio, and higher can boost the energy savings in a data Virtualized Environments) framework, dependability than ever before. This is centre. which provides an elastic, fully cus- something that can only be achieved tomized, virtual environment in which with a holistic approach.

Figure 1: EMOTIVEcloud – Elastic Management of Tasks in Virtualized Environments.

Our research group has also proposed to execute services, and which allows ways of rescuing resources by reducing the development of new schedulers that waste. For example, middleware can take power usage into account when hide and prevent some system failures building the consolidation process or denial-of-service flooding attacks, (Figure 1). EMOTIVE abstracts a thus avoiding the potential disruptions Cloud architecture using different of unplanned outages and the associ- layers and provides users with basic ated loss of resources. An important primitives for supporting the execution Links: component of this middleware is the of tasks in an infrastructure. The core http://www.bsc.es/grid predictive modelling available through layer wraps each virtualized node and http://www.emotivecloud.net self-monitoring analysis. Our current monitors its state, granting full control http://www.greenit-conferences.org approach is applying new methods and to the application of its execution envi- concepts from machine learning that ronment without any risks to the under- Please contact: can not only find accurate models of lying system or the other applications. Jordi Torres and explanations for system behav- In addition, it allows both local virtual UPC-BSC, Barcelona, Spain iours, but also predict and estimate machines (ie running in the provider’s E-mail: [email protected] system states and values. Currently, we nodes) and remote virtual machines http://people.ac.upc.edu/torres

28 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Green Building Blocks - Software Stacks for Energy-Efficient Clusters and Data Centres by Dimitrios S. Nikolopoulos

The Green Building Blocks (GBB) project is a joint effort between the Computer Architecture and VLSI Laboratory (CARV) of the Institute of Computer Science at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH-ICS), and the Department of Computer Science at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (CS@VT). GBB is a stacked assembly of device drivers, performance monitors, operating system and runtime modules, which interoperate to provide software capabilities for reducing the energy footprint of applications running on clusters and data centres, while sustaining performance near the maximum levels achievable with the hardware at hand.

GBB Architecture Layers tion of each phase in an application, in dynamic power consumption while sus- The architecture of GBB is shown in response to probes that change tem- taining and occasionally improving per- Figure 1. GBB provides a software back- porarily the underlying configuration formance. DVFS also reduces dynamic bone for fully instrumented, energy- and capacity of hardware resources. power consumption while sustaining friendly clusters. GBB targets clusters performance. Both are most effective and data centres built entirely from Eco-kernel provides an API for scaling during memory-intensive phases of power-scalable devices, that is, devices device capacities and power modes on computation. The DCT and DVFS poli- with multiple power states and program- demand. The purpose of eco-kernel is to cies in Eco-OpenMP are based on mable power state transitions, including replace application-oblivious power multi-linear regression models corre- cores, CPUs, DRAM and disks. The management policies in the operating lating performance with samples of instrumentation layer of GBB uses hard- system with application-specific, phase- event counters, thread count and core ware event monitors on processor, aware policies controlled explicitly by layout on systems with multiple multi- memory, networking and I/O devices, the runtime. core processors. The combined phase- continuous AC and DC power monitors, aware DCT-DVFS optimization scheme and on-board and ambient thermal sen- Eco-OpenMP is an energy-efficient used in Eco-OpenMP reduces execution sors. The runtime layers implement implementation of OpenMP. The Eco- time by 13.7%, total system power con- dynamic power management policies, OpenMP runtime uses interfaces to sumption by 5.9%, overall energy con- based on performance and energy signa- Eco-meter and Eco-kernel to implement sumption by 18.8% and energy-delay tures of applications collected at runtime. The policies target holistic optimization of energy efficiency at the system level.

GBB Implementation The current GBB prototype is implemented on non-virtualized deployments of Linux clusters, and includes the Eco- meter, Eco-kernel, Eco-OpenMP and Eco-MPI modules (Figure 1).

Eco-meter is a hardware monitor that collects periodic samples of device-specific event counters, from which it builds a performance, power and thermal signature (the PPT profile) of a Figure 1: Green Building Blocks architecture. running application. Application signatures are partitioned into phases of computation separated by communication or optimization policies that improve product by 39.5% in the NAS OpenMP synchronization events. The signatures energy efficiency while maintaining a benchmark suite. derived by Eco-meter are formulated as hard lower performance bound. Eco- polynomial models, which correlate OpenMP operates simultaneously two Eco-MPI is an energy-efficient imple- samples of event rates and configura- software ‘knobs’ for controlling power mentation of the Message Passing tions of hardware resources –specifi- efficiency, dynamic concurrency throt- Interface (MPI) communication and cally, the allocated capacity and power tling (DCT) and dynamic voltage and tasking runtime substrates. The power- mode of each resource – with perform- frequency scaling (DVFS). By allevi- efficiency optimization policy of Eco- ance and power consumption. Eco- ating contention between threads for MPI is based on a model of slack time meter is used by user-level runtime sys- shared resources, such as memory arising during the interaction between tems in their policy modules, to predict bandwidth and cache space, DCT pro- MPI tasks in communication phases. the performance and power consump- vides opportunities for reducing Eco-MPI is built on top of Eco-meter and

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 29 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

Eco-kernel and follows the phase-sensi- thermal and performance instrumenta- and memory traffic. The fourth directive optimization strategy used also on tion infrastructure, followed by the deri- tion is the development of a GBB run- Eco-OpenMP. Applications are decom- vation of appropriate metrics that would time for the MapReduce programming posed into phases separated by communi- apportion resources to applications in model, targeting large-scale data pro- cation events. Eco-MPI estimates slack order to improve energy efficiency cessing tasks on compute clouds. time due to communication and computa- under performance constraints. The tion load imbalance, using a novel model second direction is the implementation which calculates the rippling effects of of cluster-level static and dynamic task Links: slack on interacting tasks, both within a aggregation. Static task aggregation http://www.ics.forth.gr/carv node and across nodes. Eco-MPI is the amounts to clustering application tasks http://www.cs.vt.edu first software prototype to achieve real- in fewer nodes than the number of http://people.cs.vt.edu/~dsn/papers/ time power reduction on clusters of up to nodes apportioned to applications at PACT08.pdf 256 nodes, yielding up to 14% total submission time. Dynamic task aggre- http://people.cs.vt.edu/~dsn/papers/ energy savings in the Lawrence gation amounts to dynamic clustering of TPDS08.pdf Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) tasks after application submission and is http://people.cs.vt.edu/~dsn/papers Sequoia Benchmark suite. Eco-MPI is enabled through virtual machine migra- /ICS06.pdf integrated with Eco-OpenMP to imple- tion mechanisms. The third direction is ment power-aware execution of hybrid the integration of multi-device scaling Please contact: MPI-OpenMP programs. capabilities in GBB, in particular Dimitrios S. Nikolopoulos DRAM and disk scaling, in a unified University of Crete and FORTH-ICS Current and Future Work modeling and policy framework. This Tel: +30 2810 391657 GBB is extended in four directions. The research will enable GBB to target data- E-mail: [email protected] | first is virtualization of the power, intensive workloads dominated by I/O http://www.ics.forth.gr/~dsn

Evaluating the Energy Consumption of Enterprise Storage

by Doron Chen, Ronen I. Kat and Kalman Meth

Evaluating the energy consumption of enterprise applications is a fundamental step towards energy efficiency. The total energy cost of an application is the sum of its compute, storage and network energy consumption. We outline a method for estimating the storage part of the application energy cost.

Energy-efficient storage relies on tools devising a modelling framework that The framework is composed of three and frameworks that allow us to estimates the energy consumption of steps: measure the storage energy consump- storage servers based on the underlying tion. Although such tools are becoming storage configuration and the applica- 1. A translation methodology estimates more prevalent for enterprise storage, tion I/O workload. Our framework esti- the number of activities performed by they only measure the energy consump- mates the energy consumption of disk the storage components in order to tion of storage servers, not the energy arrays and utilizes heuristics to fairly execute the application workload. An consumed by application data. distribute the energy cost between the activity is a storage operation that can logical volumes, based on the applica- be directly associated with energy In most cases, the enterprise data of dif- tion workloads. The storage server consumption; for example, disk head ferent applications is stored on different energy consumption is composed of movement or data transfer. logical entities (logical volumes) of the fixed and dynamic portions. The fixed same storage server (Figure 1). portion is independent of the workload, 2. An interpolation step estimates the Different applications have different while the dynamic portion is directly energy consumption of the physical storage usage patterns (ie workloads) affected by the application workload. storage components based on the and utilizations. The energy consump- level of activity computed in Step 1 tion of the storage server depends on the The framework uses a small dataset of and the energy consumption dataset. aggregation of various application energy consumption tables, one for each workloads. This makes it difficult to storage component, to compute the 3. The energy consumption of the logi- proportionally divide the energy cost of dynamic portion. The dataset describes cal volumes is estimated based on the storage server between the different the energy consumption relative to the capacity and application workloads. applications. number of operations performed by the components. Building the dataset is a The application workload is translated Researchers at the IBM Lab in Haifa, one-time process for each type of to values representing the quantities of Israel have addressed this challenge by storage server. primitive storage activities, such as the

30 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Figure 1: Typical layout of application data.

number of disk seeks. This is done The storage energy estimation frame- porate energy management functions for using performance statistics provided work is now freely available for early storage arrays and logical volumes. by the storage server. Most storage adopters from IBM’s Open Process servers provide, for each array and log- Automation Library (OPAL). The Links: ical volume, statistics on the caching framework is implemented as an add-on http://www.haifa.ibm.com/projects/ and workload type. The energy con- module for IBM Tivoli Monitoring storage/pmss/index.shtml sumption of each physical component is (ITM) and Tivoli Storage Productivity http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/ computed using interpolation and the Center (TPC) customers. opal/?NavCode=1TW10TM8F energy consumption dataset. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/ Our module estimates the energy con- brandcatalog/portal/opal Our logical volume estimation frame- sumption for DS8000 and DS6000 work deals separately with fixed and storage servers, arrays, and logical vol- Please contact: dynamic energy consumption. Our umes, and graphically shows the energy Doron Chen heuristic computes the fixed portion in a consumption as it changes over time. IBM, Israel straightforward manner; each volume is Tel: +972 3768 9401 charged proportionally to its capacity. Our framework for evaluating the energy E-mail: [email protected] The heuristic for the dynamic portion consumption of logical volumes is an charges each logical volume based on important step towards understanding Ronen I. Kat its workload, relative to the workload of the total cost of running enterprise appli- IBM, Israel the storage server. The complexity of cations. The total energy cost of an appli- Tel: +972 3768 9493 the heuristic stems from the fact that cation is the sum of its compute, storage E-mail: [email protected] multiple logical volumes share the same and network energy consumption. physical resources. As a result, the Kalman Meth dynamic energy consumption of one This work began in 2007 and is being car- IBM, Israel volume is affected by the workloads of ried out primarily in the IBM Haifa Tel: +972 4829 6341 all logical volumes. Research Lab. Future activities will incor- E-mail: [email protected]

Energy-Aware Storage Benchmarks by Roger Kahn, Ronen I. Kat and Carlos Pratt

Modern enterprise storage systems have increasing capacity and a need for increased throughput. Currently up to 40 percent of the energy consumption in data centres is associated with storage systems. One IBM research focus is on energy benchmarks that provide insights into the energy consumption of storage systems; specifically, how the workload performed by the user affects energy consumption.

The architecture of a storage server dif- The energy consumption of a storage energy consumed by a storage system is fers from a computing server. In addi- system may be partitioned into the the sum of the idle and dynamic energy. tion to the computing resources (eg energy consumption of the storage processor, memory) found in a com- devices (eg disk drives) and that of the The idle portion of storage system puting server, a storage system has other components of the storage system. energy consumption is typically 70% to internal storage networks and a large Concurrently, the energy consumption 80% of the maximal storage energy number of storage devices, currently can be broken down into energy that is consumption. This is a far higher per- disk drives. A large portion of the not related to user workload, termed centage than the idle energy consump- energy is consumed by these disk idle energy consumption, and energy tion of a computing server, and is drives, primarily by their mechanical that is related to user workload, termed caused by the need to keep disk drives spindle motors. dynamic energy consumption. The total spinning at all times. While some

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 31 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

I/O per second Power (Watts)

3500 1,450 maximum performance

3000 1,400 75% performance 100% performance 2500

1,350 2000 50% performance 1500 1,300 Figure 1: Power (Watts) I/O per second per I/O 1000 Energy and performance 1,250 25% performance 500 benchmark for a idle energy consumption mid-range enterprise 0 1,200 storage system. 15:57:36 16:04:48 16:12:00 16:19:12 16:26:24 16:33:36 16:40:48 16:48:00 16:55:12

Time of day

storage systems allow disks to spin The techniques employed by SNIA and ther reduce the idle portion of the down, enterprise systems that rely on SPC are very similar to those published energy consumption. providing instant access to data cannot for servers by the Standard Performance do this. The idle portion of the energy Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). IBM The goal of the energy benchmarks in consumption also includes background labs have measured the energy con- development is to demonstrate a corre- housekeeping tasks such as media sumption and performance of different lation between the user workload and scans, parity checks, etc. storage systems for both SNIA and the storage energy consumption and SPC. IBM is using standard energy hence help design energy-proportional In April 2009, the Storage Networking measurement equipment to measure storage systems. Our work on storage Industry Association (SNIA) released a energy consumption. In addition, benchmarks began in 2007 and is per- first draft for public review of the energy measurements and performance formed by IBM’s Haifa Research Lab ‘SNIA Green Storage Power monitoring are synchronized in order to and Tucson performance lab. Future Measurement Technical Specification’. report the effect of the user workload on activities include refining models that The draft focuses mainly on the idle energy consumption. The graph in will aid in the deployment and design of energy consumption portion of storage Figure 1 demonstrates an example energy-proportional storage systems, systems. In addition, the draft has a workload and energy consumption and determining how they will affect comprehensive taxonomy that helps the benchmark for a mid-range enterprise the bottom line of the customer. user to map energy consumption of storage system. The benchmark starts storage systems based on capabilities by exercising the storage to its highest Stay tuned! and workloads. performance and energy consumption state. This is followed by running work- The dynamic energy consumption of loads that are equivalent to 25%, 50%, Links: enterprise storage is directly related to 75% and 100% of the maximum per- http://www.haifa.ibm.com/projects/ the workload of the storage system. The formance. For each step, the workload storage/pmss/index.shtml amount of dynamic energy consumed is (in I/O per second) and energy con- http://www.snia.org/forums/green/ a function of the workload and perform- sumption are shown. Between bench- http://www.storageperformance.org ance of the storage system. As the mark steps, the idle energy consumption http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/ storage system increases the utilization is observed. In this case, the idle portion of the computing resources, network it is approximately 87% of the max- Please contact: and storage devices, the dynamic imum energy consumption of the Roger Kahn energy consumed increases accord- storage system. IBM Haifa Research Lab ingly. Tel: +972 3768 9527 For more details on SNIA and SPC E-mail: [email protected] The Storage Performance Council benchmarks see the links provided at (SPC) recently released the SPC-1C/E the end of this article. Ronen I. Kat benchmark toolkit, which can drive IBM Haifa Research Lab storage systems with up to 48 storage The future holds drastic changes for Tel: +972 3768 9493 devices, either solid-state drives (SSDs) storage systems. The introduction of E-mail: [email protected] or disk drives. The SPC-1C/E workload SSDs will have a significant effect on simulates an online transactional pro- the energy consumption of storage sys- Carlos Pratt cessing (OLTP) environment and shows tems. Also, adding different technolo- IBM Tucson Arizona the correlation between performance gies and techniques such as having Tel: +1 520 799 5409 and energy consumption. ‘dormant’ and ‘active’ drives will fur- E-mail: [email protected]

32 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Power-Efficient Packet Classifier for Next-Generation Routers by Zhen Liu, Alan Kennedy, Olga Ormond and Xiaojun Wang

Building high-performance and power-efficient packet classifiers is important for the success of next-generation networking devices. The Network Processing Group, part of the Network Innovations Centre (NIC) in the Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE) at Dublin City University (DCU), is devoted to research in this area.

Packet classification involves matching In order to achieve this goal, we choose a small number of memory accesses are several fields extracted from a packet to implement in hardware a packet clas- needed in order to guarantee the header to a set of pre-defined rules in sification algorithm (HyperCuts) based throughput. order to determine the follow-up action on a decision tree, meaning TCAM can to be performed on the packet by net- be replaced with energy-efficient The major parts of the packet classifier working devices. As one of the key func- memory devices such as SRAM or are the Tree Traverser and Leaf tions of a router/switch, packet classifi- DRAM. This type of algorithm recur- Searcher (see Figure 1). Each internal cation is widely used in applications sively cuts the hyperspace represented node contains the cutting scheme to be such as policy-based routing, Quality of by the rule-set into smaller hyper-boxes performed on the hyperspace repre- Service (QoS), Virtual Private Networks called Regions along some selected sented by this node, and the starting (VPN), network security (eg firewalls dimensions, forming a decision tree, address of each child node. Other infor- and intrusion detection) and sophisti- until the number of rules contained in mation, such as whether the child node cated traffic billing. Transmission line speeds keep increasing. For example, the state-of-art line rate of OC-768 (40 Figure 1: Architecture of Gbps), used in optical fibre backbone the decision-tree-based networks, demands a worst-case pro- packet classifier. cessing speed of 125 million packets per second. In addition to meeting the ever- increasing line rates, growing attention has been paid to reducing power consumption in the design of next-generation networking devices, since it is desirable for the packet classifier to consume as little energy as possible.

The most commonly used header fields in packet classification form a 5-tuple, which includes source IP address and destination IP address for prefix matching, source port and destination port for range matching, and protocol number for exact or wildcard matching. The typical size of a rule-set ranges from hundreds to millions of rules, depending on the application and location of the router/switch. Due to the complexity of packet classification, Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) is frequently used, which can guarantee millions of searches per second by examining all rules simultaneously. However, the high power consumption caused by the resulting hyper-boxes is smaller is a non-empty leaf, is also coded. In the parallel comparison in TCAM makes than a predefined threshold. When a each leaf node, rules are stored in the it less likely to be incorporated in the packet is received, the classifier trav- order of priority, along with their IDs. design of future power-efficient net- erses down the decision tree, based on When the cutting scheme is fetched and working equipment. the value of header fields, until a leaf interpreted, the Region corresponding node is found and searched for the to the header fields is selected, ie the Our project aims to design a packet clas- matching rules. The structure and starting address of this child node will sifier that meets the challenges of both parameters of the packet classifier are be read out from memory and used for high speed and low power consumption. carefully selected to make sure that only the next round of tree traversing. If a

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 33 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

non-empty leaf is encountered, the con- to save energy. In our project, we use a Link: trol is passed to Leaf Searcher. The header buffer to monitor changes in net- http://wiki.eeng.dcu.ie/nic/278-EE.html rules are compared against packet work traffic, with the number of out- header fields one by one, until either a standing packet headers waiting for Please contact: matching rule is found or all of the rules classification working as an indicator of Olga Ormond have been examined. the frequency required for the packet Network Innovations Centre, RINCE classifier. Dublin City University, Ireland The power consumption of the packet Tel: +353 1 700 5444 classifier can be further reduced by Our packet classifier can be easily imple- E-mail: [email protected] exploiting the common fluctuations in mented in hardware (FPGA or ASIC), network traffic. For example, traffic working as an individual component on a Xiaojun Wang volume during the night might be less line card or integrated into a network Network Innovations Centre, RINCE than one third of the peak day rate. This processor. The experiments performed Dublin City University, Ireland phenomenon implies that the packet on sample implementations in Altera Tel: +353 1 700 5808 classifier need not always run at its FPGA and ASIC show that our packet E-mail: [email protected] highest possible clock speed. When the classifier can achieve packet classifica- packet arrival rate is low, the packet tion throughput of up to OC-768 line rate classifier can reduce its working fre- with significantly lower power con- quency to an appropriate level in order sumption than TCAM implementations.

EcoNets: Economic and Energy-Efficient Bandwidth Allocation in Future Networks

by David Hausheer

The EcoNets project aims to develop new mechanisms for an economic and energy-efficient bandwidth allocation in future networks. Cooperation and resource sharing combined with new allocation schemes will provide appropriate incentives to provide bandwidth only where and when it is needed.

There has recently been tremendous energy - up to 50% of the total cost of have not yet evolved, and without appro- technological progress in the area of ownership according to some estimates. priate settlement schemes providers have Internet-based communications, with few incentives to cooperate. router hardware now able to process Fortunately, there is potential to data at a rate of several terabits per improve energy efficiency in networks, EcoNets Objectives second. At the same time, the prolifera- as despite their energy consumption EcoNets is a postdoctoral project sup- tion of wireless technology has enabled being high, their utilization is generally ported by a fellowship from the Swiss users to be ‘connected’ anytime and any- below 5%. Access points of wireless National Science Foundation (SNSF) in where in the world. However, it is networks are idle much of the time, and collaboration with the University of important to consider all the costs that consume energy whether or not they are California at Berkeley. The project, arise from such new technology. Besides in use. This energy consumption could which began in late 2009, aims to acquisition and maintenance costs, be reduced by cooperation between dif- develop new incentive schemes and energy consumption is becoming ferent wireless network providers. allocation mechanisms for economic increasingly significant. Rising energy and energy-efficient bandwidth provi- costs and the need to reduce carbon Recent advances in the area of network sioning in fixed and wireless network emissions have led to an increased virtualization enable the provisioning of infrastructures of the future. The fol- awareness of the need to improve energy bandwidth ‘on demand’. Besides pro- lowing key economic and technical efficiency wherever possible. For com- viding numerous other benefits relating research issues have been identified and puting equipment such as monitors and to security, flexibility and reliability, this will be addressed in EcoNets: desktop computers, standards like technology enables the transparent • Energy-efficient bandwidth provi- EnergyStar exist to ensure that energy sharing of physical network equipment sioning: A key part of bandwidth pro- resources are used efficiently. However, between different customers of the same visioning costs is the energy cost, little attention has so far been paid to network provider. An important aspect of making minimum consumption of energy consumption in networks, and network virtualization that has received energy resources essential. Even comparable standards for networking little attention so far is its potential to sig- small energy savings can have a equipment do not yet exist. This is nificantly reduce energy costs, as it tremendous impact if summed over a despite the fact that energy consumption allows customers to gradually adapt huge number of networking devices. of network devices is a substantial and bandwidth capacity to current demand. This objective is in line with EU plans growing cost factor due to higher- However, suitable business models for to reduce primary energy use by 20% capacity equipment that consumes more such on-demand bandwidth services before 2020. However, this ambitious

34 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 goal can only be reached if energy become providers of bandwidth serv- efficiency is improved on all levels. ices. The key architectural idea is to • Bandwidth on demand: New band- organize the different network entities in width allocation schemes and busi- an overlay network in which they ness models need to be developed to become peers (see. Figure 1). This peer support the on-demand provision of awareness will allow an optimal alloca- bandwidth services to customers at tion of bandwidth to be reached. the right location, at the right time Customers will benefit from these and in the right quantity. However, mechanisms as their bandwidth needs the effect of such bandwidth-on- can be met in a more scalable and cost- demand allocation schemes on high- effective manner. Finally, by following a er-level routing and transport proto- generic bandwidth allocation approach, cols needs to be investigated. EcoNets will be applicable to both fixed • Economically efficient incentives: and wireless network scenarios. The design of resource allocation policies and incentives for coopera- Figure 1: EcoNets Architecture. tion in this context is a difficult prob- Links: lem. Incentive mechanisms should EcoNets Project: lead, ideally, to an economically effi- number of network devices. The sup- http://www.csg.uzh.ch/research/econets cient allocation and use of bandwidth port of bandwidth allocation in a fully services. Auctions are a standard way decentralized manner, such as based PeerMart Homepage: to achieve such objectives, but the on peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts (eg http://www.peermart.net/ distributed environment and the dif- PeerMart), shows advantages in ferent types of resource involved terms of robustness and scalability Dagstuhl Seminar on Bandwidth on pose significant challenges to their for large systems. Demand: implementation. http://www.dagstuhl.de/09072 • Scalable and robust bandwidth allo- EcoNets will design allocation mecha- cation: Any bandwidth provisioning nisms to allow customers to reserve Please contact: scheme needs to be able to scale to a bandwidth capacity on demand and in David Hausheer very large amount of bandwidth advance. Reserved capacity that remains University of Zurich, IFI, Switzerland offered by many providers to many unused may later be offered to other cus- Tel: +41 44 635 43 72 customers, and over a very large tomers. Thus, customers can themselves E-mail: [email protected]

A BitTorrent Proxy for Green Internet File Sharing by Giuseppe Anastasi, Marco Conti and Andrea Passarella

Greening the Internet is becoming a major research topic for the networking community. We are working towards a suite of ‘Green P2P Solutions’ that will drastically reduce the energy footprint of P2P applications.

Several reports indicate that the total centres and PCs, since there is less room Impact of Peer-To-Peer file sharing, energy consumed every day by people for energy saving inside the Internet voice over IP, Skype, Joost, Instant connecting to the Internet to carry out their core. It is particularly relevant to focus Messaging, One-Click Hosting and daily activities is already very high, and is on PCs, as these devices are widespread Media Streaming such as YouTube on expected to increase in the near future as and numerous. In 2007, data centres in the Internet”, IPOQUE – Internet Study the Internet’s role in society expands. the USA accounted for approximately 2 2007, Leipzig, Germany, September About 74 TeraWatt hours (TWh) per year TWh, while PCs accounted for approxi- 2007.) indicate that 40-73% of Internet of electricity are consumed by the Internet. mately 16 TWh. Some of this energy traffic is P2P, with BitTorrent being the Although this accounts, for example, for consumption could be easily avoided by most popular protocol, accounting for just 2% of the USA energy consumption, it just switching off overnight. However, 50-75% of the overall P2P traffic. It is is nevertheless a remarkable number. It is many PCs are intentionally left on by also expected that P2P architectures estimated that about 32% of this energy their users, to perform networking will play a key role in the design of the could be saved just by using energy man- activities such as P2P file sharing. Future Internet, and the P2P concept agement techniques on Internet devices. will be exploited well beyond the capa- It is therefore sensible to focus on bilities of current P2P applications (eg it Researchers are tending to direct their ‘green’ P2P solutions. Recent studies is expected that P2P will be increasingly attention to the network edges, ie data (H. Schulze, K. Mochalski, “The part of the Internet core).

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 35 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

thus confined to a single LAN. Different BT proxies on different LANs

Client are completely independent. This architecture is thus scalable, as it requires neither modifications of the BitTorrent Peer to Peer Overlay Network global architecture nor global coordina- Proxy Client tion. It will also support mobile clients accessing the Internet, eg through a WiFi Access Point connected to the LAN where the BT proxy is running, Figure 1: Energy-efficient BitTorrent architecture. Client and more generally is a solution to enable asynchronous BitTorrent downloads, which are not supported by the Motivated by these figures and trends, require a central control, which is in conventional BitTorrent architecture. we are modifying conventional P2P conflict with the BitTorrent design. architectures to make them ‘energy- Figure 2 shows an example of the friendly’. Our overarching goal is to To overcome these drawbacks we have energy saving that can be achieved obtain a suite of green P2P solutions. designed and implemented a proxy- using the BT proxy (results are obtained They should guarantee a significant based BitTorrent architecture (Figure from a real Internet prototype). The per- energy saving with respect to what is 1). We assume a standard LAN environ- formance index is the percentage of possible today, and should be compat- ment where several users run BitTorrent energy consumed by our ‘green BT’ ible with current de-facto standard pro- on their PCs. One PC in the LAN acts as solution relative to that of the conven- tocols, so as to be deployed in a smooth a BitTorrent proxy (BT proxy) between tional BT, when an increasing number and incremental way. the peers and the rest of the network. of clients download large files (in the The BT proxy can be either a dedicated range [3.95, 4.71] GB). We consider As a first effort towards this goal, we PC or, better, a PC that must be continu- both the case in which the BT proxy have studied an energy-efficient version ously active for other reasons. The basic runs on a PC that must be continuously of BitTorrent, which, given its popu- idea is that peers ‘behind’ the BT proxy powered for other reasons (top curve), larity, should maximize the possible ask the proxy to download the requested and that in which it runs on a dedicated energetic impact of a green P2P solution. content on their behalf. The BT proxy PC (bottom curve). We can see that participates in the conventional when an active PC can be exploited, the The legacy BitTorrent architecture is BitTorrent overlay, and takes care of all energy saved does not depend on the not energy-friendly. BitTorrent peers the downloads of the peers behind it. number of clients and is approximately must stay connected during the whole While downloads are in progress, these 95% for each peer. On the other hand, file download, which may take several peers can be switched off without stop- when we use a dedicated PC, the energy hours. Simply powering them off is not ping the requested downloads. The saving increases with the number of viable. If a peer is downloading content, requested files are transferred from the clients and asymptotically converges to powering it off does not provide any proxy to the peers upon completion. As the previous constant value (ie, about energy saving as the download stops the bandwidth available between clients 95%). However, even with two peers, when the peer is turned off. Powering and the proxy is typically higher than the energy saving is larger than 60%. off peers that are not downloading files the download rate in the BitTorrent net- These results clearly show the effective- (but are sharing content) is also not an work, the time needed to power the ness of the proxy-based architecture efficient solution, as it would result in users’ PCs can be significantly reduced. from the energy-saving standpoint. decreased performance of the swarms in which they participate. Finally, coordi- In this design, modifications are only Link: nated ways of powering those peers are required at the BT proxy and at the http://info.iet.unipi.it/~anastasi/index.html also not appropriate as they would users’ PCs behind the proxy, and are Please contact: Giuseppe Anastasi 100 Dept. of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Italy 80 Tel: +39 050 2217 559 E-mail: [email protected] 60 Marco Conti 40 IIT-CNR, Italy Tel: +39 050 315 3062 20

Energy Saving (%) E-mail: [email protected]

0 Multi-server Computer Dedicated Computer Figure 2: Energy saving Andrea Passarella -20 vs. number of clients. IIT-CNR, Italy 123456 Tel: +39 050 315 3269 Number of PCs E-mail: [email protected]

36 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Interactive Energy Management System in Households by Tuan Anh Trinh and Sándor Plósz

In the framework of the AIM project (a novel architecture for modelling, virtualizing and managing the energy consumption of household appliances), an energy management system for the home enviroment is being developed [1]. The challenge is to provide communication between the user, powered devices and the energy management system.

The concept of sustainable development tion systems are centralized and less functions and utility services are states that we are responsible for managed on the consumer side, with deployed under a common logic on a ensuring that the environment remains production being based on predictions. future ‘home gateway’. In the house- as suitable for future generations as it The billing of energy is done by reading hold, the target is to create an Energy was for us. According to measurements, the installed watt meters manually. Management Device (EMD) which can the ICT industry was responsible for Energy is sold at a fixed, predetermined provide basic energy management func- about 2% of global CO2 emissions in price based on the observed consump- tions for existing appliances and which 2007, with this value projected to mul- tion. As of yet, the logic to implement will speed up the spread of the tech- tiply in coming decades (SMART 2020: energy management functions is nology until it is standardized. Although Enabling the low carbon economy int he missing in households, but achieving it complete logic layer structure is being information age; A report by The would involve users in conscious deci- defined for the inter-working of compo- Climate Group on behalf of the Global sion-making through resource manage- nents in the system, the physical layer

Figure 1: General architecture of the system.

eSustainability Initiative (GeSI), 2008). ment and dynamic pricing. The communication interfaces are not This issue is in large part related to the spreading of alternative energy source strictly bound, allowing manufacturers energy consumption of the devices and exploitation in households demands to use their desired technology. equipment in use. As a result, efficient more intelligence by itself. The former energy management has recently consumer may become a provider by In this work, we first investigate the received much attention from the ICT investing into energy production tech- option of realizing an energy manage- industry and the academic sphere alike. nologies using alternative forms of ment system on a DECT (Digital energy. In order to feed energy back to Enhanced Cordless Technologies) inter- Centralized energy production is the grid smart power meters are needed. face, and the peculiarities of DECT and becoming obsolete in consequence of new generation standards; we also the spread of methods that utilize alter- AIM is one of a number of projects examine its suitability as a communica- native energy, which can be installed investigating the issues of energy man- tion interface in the home. We then anywhere in small scale thereby making agement. Some concepts have already design an EMD with basic functions and the grid more decentralized. The pres- been implemented, such as smart grids integrate it with a system connecting to sure of the principle of sustainable dealing with decentralized energy sys- the home gateway. On the home development is beginning to make a sig- tems. The purpose of AIM is to create gateway we implement logic for virtual- nificant impact on the distribution of an end-to-end system for connecting the izing the functions of the EMD and energy exploitation techniques. Most of appliances into the home network in hosting it for remote accessibility via a today’s energy production and distribu- which virtualized household appliance Web server. The main idea behind the

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 37 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

EMD is on the one hand to involve the • energy management logic on the Link: user in energy management decisions, home gateway connecting the man- http://www.ict-aim.eu/ and on the other to be able to connect the agement systems of the home and the Utility (energy provider) to the home Utility Please contact: environment. The Utility has a great • real-time monitoring of the house- Tuan Anh Trinh interest in gaining some influence, even hold’s consumption by the Utility. Budapest University of Technology indirectly, in the home environment. • electricity price information request and Economics, Hungary can be made to the Utility; cost of E- mail: [email protected] Our system provides the missing com- operating the appliance can be pre- munication between the Utility, the con- calculated based on energy profiles Sándor Plósz sumer and the energy management • resource management by the Utility; Infineon Technologies, AG system. The following features are energy can be pre-bought, with price E-mail: [email protected] available: based on the reserved energy for that • monitoring of energy consumption of period individual appliances with the EMD • resource optimization; the Utility can • control of individual appliances propose resource shifting for remotely through the EMD favourable prices.

Intelligent Systems for Green Developments

by Han La Poutré, Wil Kling and Sjef Cobben

Alternative local energy sources are becoming increasingly popular, creating a new network of small suppliers. Fluctuations in the supply from such sources may cause instability and inefficiency in electricity distribution networks. The IdeaNeD consortium in the Netherlands aims to solve these problems.

Wind turbines, biomass, solar energy Networks and Data’ (IdeaNeD), which and storage facilities are some of the started in mid-2009, is investigating the new green developments in energy sup- optimal management of such future net- plies. In addition, ìCHPs (Combined works. Researchers in IDeaNeD will Heat and Power generators) are being design computational methods and introduced into homes, with conven- instruments that can deal with the large tional heating systems replaced by sys- amounts of data and actors involved. tems that can produce both heat and The project is developing intelligent electricity. One can thus speak of decen- decentralized systems for management tralized power generation in an elec- and data analysis via two main objec- tricity distribution network (also called tives. The first is decentralized manage- active power grids) with many actors. ment systems for distribution networks, in the form of prototype and proof-of- Power production can fluctuate due, for concept systems for testing, evaluation instance, to variations in wind velocity and development. Such systems will be or in the power supply from ìCHPs. The used and developed in computer simu- demand for energy also varies. This lations with realistic data as well as makes balancing generation and load (later on) with experimental electrical problematic and has large consequences hardware systems in laboratories. They for power flows. Large-scale use of elec- allow for ‘what if’ scenarios for dif- tric cars increases these problems, with Intelligent systems guarantee efficiency and ferent types of management and deploy- everybody recharging their car after rush and stability of networks of small alternative ment of distribution networks. They hour. It is therefore necessary to improve energy suppliers. will also form a base for future opera- the management of medium voltage tional systems. These take the form of (MV) and low voltage (LV) distribution can be used for management and con- adaptive multi-agent systems, where a networks, as most important develop- trol purposes in future networks. Due to software agent is an intelligent software ments are taking place in these net- the very large amounts of data, it is module designed for some area, actor or works. important that it be analysed and com- asset. Such software agents can be pressed, in order to be usable for net- located at, for example, control or dis- At the same time, with smart metering work and system management. tribution centres, at intelligent ring and sensor systems appearing all over main units, or with the users, for man- the network, the amount of available The SenterNovem project ‘Intelligent aging power cells and consumption. data has substantially increased, and this and Decentralized Management of Pricing is one of the mechanisms that

38 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 could be used to accomplish efficient transform sensor data into control data is the key to decentralized supply and network management. Electricity costs (performance indicators), which can be storage of electricity. and benefits for an actor can thus used to manage the network and for depend on the moment of use and visualization purposes. Supporting CWI is leading the IdeaNeD project, supply, as in day and night rates. For infrastructure for data and communica- with the other partners being Eindhoven any user or distributor, intelligent soft- tion will also be developed. Important University of Technology, Alliander, ware can then determine at what times aspects to be controlled and analysed in KEMA, Stedin, Joulz, Phase to Phase, power is used or produced. An alterna- networks include network loadings, ori- Early Minute and Alfen. The project is a tive control mechanism to be investi- gins of power flows, switching possibil- close collaboration between experts gated is 'remote control', enabling elec- ities, dynamic stability and power from computer science and the electricity companies to have a certain quality. tricity domain as well as between aca- degree of control over usage and supply demic institutions and companies. from a distance. Research into the control of distribution networks is now receiving international Link: The second objective is the develop- attention. The IdeaNeD project will lead http://www.cwi.nl/en/IDeaNeD ment of tools that indicate the (future) to both new insights and practical prod- state of the network. This will require ucts to be used by energy companies, Please contact: data banks for intelligent network man- network operators and industry. This Han La Poutré agement, as well as conversion, analysis makes the distribution network suitable CWI, The Netherlands and compression tools for using real for new developments; achieving Tel: +31 20 592 4082 sensor data. The objective here is to decentralized management and control E-mail: [email protected]

Computational Science for Future Energy Production by Barry Koren

At CWI two new PhD-projects are focusing on future energy production: one on controlled nuclear fusion and one on wind energy.

Energy is of vital importance to human Controlled nuclear fusion funded by the FOM Institute for Plasma life in the modern world. We need it for Currently in France, the International Physics Rijnhuizen. The research goal primary necessities such as food, water, Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is to investigate ITER ELMs by the fur- clothes and heating, as well as for trans- (ITER, Figure 1) is under construction. ther development and application of port, cooling, lighting, ICT, and so on. True to its name, ITER is an interna- computational tools. In the first phase Energy consumption is proportional to tional project, involving the EU, the of the project, a study is being made of living standard, which - on average - is USA, China, Russia, Japan, South tokamak plasma equilibria in the pres- increasing worldwide. At the same Korea and India. It is expected to ence of toroidal flow, using the general- time, the world’s population is become operational around 2025, and ized Grad-Shafranov equation. For increasing. Our fossil fuel resources are is hoped to reach a power output-over- these equilibrium studies, the existing becoming scarcer and, at the same time, input ratio of 10; ITER's deuterium-tri- FINESSE and PHOENIX software are combustion of those resources is tium plasma will not yet be self- extensively used, with FINESSE being believed to be leading to unacceptable burning. To magnetically confine the extended for ITER's specific H-mode climate change and concomitant plasma, ITER uses the tokamak con- conditions. In the second phase, full, flooding risks in many of the world’s cept. ITER's tokamak plasma will be in unsteady magnetohydrodynamic simu- lowland areas. The relevance of the so-called H-mode, which implies lations will be made of the ITER research on sources of energy to steep density gradients near the outer plasma in H-mode. Here also, use will replace fossil fuels is evident. edge of the plasma and yields an be made of existing software. A full enhanced plasma confinement. A con- MHD code will be coupled to Both CWI’s PhD-projects make full sequent challenge is the possible FINESSE, and numerical extensions use of numerical simulations, because occurrence of instabilities at the that appear to be necessary for ITER experiments are either technically plasma's outer edge: edge localized will be made. The software to be devel- impossible or too expensive. Numerical modes (ELMs). ELMs, which show oped in this project is intended to be mathematics can also be fruitfully some resemblance to solar flares, may finally included in software for inte- used in future optimizations of both damage and finally ruin the expensive grated ITER modelling and simulation. energy sources. The two PhD projects tokamak walls. are fine examples of research for Wind-farm aerodynamics which computational science is indis- In February 2009, Willem Haverkort A significant portion of the future pensable. started his PhD research at CWI, energy needs of the Netherlands is to

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 39 Special Theme: Towards Green ICT

technically impossible, in wind-farm aerodynamics it is not. Nevertheless, wind-farm experiments have the disad- vantage of being expensive at full scale, and involving upscaling difficul- ties at reduced scale. In fact, computational research is proving to be indis- pensable here as well.

In October 2008, funded by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), Benjamin Sanderse started his PhD research, at both CWI and ECN, to develop a state-of-the-art computational method for simulating wind- farm wake aerodynamics. Proper turbulence modelling and accurate and efficient numerical simulation of the multiscale flow features are major research challenges in this project. We are opting for Large-Eddy Simulation Figure 2: Artist’s impression of ITER. Source: http://www.fusie-energie.nl to treat turbulence. The numerical methods to be developed and applied be produced by wind farms in the North wind farm as a whole is maximal, its will preserve specific mathematical Sea. A wind farm is a large set of cou- maintenance cost minimal and its life properties of the continuous equations. pled wind turbines, positioned in a time maximal. Two mathematical chal- matrix form. The advantages of wind lenges are that these objectives are con- Links: farms as compared to sets of individual flicting, and that the situation is com- http://www.cwi.nl wind turbines are their smaller occupa- plicated by the uncertainty in wind. http://www.ecn.nl tion of space and their lower construc- State-of-the-art stochastic, multi-objec- http://www.rijnhuizen.nl/ tion and maintenance costs. The disad- tive optimization techniques are vantage is a reduced average power required to meet these objectives. Please contact: output per wind turbine. Designing Further, a good physical understanding Barry Koren wind farms involves creating, posi- of wind-farm wake aerodynamics is CWI, The Netherlands tioning and controlling each turbine crucial. Whereas for controlled nuclear Tel: +31 205924114 such that the energy production of the fusion most experimental research is E-mail: [email protected]

ENERPLAN - Green Logistic Solutions

by David Pisinger

While the present global climate debate is to a large extent focused on mechanical solutions like electric cars and wind turbines, such technology is expensive and time-consuming to implement. Better IT-based logistics and planning tools with a focus on the environment may be an attractive alternative, since they do not need large investments, are fast to implement, and the underlying techniques are already mature.

The EU has the goal of reducing CO2 Planning) will develop intelligent IT- used to integrate these approaches and emissions by 20% within the next based planning tools for the container- provide decision support in the case of decade. The transportation sector is ized transportation sector, reducing sudden changes, meaning superfluous responsible for a large proportion of energy consumption and thus environ- energy consumption can be avoided. To these emissions because of its reliance on mental impact. The research project allow end customers to visualize these fossil fuel. While the very nature of the includes decision tools for planning a efforts, decision tools that highlight the industry means the introduction of alter- route network such that a higher load environmental impact of various trans- native energy sources is not an immedi- factor can be achieved, algorithms for portation solutions are developed, ately useful option, an alternative may be filling containers and stowing vessels making it possible for them to choose found in improving logistics. more efficiently, and methods for the most energy-efficient route. finding more efficient distribution The ENERPLAN research project paths. Pervasive computing methods The research involves cooperation (Energy Efficient Transportation using RFID and handheld devices are between Maersk Line, DTU Manage-

40 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 ment Engineering and the IT-University in Copenhagen. Being the largest container shipping company, Maersk Line Photo: Maersk Line. provides in-depth knowledge of the problems under scrutiny, and can transform the research results into actual energy-saving initiatives that have a significant impact on CO2 emissions. The two university partners have a long experience in solving logistic problems in cooperation with industrial partners.

The goal of the project is to reduce energy consumption by 3-5% by designing more efficient route nets and improving logistic handling. For a large liner shipping company, this reduction Figure 1: Algorithms for filling containers more efficiently can help reduce CO2 emissions. amounts to the CO2 emissions of a major Danish city.

It has now become possible to obtain ENERPLAN has its origin in classical logistics cannot solve all our environ- dynamic information from the Internet optimization techniques, but brings a mental problems, it is a necessary supple- using handheld computers and cellular new dimension to the research field by ment for reaching our goals on time and phones, such that at any time we have a also considering robustness, multi-cri- should play a central role in the UN cli- complete and reliable description of all teria optimization, dynamic optimiza- mate conference in December 2009. current tasks and their execution tion and configuration. A great demand progress. This means that we can start exists for dynamic decision systems, Please contact: developing robust dynamic optimization and the research will have a significant David Pisinger systems. Such systems need to be suffi- scientific impact. The solution methods DTU Management, Technical ciently fast to reoptimize a plan almost and modeling techniques will be devel- University of Denmark instantly, very expressive so that they oped into prototype systems and tested Tel: +45 4525 4555 can handle nearly all realistic constraints, on concrete customer data from the E-mail: [email protected] and be able to deliver decision support to industry and government. the end-user such that an appropriate Rune Møller Jensen trade-off can be made between the cost In classical operations research the IT University of Copenhagen, and robustness of a solution. focus has been to optimize a single cri- Denmark terion, typically profitability. ENER- Tel: +45 7218 5048 The solution method follows a number PLAN treats profitability and environ- E-mail: [email protected] of steps. First, a demand graph is con- mental impact as two equal objectives. structed which describes the expected Experience from other multi-criteria Niels Rasmussen transportation from one port to another. problems shows that a small decrease in Maersk Line, Network Design, Routes are then constructed by use of one objective (profit) may lead to a sub- Denmark graph algorithms which aim at finding stantial saving in the other objective E-mail: [email protected] dense subgraphs that satisfy a number (energy), resulting in a large impact for Tel: +45 3363 4971 of properties. The cost of the flow in the small cost. With the global focus on proposed route net is evaluated by environmental issues intensifying, Mikkel Mühldorff Sigurd solving a generalized multicommodity green logistics may be an important Maersk Line, Network Advanced flow problem. Based on the solution competitive parameter. Solutions, Denmark found, bottlenecks in the route net and Tel: +45 3363 8157 non-competitive transportation paths Green logistics is an often overlooked E-mail: are identified, and used as input to a tool in the climate debate. Although green [email protected] new iteration.

The project has been awarded a 1 million EURO grant by the Danish Agency for Science Technology and Innovation within the special program ‘Green IT’. The grant will finance two PhD and two post-doctorate positions at DTU and ITU to carry out research on mathematical optimization together with Maersk Line over a four-year period, starting in Figure 2: Time-space network with the schedule as time units. Service 1: A → B → C → → 2009. D A, vessel v1,1 departing A at time t = 1 vessel v1,2 departing A at time t = 2.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 41 R&D and Technolgy Transfer

A 3D Event-Based Silicon Retina Stereo Sensor

by Christoph Sulzbachner, Jürgen Kogler, Wilfried Kubinger and Erwin Schoitsch

Conventional stereo vision systems and algorithms require very high processing power and are costly. For the many applications where moving objects (either source or target, or both) are the main goal to be detected, a new kind of bio-inspired analogue sensor that provides only event-triggered information, so-called silicon retina sensors, are providing a very fast and cost-efficient alternative.

The challenge of stereo vision is the mation only on variations of intensity meter of movement in a distance of reconstruction of depth information in (‘event-triggered’), meaning data six meter. images of a scene captured from two dif- redundancy processing requirements • System Reaction Time: due to the ferent points of view. State-of-the-art are reduced considerably. Unaltered requirement for reliability reasons of stereo vision sensors use frame-based parts of a scene that have no intensity at least three consecutive detections, monochromatic or colour cameras. The variation need neither be transmitted a time resolution of 5ms for the sen- corresponding stereo-matching algo- nor processed, and the amount of data sor is needed. rithms are based on pixel patch correla- depends on the motion of the scene. The • Location: depends on application tion for the search of pixel correspon- second generation of the sensor has a conditions; for example, if applied to dences. Generally, these algorithms con- resolution of 302x240 pixels, and meas- moving vehicles in automotive appli- tain the following steps: computation of urements show that for a typical scene cations, the sensor must be mounted matching cost, aggregation of cost, com- we anticipate about 2 mega data events on the side of the car and must be putation of disparity, and refinement of per second. Depending on the protocol protected against typical outdoor disparity. As a pre-processing step, the used, one data event requires a min- conditions. sensor needs to be calibrated and the imum of 32 bits. images delivered by the cameras recti- Figure 1 shows the components of the fied; various methods and algorithms are The requirements of the Silicon Retina SRSS, including the captured scene and available. This procedure is applied on Stereo Sensor (SRSS) are: the resulting disparity map. The SRSS whole images that are captured at a fixed • Detection Range: objects must be consists of two silicon retina imagers frame rate. Due to the resolution of the detected with high confidence well that are synchronized to have a common sensors and the processing-intensive before activation of countermeasures. understanding of the local timing where algorithms, the performance of these Due to the system reaction time of variations of the intensity occur. The systems is quite low. 350ms, a detection range of 6 metres pair of imagers is called a silicon retina at an angular resolution of 4.2 pixel/° stereo imager (SRSI). One imager acts The silicon retina (SR) stereo sensor is required. as a slave device, permitting a synchro- uses new sensor technology and an algo- • Field of view: for the given sensor nization mechanism with the master rithmic approach to processing 3D resolution of 128x128 pixels and the imager. In Figure 1, only the scene visu- stereo information. The SR sensor tech- baseline 0.45m, lenses with a field of alized by accumulating the events for a nology is based on bio-inspired ana- view of 30° are chosen. The large specified time is shown. Both imagers logue circuits. These sensors exploit a baseline is necessary to reach the are connected to the embedded system, very efficient, asynchronous, event- required depth resolution of three which consists of two multi-core fixed- driven data protocol that delivers infor- consecutive detections during one point digital signal processor (DSP)

Visualized Scene Embedded System Disparity Map

Figure 1: Overview of the SR stereo sensor, including a visualization of the scene and the resulting disparity map.

42 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 with three cores each. One DSP is on locality and timely correlation of the of Road Users with Vehicle On-Board responsible for data acquisition, pre- asynchronous data event streams of Sensors (ADOSE)’. The project focuses processing of the asynchronous data, both imagers. First, the sensor is cali- on the development and evaluation of and miscellaneous objectives of the brated to affect the distortion coeffi- new cost-efficient sensor technology for embedded framework. Another per- cients and the camera parameters. Then, automotive safety solutions. For an forms the main part of the event-based the events received by the embedded overview of the ADOSE project, please stereo vision algorithm in parallel on system are undistorted and rectified to see ERCIM News No. 78. three cores. obtain matchable events lying on parallel and horizontal epipolar lines. The A scene captured by the SRSI delivers events from the left imager are corre- Links: two streams of variations of intensity as lated to the right imager and vice versa. http://www.ait.ac.at digital output. These asynchronous data This allows the disparity information of http://www.adose-eu.org streams are acquired and processed by the scene to be calculated. Early proto- the embedded system resulting in a dis- types showed that by using this algo- Please contact: parity map of the captured scene based rithm the advantage of the SR tech- Christoph Sulzbachner, Jürgen Kogler, on the left imager. Conventional block- nology could be fully exploited at very Wilfried Kubinger, Erwin Schoitsch based and feature-based stereo algo- high processing framerates. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology rithms have been shown to reduce the GmbH /AARIT, Austria advantage of the asynchronous data This technology is applied in the EC- E- mail: {christoph.sulzbachner, interface and throttle the performance. funded (grant 216049) FP7 project juergen.kogler, wilfried.kubinger, Our novel algorithm approach is based ‘Reliable Application-Specific Detection erwin.schoitsch}@ait.ac.at

CoMem-XML: Exploring Context in Repositories of Construction Management Data by Peter Demian and Panos Balatsoukas

Engineers often seek to explore context in order to judge the relevance of a retrieved piece of information. The ‘Finding needles in (hierarchical) haystacks’ project, based in the Department of Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University, is examining new methods of information representation that will support exploration and understanding of context in hierarchical repositories of construction management projects.

It has been demonstrated in the literature sonal memory). Many of these external (California), by one of the authors of that civil engineers often seek to explore systems fail to provide contextual infor- this article (Peter Demian), which the context of a retrieved piece of information to aid the understanding of explored the application of visualiza- mation, in order to understand that item retrieved items (eg highlighting an tion in the design of corporate memo- and use it appropriately. This behaviour item’s position in the granular hierarchy ries. can be attributed to the highly structured and exposing relationships with other and hierarchical nature of engineering parent and child items). The ‘Finding To date, a prototype query-driven repos- information; for example, a construction needles in (hierarchical) haystacks’ itory of construction management proj- project can include details about a project attempts to address this problem ects, called CoMem-XML, has been building as well as the individual com- by exploring and evaluating new built using XML technology. This ponents and sub-components of that methods and techniques of presenting system supports relevance ranking and building. For such information, context information that will support explo- presents the context of the retrieved is defined by the hierarchical relation- ration and understanding of context in information at various levels of granu- ship between a piece of information and hierarchical repositories of construction larity. The content stored in the other information items within the hier- management projects. CoMem-XML is hierarchical. A Project archy (such as components and subcom- item (eg Imaginary Hotel in ponents in a parts hierarchy of a The project, which is funded by the Manchester) is made up of multiple designed product). Leverhulme Trust, involves an interdis- Discipline items (eg the architectural ciplinary team of researchers from the layout of the hotel or the structural However, the process of understanding construction management research frame of the hotel). Each Discipline and exploring context is more difficult group based at the Department of Civil item is made up of multiple Building to achieve in external information and Building Engineering of Components (a particular room or struc- sources (such as knowledge manage- Loughborough University, UK. This tural column). Each Building ment systems and corporate databases) project builds upon previous research Component is decomposed into two fur- than in internal resources (such as per- conducted at Stanford University ther levels: Subcomponent (eg a joint at

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 43 R&D and Technolgy Transfer

CoMem CoMem-XML

Figure 1: Visual and textual databases of engineering content.

the end of a column) and Sub-subcom- relevance in terms of the degree of simi- Please contact: ponent (eg a bolt in the joint). larity between a query and the item’s Peter Demian content (as is the case for traditional Department of Civil and Building This hierarchy is used to organize not query-driven information retrieval sys- Engineering, Loughborough University only objects from the CAD models in tems and search engines), but also sup- Tel: +44 1509 228541 the repository, but also any textual or ports understanding and exploration of E-mail: [email protected] non-textual documents associated with that information, such as its context and construction projects: construction organization within the product parts schedules, reports, journal papers, email hierarchy. archives, contracts and specifications. After a query is executed, the results are An existing alternative to the CoMem- displayed as a list of Project items, XML system, the original CoMem, ranked by relevance. The calculation of applies information visualization tech- the relevance score of each Project is niques to display relevant information based on the average score of the indi- and facilitate browsing across a collec- vidual constituent items of that Project tion of construction projects. Users of (ie Discipline, Building Component, this system are provided with an Subcomponent and Sub-subcompo- overview of the contents of the collec- nent). In addition, within each Project tion. When relevant information is iden- all the relevant items are displayed in tified from this overview, the context of ranked order but within their actual con- the selected item can be explored in two text in the hierarchy. For example, if rel- interfaces that (i) identify and display evant information had been identified related information in the hierarchy, and within a Building Component, then (ii) visualize the evolution history of information about the Discipline within that item. which the Building Component occurred is also displayed. In addition, Usability tests have shown that both the user has the option of exploring CoMem and CoMem-XML can improve other Building Components and user performance and satisfaction when Subcomponents of that Discipline item, searching and judging the relevance of regardless of their relevance to the retrieved information, compared to typ- user’s query. ical browsing trees (eg Microsoft file explorer), search engines (eg Google) The search result interface of this and repositories that present the system thus communicates not simply retrieved information out of context.

44 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Route Optimization: How Efficient will the Proposed North Dublin Metro Be? by John R. Walsh

In November 2005, the Irish government presented its ‘Transport 21’ plan for the future of transport infrastructure in Ireland. The largest prospective capital investment to date in Ireland and occurring under the auspices of the National Development Plan, the work was anticipated to occur over the period 2006 to 2015.

The single largest element, the con- whilst Metro North is reported to be at not disclosed expected costs in full). A struction of a metro system for the the ‘permission to build and operate’ framework for modelling impact sce- greater Dublin area, is yet to commence. stage. narios is essential. The plan comprises two metro lines: Metro North linking the city centre with The Metro North line presents inter- In earlier stages of the project, route the airport and continuing to north esting features: consisting of under- options and the effect on properties in county Dublin, and Metro West, linking ground, surface and elevated tracks over the vicinity of the line were identified, outer Dublin centres Tallaght, a total length of 18 kilometres, 15 initial both during and after construction. This Clondalkin, Liffey Valley and stops are planned, with some future was supported by work of the Dublin Blanchardstown, with connections additions anticipated. In the current Transport Office (DTO), using through the city centre, to the Metro economic climate, cost estimates SATURN models of optimal flow North and existing rapid transit (Luas ranging from €3-6 billion are inevitably across the road traffic network. Red line). Metro West is presently at the a serious concern (for commercial rea- SATURN (Simulation and Assignment stage of designing lines and stops, sons, the Rail Procurement Agency has of Traffic in Urban Road Networks) is

Figure 1: Figure 2: The planned Dublin Metro North line. network performance mesure. Source: http://www.transport21.ie/

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 45 R&D and Technolgy Transfer

the model used by the DTO to help pre- formance/efficiency is based on sum- Rapid Transport system (DART) system dict, for example, the impact on traffic ming the ratio of demand to equilibrium (which came in to operation in 1984) of introducing Luas, building the disutility (minimal path cost) for each increased its passenger capacity by Dublin Port Tunnel and completing the of the origin/destination (O/D) pairs in 12.5% in 2000, and by a further 19.6% C-Ring motorway. The model is thus the network, and then scaling this by the of the original figure in 2003 to meet the principal design and evaluation tool total number of O/D pairs. The impor- demand. Similarly, the newer road- for these and all major road and public tance measure for a given component based light rail (Luas Green and Red transport proposals currently being then depends on the ratio of the differ- lines) has seen a 65% increase in the planned and implemented in Dublin. ence between the efficiency measures number of trams. A metro system, The final proposed route for the Metro for the network with and without that serving initially the north and west of is a compromise between earlier component, to the efficiency measure of the city, but with the potential to com- options, but further assessment is the network with all components plete or link with existing modalities, needed, not least to address the net- included (see the flow diagram in will have to be assessed both in its own work’s robustness to failure. One option Figure 1). right and in terms of its complemen- is to consider an importance factor for tarity. each of the links and nodes. Using this approach, the importance of each link in the proposed Metro line and While an initial integrated model at net- Whilst the SATURN model is not each station (node) along the line can be work level is unlikely to answer all directly concerned with robustness of calculated and ranked to show its rela- questions raised, it seems evident, the network, it can be used, in conjunc- tive importance within the whole trans- (given recent experiences with alterna- tion with the key system equations of port network. tive modalities), that assessing the Nagurney and Qiang (2007, "A network Metro’s potential to have a positive efficiency measure for congested net- Whilst the Metro line is itself a ‘linear’ impact on road usage and the ‘greening’ works." Europhysics Letters 79(38005): network, this method enables us to of Dublin transport, is a necessary step 1-5), to look at network efficiency, assess it within the overall transport net- in the planning process. together with the importance of indi- work, whereby users of the system can vidual network components. make choices regarding the routes and Please contact: mode of transport. John R Walsh Specifically, following Nagurney and The Economic and Social Research Qiang (2007), given the topology of the Several alternative transport systems Institute, Dublin network and the demand for transport have been introduced in Dublin over the Tel: +353 1 8632054 across it, the measure of network per- last three decades. The Dublin Area E-mail: [email protected]

Energy-Optimized Electrical Systems for Land Transport Using Batteries and Supercapacitors: TRANS-SUPERCAP

by Paul Borza, Ana Maria Puscas and Marius Carp

The ‘TRANS-SUPERCAP’ project plans to optimize the energy use, operation, reliability and availability of locomotives and automobiles by redesigning the electric starting systems of the internal combustion engine. This is done using combinations of batteries and ‘stacked’-type supercapacitors provided by new nanotechnology.

It is known that energy storage and aqueous stacked supercapacitors) and the demand from the load side, in mobile energy sources are critical ele- an intelligent control system. order to optimize the energy effi- ments for powered systems. Existing ciency of the whole system. This energy storage devices do not satisfy all This project proposes the research and implementation allows not only modern requirements, especially when a development of an, energy-efficient energy and material consumption but device must demonstrate high perform- electric starting systems with a long also environmental pollution to be ance and be energy efficient. The lifespan. These will use a combination reduced. TRANS-SUPERCAP national research of battery and supercapacitors, project, currently under development at adjusted according to the load, using The project will work toward a deeper the ‘Transilvania’ University of Brasov, power-switching devices controlled understanding of the transient phe- will demonstrate that a satisfactory com- by an embedded system. This latter nomena occurring into the whole promise can be reached by combining system will control the power flow system, in energy and power sources, energy sources (batteries), rapid-release transfer between the source and the ICE (internal combustion engine), and storage devices (high voltage [9F/110V] load by monitoring and anticipating also the DC starter motors. The project

46 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 will develop integrated model sources, costs). While low-temperature starts are The starting system described here has an electric starter motor, ICE and con- a problem for batteries, in the case of been successfully tested over a one-year trol systems and also a methodology the combined solution, the battery will period in collaboration with the for system design which will permit its be protected and ICE starting will be Romanian Railways Company. The rapid adaptation to any type of vehicle. significantly improved. By providing successful results of the tests, with intelligent and adaptive switching of the implications for increased reliability Most vehicles currently use lead-acid electric starter motor between superca- and reduced costs, encouraged the (L-A) batteries as power supplies for pacitor and battery, the characteristic application of stacked supercapacitors starting their ICEs, after which the run- response of the system can be optimized utilizing aqueous electrolyte to improve ning of the ICE provides the electricity both in the starting phase and in the the starting systems of diesel locomo- necessary for vehicles. The starting charging phase of the batteries. tives and other diesel engine vehicles. process is critical because it requires significant peaks of power from bat- In the specific case of locomotives, the The energy management system which teries. Assessing the damage caused by most important requirements are the has been developed allows switching starting shocks is a difficult task. Thus, reliability and availability of the starting between the two energy sources (super- all the design methodologies for system, low weight, and the cost and capacitors and batteries) to occur auto- staring systems of vehicles take into fuel consumption. Our energy manage- matically, depending on the temperature account an over-dimensioning of the ment system optimally satisfies all these and oil pressure within the ICE. batteries. To protect and also to assure necessities: a reliable starting process, the designer • the mass and volume of the power We are encouraged by these results, and over-dimensions the battery, that supply have been reduced by more are now working on developments such means they increase the battery than half as dynamic retrieval of breaking energy capacity in order to assure the max- • the application does not need balanc- on vehicles, mechatronic actuator sys- imum current demanded by DC ing resistors for component cells of tems, and active filters used to improve starting motor and at the same time try high voltage supercapacitor energy grid parameters. At the same to prevent the deep discharge which • this type of supercapacitors is time, energy sources endowed with would significantly reduce its lifetime. ‘stacked’ with aqueous electrolyte intelligent controlled storage devices (KOH) and doesn’t generate poison- will lead to future architectural forms for Progress in nanotechnology has brought ous gases during functioning energy sources, especially for mobile with it important improvements in • the devices operate between -40ºC types. By embedding the control in each supercapacitors, which are now better and +80 ºC, maintaining a very low combined energy cell and developing able to fulfill requirements related to ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) the hierarchical architecture, the com- maximum current, power and energy over the entire temperature range plexity of bidirectional energy transfer density. It therefore appears mandatory assuring a very high reliability of can be better mastered to give a direct to introduce an energy management starting process improvement in energy efficiency. system developed for mobile applica- • the storage devices are compact and tions that also assure the harmonization ecologically sound, with a very high of the time constants between the dif- dynamic stability (tested at sinus 4 Please contact: ferent power supplies or storage devices. g(ms-2) mechanical vibration stress Paul Borza, Ana Maria Puscas for more than 1000 hours with no and Marius Carp Combined solutions involving L-A bat- damage); the devices accept more Transilvania University of Brasov, teries and supercapacitors appear to be than 10 g acceleration shock without Romania feasible and an optimum compromise in damage E-mail: [email protected], terms of energy economy, materials, • the system presents a high power [email protected], size and cost (including maintenance density (by mass and volume). [email protected]

An electric starting system installed on locomotive. The system include two components: the locomotive driver console (left) and the embedded systems dedicated for the main subsystems. The picture on the right shows the box of supercapacitors and the afferent control systems linked to console by an Ethernet bus.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 47 R&D and Technolgy Transfer

SensorWeb-Based Prototype for Air Quality Reporting Systems

by Katharina Schleidt and Denis Havlik

Two European research projects, SANY (Sensors Anywhere) and the Austrian INSPIRE CAFE prototype are currently testing the usability of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite for CAFE (Clean Air For Europe) and INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community), by developing a prototype air quality reporting system in accordance with the CAFE directive. Unlike the Web Feature Service, which excels at geographic features, the SWE services and encodings help to model the world from a sensor-centric view, with each observed value being associated with a geographic and temporal position, as well as the unit of measurement, data quality value, and process description.

The INSPIRE directive requires in accordance with the CAFE directive provision. Based on an analysis of the exchange of geospatial data relevant to (Clean Air For Europe) in Austria, Poland, requirements of the CAFE directive, the the environment between public author- Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Austrian development team realized that ities, as well as provision to the research a much stronger focus on the measure- community and to the general public, CAFE will report annually on the fol- ments obtained at the monitoring sites according to international standards lowing: would be required than can be served by within the next decade. In addition, the • air quality monitoring zones WSF-based solutions. Shared Environmental Information • air quality monitoring stations System (SEIS) foresees the acquisition • validated air quality monitoring data In the meantime, the SANY Sensor and integration of environmental data • threshold exceedances for zones and Anywhere FP6 Integrated Project pub- from distributed sources across Europe stations. lished the ‘Sensor Service Architecture’ for reporting and policy purposes as (SensorSA) specifications. SensorSA well as for provision of the information In addition, the CAFE directive requires advocates the use of the OGC Sensor to the public. access to the near real time air quality Web Enablement (SWE) suite for data for general public. accessing sensors and similar data Four INSPIRE CAFE prototype projects sources. Unlike other OGC standards, contracted by Joint Research Center are To date, INSPIRE has been driven by which focus on the spatial aspects of the currently testing possible technical solu- the Spatial Data Infrastructure commu- data, the SWE suite has been designed tions for open standards-based INSPIRE nity, relying on traditional OGC Web specifically to interact with sensor net- networks suitable for air quality reporting Feature Service (WFS) services for data works and allows explicit description and efficient handling of the sensor- related data, metadata and operations. In addition, SANY developed a number of services for processing and visualization of sensor data, including the ‘Cascading SOS’ service developed by Austrian Institute of Technology. Cascading SOS can extract the information from available SOS services and produce various indicators, including those required for CAFE reporting, on the fly. Finally, the SANY SP4 air quality demonstrator has already integrated some of the Austrian air quality data in a SensorSA/SWE-compliant network.

This led to the idea of basing the Austrian INSPIRE CAFE prototype on SANY technology. On the SANY side, the air quality use cases, data models and functionality were extended based on the INSPIRE-CAFE requirements. The Umweltbundesamt Austria, which is participating in both projects, provided the concrete requirements for the air quality reporting in accordance with Figure 1: Main INSPIRE CAFE reporting use cases. the CAFE directive. These include

48 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 metadata and data according to the sensor data but also for the results of join the final SANY event and SP4 INSPIRE directive, as well as trans- the data fusion, modelling and demonstration on November 19th in formed and aggregated data as required reporting services (‘soft sensors’). In Linz. Participation in this event is free of by the CAFE directive. addition, the INSPIRE-compliant ver- charge, but the registration is required. sion of the SANY catalogue service Instructions for registration are available Preliminary results of this work, which illustrates that the INSPIRE-relevant on the SANY Web site. will be presented at the final SANY meta-information can be harvested event, confirmed the superiority of from SWE services. Links: OGC SWE-based solutions as com- INSPIRE: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ pared to classical WFS services, not All parties interested in the use of JRC: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/ only for INSPIRE/CAFE affine model- SensorSA and OGC SWE in the context OGC SWE: ling of the immission and emission of CAFE and INSPIRE are invited to http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/ groups/sensorweb SANY IP: http://sany-ip.eu SEIS: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/seis/ SensorSA: http://www.sany-ip.eu/biblio/type/11

Please contact: Katharina Schleidt Umweltbundesamt GmbH (Govern- mental Environmental Agency), Austria Tel: +43-(0)1-313 04/5363 E-mail: [email protected]

Denis Havlik Austrian Institute of Technology, Safety and Security Division (AARIT) Tel: +43 50550 3157 Figure 2: SANY air quality pilot (Linz) use cases and data provision services. E-mail: [email protected]

New Technologies Provide Overview@aGlance at Large Music Festivals by Preben Holst Mogensen and Marlene Nybro Thomsen

Overview@aGlance is the name of a collaborative overview system that integrates a number of technologies to provide overview and support collaboration between emergency response teams at large events such as music festivals.

The @aGlance system has just returned staff (police, security, local alarm the end it is a question of saving time to Aarhus University from a beech centre, coordinators, stretcher teams and money – but it all comes down to wood near Skanderborg, Denmark, etc) were gathered at the annual festival saving human lives and ensuring a safe where it was trialled at the Danish in the wood. The emergency staff tested festival for our 50 000 guests.” music festival ‘Skanderborg Festival @aGlance together with developers 2009’. The festival site and its sur- from the Computer Science Department The @aGlance system integrates well- roundings consisted of a forest with at Aarhus University and The Alexandra known technologies such as GPS radios, hilly terrain and narrow paths, making it Institute. This technology represents a mobile phones, remotely controlled video an extremely challenging and thereby big step towards making this festival cameras, WiFi access points and monitors perfect setting for testing out this tech- safe and secure for visitors in the future. (large stationary and smaller portable), nology, which is intended to support GIS data and 3D visualization. This pro- emergency response personnel at geo- Erik Pong Madsen, who has been vides emergency response personnel with graphically and organizationally dis- responsible for security at the festival a common and dynamic frame of refer- tributed events. for 29 years, said, “The @aGlance ence, improving their overview of the fes- system provides us the needed overview tival. In particular, they: Forty thousand attendees and ten thou- of our emergency response personnel, • can see ‘at a glance’ what is happen- sand volunteer helpers and emergency of the festival and its surroundings. In ing at the festival (overview)

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 49 R&D and Technolgy Transfer

• can see where the other personnel are supports visual communication as the The project is partly sponsored by the (location) users are able to draw ambulance roads, ICT-competence Centre ISIS • can see what the other personnel see barriers or take pictures of the situation Katrinebjerg. The experiment was a (collaboration) – which will then pop up in the correct collaboration between the Computer • can choose their own or their col- location in the common 3D environ- Science Department, Aarhus leagues’ point of view and can see ment. In addition, in order to support University, the Alexandra Institute, the what is happening nearby (context). crowd control and to prevent bottle- Skanderborg Festival Club and the soft- necks, the system analyses the video ware firm 43D. In the @aGlance The backbone of this system is an inte- feeds to indicate activity, which is then project, Polycom and Sølund are also grating 3D environment. It contains 3D also shown in the 3D environment. partners. models of the Skanderborg area, camping areas, festival site, stages, stalls, service centres, live video feed from the site, and tracking of stretcher teams, security guards and coordinators, to mention a few.

A comprehensive overview is provided by means of: • integration of communication infrastructure (GPS and radio) • visual communication (live video and pictures integrated in the 3D environment) • activity indication (larger movements at the festival illustrated in the 3D environment) • tracking emergency response Figure 1: System overview. resources and key personnel (via GPS, represented and located in the 3D environment) • static and remotely controlled cam- In all, the Skanderborg experiment was Link: eras a huge success. The festival visitors http://www.aglance.dk • local and central interaction with 3D were in favour of the video cameras due environment using (i) handheld to the safety they provided, and the fes- Please contact: devices ‘in the field’, and (ii) central- tival staff used the system constantly to Preben Holst Mogensen ly located stationary monitors at, for maintain an overview of what was hap- Aarhus University, Denmark example, the local alarm centre or pening on the site. The festival staff E-mail: [email protected] coordinators (see Figure 2). were happy to see their ideas from the iterative process based on user-centred Marlene Nybro Thomsen The @aGlance system supports collabo- design brought to life. The developers E-mail: [email protected] ration and overview, which are of para- were happy to see it work – most of the Aarhus University, Denmark mount importance to emergency time. In preparation for next year, they response personnel. A video browser will work on further development and shows all selectable video feeds from 24 integration of innovative ideas. video cameras centrally placed at the festival site, and tracked personnel are represented in the model, along with patients, place and position.

In the case of an emergency, the patient is pointed out by the local alarm centre and placed in the correct position in the 3D environment. The required personnel (eg doctors, stretcher teams and security teams) are notified and can see the same part of the 3D environment as the coordinators. For a given user this may include, for example, where the patient is, which way to go, where his own team is (GPS tracked) and where the doctor and other vital personnel are heading Figure 2: interaction with the 3D environment with handheld devices (left) and stationary (also GPS tracked). The system also monitors (right).

50 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 Events

Out of the Ether: bed for approaches and how theoretical 13th European approaches could be adapted to produce Information a hybrid system that worked in a prac- Conference tical environment. Mike Middleton and Management Susan Casey considered the impact of on Digital Libraries the INSPIRE directive and presented the for Archaeologists preliminary findings of a study of the by Giannis Tsakonas spatial depiction of heritage objects and Christos Papatheodorou by Martin Newman looking at spatial data quality and the current state of polygonisation in The organization of the European The Institute for Archaeologists (IfA) is Scotland. David Thomas and Tom Pert Conference on Digital Libraries a professional institute for the study talked about a major National Assembly (ECDL) 2009 in Corfu from 27 Sep- and care of the historic environment for Wales supported initiative Csgliad y tember to 2 October 2009 signaled in the United Kingdom. The Institute’s Bobl – the Peoples Collection, which is the second “visit” of ECDL to annual conference was held in creating an online archive illustrating Greece, following ECDL 1998 in Her- Torquay in England from the 7th to Welsh History using photographs, docu- aklion, Crete. The theme of the con- 9th April 2009 and saw a session to ments and film. The theme of online ference was “Digital Societies”, launch a new Information access continued with a sobering look at addressing the main issues that Management special interest group of usability testing, with Cat Cload pre- users and user communities con- the Institute. The new group is aimed senting a case study using the Heritage front within modern digital libraries, at those working with historic Gateway, a web portal for historic envi- such as the creation and enrich- environment data/information ronment data managed by the National ment of information artifacts, shar- management, computing and Monuments Record at English Heritage ing and distribution of information informatics. This first event that uses web services to create interop- objects, retrieval and filtering mech- showcased a wide range of current erability between datasets from differing anisms, enhancement of user inter- projects and recent developments. sources (www.heritagegateway.org.uk). faces to increase productivity, and The final paper of the digital preservation. session also dealt with access via a portal. Dan 128 full papers, 15 short papers and 38

Photo: Edmund Lee. Hull and Stuart Jeffrey posters and demos were submitted to the presented a web services Conference. The final number of case study, HEIRNET accepted papers was 28 in the full paper the Historic Environment category, with an acceptance rate of Information Network. 21.88%. There were two invited The session also included speeches: in the opening session Gary the group’s Annual Marchionini, University of North General Meeting with the Carolina, talked about “Digital Libraries election of a committee. as Phenotypes for Digital Societies”, Versions of these presen- and on the final day Peter Buneman, tations will be published University of Edinburgh, presented his It’s not just potsherds and bones any more. Information in the first edition of the thoughts on “Curated Databases”. management is integral to modern archaeological practice. group’s newsletter, and future events are planned This year, it was decided to introduce including a joint meeting some novel features to the conference The session opened with a paper by with the Forum on Information structure. The first feature was the pro- Edmund Lee titled ‘Everything We Standards in Heritage (FISH). It is hoped posal of four special plenary sessions Know Informs Everything We Do’: A that the group will foster links between which solicited focused high quality Vision for Information Management. archaeologists involved in managing papers on the areas of Infrastructures, This set the scene for the papers that fol- information and those working in infor- Services, Foundations and Content. For lowed by examining the current state of mation technology. Further information each of these areas, a separate call for historic environment information man- about the IfA Information Management papers was distributed to the research agement in theoretical terms as well as Special Interest Group including mem- communities. The reviewing process looking at what needs to be undertaken bership is available on the IfA’s website. for the special sessions was united with to make information management cen- that for the main Call with an accept- tral to good practice. There then fol- Link: ance rate for these submissions of lowed a series of case studies. Jay http://www.archaeologists.net approximately 25%, resulting finally in Carver looked at multidisciplinary two special sessions on Infrastructures working for the Highways Agencies Please contact: and Services. The second innovative Cultural Heritage Management Plan Martin Newman feature was the recreation of Posters which is drawing together datasets from National Monuments Record, and Demos in Second Life in order to a range of partners. Guy Hunt’s paper English Heritage, UK digitally preserve this year’s posters concerned digital data creation on site, E-mail: and demos. This effort was undertaken using a developer funded site as a test [email protected] successfully by the Digital Libraries

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 51 Events

In addition numerous project meetings Cross Language were held and three lectures on important topics of digital libraries were Evaluation Forum given by well-known experts to students of the International Master in Celebrates Tenth Digital Library Learning programme (DILL, http://dill.hio.no/) Birthday

Digital Libraries is a very multidiscipli- by Carol Peters nary domain and the more than 220 par- ECDL opening session. ticipants at the conference came from a The results of the tenth campaign of wide range of domains. This number the Cross Language Evaluation rose considerably for the workshops Forum (CLEF) were presented and and Preservation Group, Virginia which were attended by nearly 300 plans for CLEF 2010 were unveiled at Polytechnic Institute and State people. Although the majority of atten- the annual CLEF workshop, held this University, USA and Information dees were from Europe, there was also a year in Corfu, Greece. Systems Group, Instituto Superior good contingent from North America Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal. and Asia plus a few people from Africa. The objective of the Cross Language Approximately 25% of the participants Evaluation Forum (CLEF) is to promote The Conference was accompanied by a were graduate or PhD students. research in the field of multilingual very large number of satellite events. On information access (MLIA) research and Sunday 27 September a Doctoral During the ECDL Steering Committee development. This is done through the Consortium and four tutorials were held. meeting, there was much discussion on organisation of annual evaluation cam- The Consortium consisted of presenta- the future directions of the conference. paigns offering tasks designed to test tions and discussions of the work of One of the points made was that the different aspects of mono- and cross- eleven Ph.D. students; the post- inclusion of European in the name was language information retrieval systems. Consortium proceedings will be pub- limitative. It was agreed that the confer- The aim is to encourage the develop- lished by the Bulletin of the IEEE ence name should be changed to ment of next generation multilingual Technical Committee on Digital “Theory and Practice of Digital multimodal IR systems. Libraries. The tutorials were on: Libraries” (TPDL) with the 2011 con- • Aggregation and reuse of digital ference in Berlin. ECDL 2010, which The participation in the CLEF initiative objects metadata from distributed dig- will be organized by the University of has increased steadily over the years, ital libraries Glasgow, UK (www.ecdl2010.org), will growing from just 20 research groups in • Knowledge Organization Systems in thus be the final version with the name CLEF 2000 to more than 150 groups this Digital Libraries of ECDL. year, mainly but not only from aca- • Designing user interfaces for interac- demia. Most of the participants in CLEF tive information retrieval systems & ECDL2009 was organized by the 2009 were from Europe but there was digital libraries Laboratory on Digital Libraries and also a good contingent from North • Digital preservation: Logical and bit- Electronic Publishing, Department of America and Asia plus a few from South stream preservation using Plato, Archives and Library Sciences, Ionian America and Africa. EPrints and the Cloud. University, Corfu, Greece. The General Chairs were Sarantos Kapidakis and Nine workshops were also organised on Christos Papatheodorou and the Scenes from CLEF 2009 Workshop. 1 and 2 October, following the main Organizing Chair was Giannis conference: Tsakonas, all from Ionian University. • Digital Curation in the Human Sciences The Programme Chairs were Maristella • Digital Libraries: Interoperability, Best Agosti, University of Padua, Italy, and Practices and Modelling Foundations Jose Borbinha, Technical University of • Harvesting Metadata: Practices and Lisbon, Portugal. Challenges • 8th European Networked Knowledge The ECDL2009 proceedings are pub- Organisation Systems Workshop lished by Springer in the Lecture Notes • 2nd Workshop on Very Large Digital for Computer Science series. ECDL Libraries 2009 was sponsored by ERCIM. • BooksOnline '09: 2nd Workshop on Research Advances in Large Digital Link: http://www.ecdl2009.eu/ Book Collections; • Workshop on Exploring Musical Please contact: Information Spaces Christos Papatheodorou, Giannis • 9th International Web Archiving Tsakonas, Department of Archives Workshop and Library Sciences • 10th Cross-Language Evaluation Ionian University, Greece. Forum. E-mail: {papatheodor, gtsak}@ionio.gr

52 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 CLEF 2009 Tracks Conference on Digital Libraries. It was Evaluation, Best Practices and CLEF 2009 offered eight main tracks attended by 160 researchers and system Collaboration in the Multilingual designed to evaluate the performance of developers, who presented their experi- Information Access domain. The first systems for: ments and results in lively plenary, par- Calls for Proposals for the organisation • multilingual textual document allel, poster and breakout sessions. of Evaluation Labs and the preliminary retrieval (Ad Hoc) There were several invited talks. Noriko Call for Papers for the submission of sci- • interactive cross-language retrieval Kando, National Institute of Informatics entific papers to the Conference will be (iCLEF) Tokyo, reported on the “Evolution of posted on the TrebleCLEF website. • multiple language question answer- NTCIR”, an evaluation infrastructure ing (QA@CLEF) testing Information Access technologies Links: • cross-language retrieval in image for Asian languages) and Jaap Kamps of CLEF: http://www.clef-campaign.org collections (ImageCLEF) the University of Amsterdam presented NTCIR: http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/ • multilingual information filtering the main outcomes of a SIGIR workshop TrebleCLEF: http://www.trebleclef/eu (INFILE@CLEF) on the “Future of IR Evaluation”. Donna • cross-language video retrieval Harman, US National Institute of Please contact: (VideoCLEF) Standards and Technology, in a con- Carol Peters • intellectual property (CLEF-IP) cluding talk summed up what she felt ISTI-CNR, Italy – New this year were the main achievements of CLEF E-mail: [email protected] • log file analysis (LogCLEF) over these ten years of activity. – New this year. The presentations given at the CLEF An experimental pilot task was also 2009 Workshop and detailed reports on offered: the experiments of CLEF 2009 and pre- ACM Europe • Grid Experiments (Grid@CLEF). vious years can be found on the CLEF website. Launched In addition, CLEF collaborated in the organisation of Morpho Challenge 2009, CLEF 2010 – Conference On 8 October, the Association for an activity of the Pascal Network of on Multilingual and Multimedia Computing Machinery (ACM) Excellence. Information Access Evaluation highlighted its ACM Europe CLEF 2009 has represented an impor- initiative aimed at recognizing and A main result of the CLEF campaigns is tant milestone for the MLIA community. supporting European members and the creation of a number of valuable, After ten years of activity focused on ACM activities in the region, during reusable test collections consisting of stimulating the development MLIA sys- a special reception in Paris data in many languages and diverse tems and functionality through the honouring achievements in media (text, image, speech and video) organisation increasingly complex eval- European computer science. which are made available for system uation tasks, it is now time to assess benchmarking purposes. achievements and to identify priorities Hosted by ACM President, Wendy Hall for the future. For this reason, it has been and ACM Europe Council Chair Workshop decided to change the format for next Fabrizio Gagliardi, the reception As usual, this year’s workshop was held year. CLEF 2010 will take the form of brought together ACM Turing Award in conjunction with the European an independent, peer-reviewed winners from Europe, European win- Conference organised in conjunction ners of other major ACM awards, and with a set of Evaluation Labs, each run- ACM Europe Council Members. The ning experiments aimed at testing per- reception, which took place in conjunc- formance in MLIA-related areas. tion with Informatic Europe’s annual European Computer Science Summit The Conference will be held in Padua, (ECSS 2009), offered a showcase for Italy, September 2010, as a four day ACM’s effort to illuminate the role of event: The first two days will consist of computing in driving innovation as a plenary sessions in which keynote top priority in a global environment. speeches and peer-reviewed papers will be presented. The goals will be to ACM is the world’s largest educational explore current needs and practices for and scientific computing society, information access, study new evalua- uniting computing educators, tion metrics and methodologies, discuss researchers and professionals to inspire new directions for future activities in the dialogue, share resources and address European multilingual /multimodal IR the field’s most pressing challenges. Its system evaluation context. In Days 3 mission is to ensure a stronger collec- and 4, the results of the Labs will be pre- tive voice for the profession through sented in full and half-day workshops. thought leadership, promotion of the highest standards and the recognition of CLEF 2008 and 2009 have been spon- technical excellence, supporting the sored by the TrebleCLEF project: professional growth of its members by

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 53 Events

providing opportunities for life-long ACM, which serves a global community Second ENISA-FORTH learning, career development, and proof over 95,000, unites the world’s com- fessional networking. puting educators, researchers and pro- Summer School fessionals to deliberate ideas that consti- ACM Europe is spearheaded by fifteen tute the lifeblood of the global technical on Network and leading computer scientists from aca- community and disseminates the funda- demia and industry, who have recently mental discoveries in computing Information Security formed the ACM Europe Council, in through the ACM Digital Library, the order to expand ACM’s high-quality most comprehensive resource for The European Network and technical activities, con- Information Security Agency (ENISA) ferences, and services in and the Institute of Computer Science the European region. (ICS) of the Foundation for Research ACM President and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) have Professor Dame Wendy organized the 2nd ENISA-FORTH Hall said, “our goal is to Summer School on Network and share ACM’s vast array Information Security (NIS'09), in of valued resources and Heraklion, Crete, Greece, from 14-18 services on a global September 2009. This year’s theme scale. We want to dis- was "Privacy and Trust in a Networked cover the work and wel- World" with an exciting programme of come the talent from all invited lecturers that covered a range corners of the computing ACM President Wendy Hall. of topics extending beyond pure arena so that we are technological areas to economic, better positioned to policy, and legal issues. appreciate the key issues and challenges exploring the accumulated knowledge, within Europe’s academic, research, and defining also curricula and accreditation Network and Information Security professional computing communities standards for university computing pro- (NIS) has emerged as a fundamental and respond accordingly. For us, ACM grammes and working to strengthen the aspect of Information and Europe is about seeing leading European foundations of computing education at Communication Technologies (ICT) and computer scientists shape and enhance the pre-college level. its widespread adoption for improving what ACM does in Europe and for productivity, learning and leisure. While Europe”. ACM Europe Council Members include creating new opportunities for growth in Fabrizio Gagliardi, Director of External European economy and for improving Today’s ACM European contingent Research Programs, Microsoft quality of life for its citizens, constant includes more than 15,000 members and Research Europe (Chair); Andrew advances in ICT pose new challenges to over 100 chapters, as well as an ever- McGettrick, University of Strathclyde, NIS, requiring a high-level of alertness, growing number of ACM-sponsored Scotland; Marc Shapiro, INRIA and solid understanding of technology and conferences and symposia. The ACM LIP6, France; Thomas Hofmann, trends, and continuous adjustment of Europe Council will serve this growing Google EMEA, Zurich, Switzerland; strategic options. Therefore, raising constituency by increasing the number Gerhard Schimpf, Chair, German ACM awareness and understanding on the of chapters, particularly for students; Chapter, Pforzheim, Germany; issues involved in NIS is of paramount expanding interest in nominations for Alexander Wolf, Department of importance. In this perspective ENISA the many ACM professional awards and Computing, Imperial College London, and FORTH have jointly taken the ini- distinguished member grades; and UK; Gabriele Kotsis, Johannes Kepler tiative to set up and support this Summer engaging ACM’s Special Interest University of Linz, Austria; Jan van School. The Summer School aims at Groups to focus on Europe when plan- Leeuwen, Utrecht University, The providing a forum for experts in ning conferences and major events. Netherlands; Avi Mendelson, Microsoft Information Security, policy makers Research, Israel; Michel Beaudouin- from EU Member States and EU Fabrizio Gagliardi, ACM Europe Lafon, Universite Paris-Sud, France; Institutions, decision makers from the Council Chair and Director of External Burkhard Neidecker-Lutz, Research industry, as well as members of the Research Programs for Microsoft Division, SAP AG, Germany; Bertrand research and academic community, to Research Europe, hailed the intent of Meyer, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Paul interact on cutting-edge and ground ACM’s European aim of illuminating Spirakis, University of Patras and the breaking topics in Network and the role of computing in driving innova- Greek Computer Technologies Institute, Information Security. tion in a global environment. “By Greece; Wendy Hall, University of strengthening ACM’s ties in the region Southampton, UK (ACM President); The 3rd NIS Summer School on and raising awareness of its many bene- Mateo Valero, Technical University of “Privacy and Security in the Future fits and resources with public and Catalonia, Spain. Internet”, co-organized by ENISA and European decision-makers, we can play FORTH, will be held between 13-17 an active role in the critical technical, September 2010 in Heraklion, Crete, educational, and social issues that sur- More information: Greece. The "Future Internet" promises round the computing community,” he ACM Europe: http://europe.acm.org an exciting world: new services, new said. ACM: www.acm.org infrastructures, and new capabilities at

54 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 all levels. Devices that will automati- • Mobile growth is continuing unabat- Overall, though, the general feeling at cally exchange information to facilitate ed, with global mobile subscriptions TELECOM 2009 is one of great opti- users, services that take into account expected to reach 4.6 billion by the mism and the belief, for example, that information from different and multiple end of this year, and mobile broad- ICT will be a major contributor to sources, protocols and systems that are band subscriptions to top 600 mil- increasing the wellbeing in developing able to handle complex interactions. At lion in 2009, having overtaken fixed countries. the same time, however, concerns about broadband subscribers in 2008. privacy and security increase for indi- Links: viduals, organizations, and the society in • More than a quarter of the world’s http://www.itu.int/WORLD2009/ general. Where should responsibility be population is online and using the http://www.itu.int/ITU- placed and how should solutions be Internet, also as of 2009. Ever- D/ict/material/Telecom09_flyer.pdf enforced and verified in a world of com- increasing numbers of users are opt- http://www.itu.int/crisis2009 plex infrastructures and services? The ing for high-speed Internet access, 3rd Summer School on Network and with fixed broadband subscriber num- Information Security (NIS'10) will bers more than tripling from 150 mil- cover topics that address technical, lion in 2004 to an estimated 500 mil- legal, and policy issues in this emerging lion by the end of 2009. world. • ITU estimates show that three quar- Celebration More information: ters of households now own a televi- http://www.nis-summer-school.eu sion set and over a quarter of people of Ten Years W3C globally – some 1.9 billion – now Please contact: have access to a computer at home. Greece Office Demosthenes Ikonomou This demonstrates the huge market ENISA, Greece potential in developing countries, In the context of the 10-year long E-mail: where TV penetration is already high, presence of the World Wide Web [email protected] for converged devices, as the mobile, Consortium (W3C) in Greece, the W3C television and Internet worlds collide. Greece Office held an event on Angelos Bilas September 16th, 2009 in Heraklion, FORTH-ICS, Greece A key question is what to do about the Crete, at ICS-FORTH, where the office E-mail: [email protected] current general economic crisis. In is hosted. The W3C Greece Office, another report released, “Confronting which is among the first five offices to the Crisis: ICT Stimulus Plans for join the World Wide Web Consortium, Economic Growth,” it is convincingly shares the consortium’s goals and Excitement from the argued that relatively small investments vision and contributes towards the in ITC result in substantial increases in a improvement and participation of the ITU TELECOM WORLD country’s gross domestic product. Greek community in the evolution of the World Wide Web. 2009 Conference One conference session dealt with ICT stimulus stories from around the world. The celebration event took place in the by Harry Rudin The world not only has economic prob- context of the ENISA-FORTH Summer lems - there was a widespread feeling School, co-organized by the European These days, the air is typically full of that ICT will help with other problems Network and Information Security discouraging economic news. In such as making the provision of health Agency (ENISA) and FORTH. The goal contrast, the atmosphere at the ITU services more efficient and helping to was to strengthen the ties between the TELECOM WORLD 2009 Conference relieve the world’s environmental prob- W3C Members in Greece and their in Geneva, 5 - 9 October, 2009, was lems through energy conservation and acquaintance with the managerial and up-beat and rippling with energy and perhaps even climate control. research staff of W3C, FORTH and excitement. Relevant to this issue of ENISA, as well as to exchange views on ERCIM News, there was considerable One of the sessions on green ICT dealt current, crucial matters regarding the interest in Green ICT. with the cataloging of different World Wide Web. The talks given at the approaches for saving the energy celebration covered a broad range of Compared with most other branches, the required by ICT. Another session dealt subjects ranging from effective content Information and Communication with applications of ICT such as in smart recommendation in social sites to Web Technology (ICT) industry is doing homes, smart appliances, smart trans- security. well. The resultant enthusiasm was very portation, and smart energy grids. much in evidence at the International The introductory talk was given by Klaus Telecommunications Union (ITU) Of course there are also problems Birkenbihl, coordinator of W3C's TELECOM WORLD 2009 conference. resulting from ICT such as child protec- International Offices Program, who gave At the conference, the ITU released sev- tion in cyberspace, protection of prop- a brief history of W3C and discussed its eral reports; here are some observations erty rights and even the danger of war in most prominent technologies, such as taken from one of them, “The World in cyberspace. These topics were also dis- HTML, XML and RDF that have affected 2009 - ICT Facts and Figures”: cussed at length. the course of development of the Web.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 55 Events

Dr. Sihem Amer-Yahia, Senior Research CALL FOR PAPERS Scientist at Yahoo! Labs, discussed information presentation of (possibly 40th International large) ranked datasets in two contexts: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION recommendations in social content sites Symposium on and online search of structured datasets. Privacy on the Web: Multiple-Valued Logic Dr. Giorgos Flouris, Research and W3C Organizes Development Engineer at the Institute of Barcelona, Spain, 26-28 May 2010 Computer Science of FORTH, presented Workshop on Access work on detecting high level changes for The Multiple-Valued Logic Technical Semantic Web Data. He argued that Control Application Committee of the IEEE Computer dynamic ontologies are a key technology Society will hold its 40th annual sympo- for the Semantic Web, and discussed an Scenarios sium on 26-28 2010 in Casa approach for an 'a posteriori' detection of Convalescència, Barcelona, Spain. The ontology changes. Luxembourg, 17-18 November 2009 event is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, and is organized by Finally, Dr Sotiris Ioannidis, Associate W3C invites people to participate in a the Artificial Intelligence Research Researcher at the Institute of Computer Workshop on Access Control Institute of the Spanish National Science of FORTH, discussed typical Application Scenarios on 17-18 Research Council (IIIA-CSIC), the vulnerabilities attackers use to compro- November 2009 in Luxembourg. This University of Barcelona, the mise Web systems and services and pre- workshop is intended to explore Autonomous University of Barcelona, sented state of the art methods for tack- evolving application scenarios for and the University of Lleida. ling these vulnerabilities. access control technologies, such as XACML. Results from a number of You are invited to submit an original Links: recent European research projects in the paper, survey or tutorial paper on any http://www.w3c.gr/ grid, cloud computing, and privacy areas subject in the area of multiple-valued http://www.w3.org show overlapping use cases for these logic, including but not limited to: technologies that extend beyond clas- Please contact: sical intra-enterprise applications. The Algebra and Formal Aspects, ATPG and Eleni Orphanoudaki Workshop, co-financed by the European SAT, Automatic Reasoning, Circuit/ Tel.: +30 2810 391702 Commission 7th framework program Device Implementation, Communi- E-mail: [email protected] via the PrimeLife project, is free of cation Systems, Computer Arithmetic, charge and open to anyone, subject to Data Mining, Fuzzy Systems and Soft Irini Fundulaki review of their statement of interest and Computing, Image Processing, Logic Head and Coordinator of the Greek space availability. Position papers are Design and Switching Theory, Logic W3C Office due 23 October. Programming, Machine Learning and Tel.: +30 2810 391725 Robotics, Mathematical Fuzzy Logic, E-mail: [email protected] More information: Nano Technology, Philosophical http://www.w3.org/2009/policy- Aspects, Quantum Computing, Signal ws/cfp.html Processing, Spectral Techniques, Privacy Activity: Verification. http://www.w3.org/Privacy/ Authors should submit papers by 1 November 2009.

Invited speakers: Events sponsored by ERCIM in 2010 • Joao Marques-Silva, University Col- lege Dublin, Ireland ERCIM sponsors three conferences in 2010: • Claudio Moraga, European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain • The 35th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, • Daniele Mundici, University of Flo- hosted by the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, rence, Italy. 23-27 August 2010 http://mfcsl2010.fi.muni.cz/mfcs More information: http://www2.iiia.csic.es/conferences/ • The 11th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2010), hosted by FORTH, ismvl2010/ Crete, Greece 5-11 September 2010 http://www.ics.forth.gr/eccv2010/intro.php

• SAFECOMP 2010 - 29th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, Vienna, Austria, 14-17 September 2010 http://www.ocg.at/safecomp2010.html; http://www.safecomp.org

56 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION • J de Dios and R. Pena: ‘A Certified For the latest information on FMweek, Implementation on top of the Java see http://www.win.tue.nl/fmweek. FMICS 2009 - Virtual Machine’ • S. Evangelista and L. M. Kristensen: Organisation 14th Intl. ERCIM ‘Dynamic State Space Partitioning for • PC co-Chairs:María Alpuente (T. U. External and Distributed Model Valencia, Spain) and Byron Cook Workshop on Formal Checking’ (Microsoft, UK) • A. Goodloe and C. Munoz: • Workshop Chair: Christophe Joubert Methods for Industrial ‘Compositional Verification of a (T. U. Valencia, Spain). Communication Protocol for a Critical Systems Remotely Operated Vehicle’ More information: • J. Mariño, Á. Herranz, M. Carro and http://users.dsic.upv.es/workshops/ Eindhoven, The Netherlands, J. J. Moreno-Navarro: ‘Formal fmics2009/ 2-3 November 2009 modeling of concurrent systems with shared resources’ The aim of the FMICS workshop series • P. Parizek and T. Kalibera: ‘Platform- is to provide a forum for researchers Specific Restrictions on Concurrency CALL FOR PARTICIPATION who are interested in the development in Model Checking of Java Programs’ and application of formal methods in • M. Raffelsieper, M. Reza Mousavi, MLIA Technology industry. In particular, these workshops J.-W. Roorda, C. Strolenberg and H. are intended to bring together scientists Zantema: ‘Formal Analysis of Non- Transfer Day and practitioners who are active in the Determinism in Verilog Cell Library area of formal methods and interested Simulation Models’ Berlin, Germany, 8 December 2009 in exchanging their experiences in the • E. Schierboom, A. Tamalet, H. Tews, industrial usage of these methods. M. van Eekelen and S. Smetsers: The aim of the MLIA Technology These workshops also strive to promote ‘Preemption Abstraction: a Transfer Day is to facilitate a two-way research and development for the Lightweight Approach to Modelling communication of research priorities, improvement of formal methods and Concurrency’ advances and results between tools for industrial applications. • K. J. Turner and K. Leai Larry Tan: researchers, software developers and ‘A Rigorous Methodology for Com- users. Invited Speakers posing Services’. This year, FMICS will feature four out- The event will begin with the presenta- standing invited speakers - two out- Accepted Posters tion of a set of Best Practice recommen- standing scientists and two prominent • A. Ferrari, A. Fantechi, S. Bacherini dations in the areas of MLIA System industrialists working in top companies and N. Zingoni: Development and Search Assistance, with an emphasis on formal methods for ‘Formal Development for Railway Test Collection Creation, Evaluation critical systems : Signaling Using Commercial Tools’ Methodologies and Language • Dino Distefano, Queen Mary, Univ. • N. Izerrouken, M. Pantel, X. Thiri- Processing Technologies. London, UK: “Attacking Large oux and O. Ssi yan kai: Industrial Code with Bi-Abductive ‘Integrated Formal Approach for Key speakers from the business and Inference” Qualified Critical Embedded Code application communities will present • Diego Latella, ISTI-CNR, Italy: “On Generator’ their experiences, requirements and a Uniform Framework for the Defini- • L. Ladenberger, J. Bendisposto and problems with respect to Multilingual tion of Stochastic Process Lan- M. Leuschel: Information Access. guages” ‘Visualizing Event-B models with • Thierry Lecomte, ClearSy, France: BMotionStudio’ There will also be a demo session and a “Applying a Formal Method in • A. Mathijssen, Y. S. Usenko and D. panel discussion on the current state of Industry: a 15-year trajectory” Bosnacki: the art, focusing on those areas where • Ken McMillan, Cadence, USA: ‘Behavioural Analysis of an I2C the application communities have prob- “What's in common between Test, Linux Driver lems in identifying the best solutions for Model checking, and Decision Proce- • W. Mostowski, E. Poll, J. Schmaltz, their particular requirements. dures?” J. Tretmans and R. Wichers Schreur:‘Model-Based Testing of The MLIA Technology Day will be held Accepted Papers Electronic Passports’ at the World Alliance Center in Berlin. • J. B. Almeida, M. Barbosa, J. Sousa • L. Panizo, M. M. Gallardo, P. Merino Join us for an in-depth discussion on key Pinto and B. Vieira: ‘Correctness and A. Linares: issues in the Multilingual Information with respect to reference ‘Developing a decision support tool Access domain. Participation is free of implementations’ for Dam management with SPIN’ charge but places are limited. Register • D. Delmas, E. Goubault, S. Putot, J. now at the URL given below. The event Souyris, K. Tekkal and F. FMICS 2009 is part of the first Formal is promoted by the TrebleCLEF project. Védrine:‘Towards an industrial use Methods Week (FMweek), which will of FLUCTUAT on safety-critical bring together a choice of events in the More information: avionics software’ area. http://celct.isti.cnr.it/MLIA-Day/

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 57 Events

Sponsored by ERCIM omnipresent, communicating and coop- and utilities. Different application erating, interacting with each other, domains as well as generic, cross SAFECOMP 2010 - humans and environment. The primary domain issues may be covered. issue is to cope with complexity and The 29th International new paradigms of failure modes and Papers are invited in application and resource management, due to shrinking industrial sectors as well as research Conference on feature size, multi-core systems on chip areas. and management of multiple variants Computer Safety, while maintaining dependability proper- Important dates ties and robustness of systems. • Abstract submission: 8 February 2010 Reliability and Security • Full paper submission: 8 March 2010 The topic includes purely scientific/ • Tutorial/Workshop proposal submis- Vienna, Austria, 14-17 September 2010 technical as well as societal aspects. It sion: 6 April 2010 concerns (explicitly used or hidden) • Notification of acceptance: 10 May Since it was established in 1979, SAFE- devices, services, infrastructures, 2010 COMP has contributed to the progress of machines, transport systems, robots etc. the state-of-the-art in dependable appli- It also involves raising awareness for Accepted papers will appear in the con- cation of computers in safety-related and rare circumstances under which, ference proceedings published by safety-critical systems. SAFECOMP is because of an unlucky combination of Springer-Verlag in the series Lecture an annual event covering the state-of- conditions, a normally non-critical Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). the-art, experience and new trends in the system may endanger life, as may be the areas of safety, security and reliability of case when relying too much on past cor- Extensions of the best papers will be critical computer applications. rect operation. Therefore, a holistic view considered for publication in a Special is required. The conference will cover Issue of the International Journal on The Key Theme of Safecomp 2010 is research in all related areas, industrial Reliability Engineering and System Critical Embedded Systems Challenges experience and practice, reports from Safety (RESS) published by Elsevier. and Risks. The emphasis of this event is interesting R&D projects, studies, stan- to take a look at critical embedded sys- dardization issues, assessment, evalua- More information: tems which are already almost tion and certification of systems, tools http://www.ocg.at/safecomp2010.html

ERCIM Endorses “Enabling Open Scholarship”

As a signatory of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Membership Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, ERCIM endorses EOS membership is for senior institutional managers who have an “Enabling Open Scholarship”, an organisation with the mission to interest in, and wish to help develop thinking on, strategies for pro- promote open access, open education, open science and open inno- moting open scholarship to the academy as a whole and to society at vation. large.

Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) is an organisation for universi- The EOS website is a resource open to all. It provides background ties and research institutions worldwide. The organisation is both an information, data and guidance material on open scholarship- information service and a forum for raising and discussing issues related issues. There is an area of the site that is accessible to mem- around the mission of modern universities and research institutions, bers only where members can find announcements, news and dis- particularly with regard to the creation, dissemination and preserva- cussions. tion of research findings. The aim of EOS is to further the opening What does EOS offer? up of scholarship and research that we are now seeing through the EOS offers an outreach service to universities and research insti- growing open access, open data, open education, open science and tutes - whether members or not - that need help, advice, guidance or open innovation movements. These, and other, 'open' approaches to information on open scholarship issues. EOS does this through their scholarship are changing the way research and learning are done Web site resource and also by providing information on an indi- and there are profound implications for universities and research vidual basis to institutions that need it. institutions. EOS has been established to help guide developments and to assist others in understanding the issues and their implica- The EOS board is composed of people who have personally insti- tions. gated the kinds of changes in their own institutions that herald the benefits of the open scholarly communication system of the future. Enabling Open Scholarship provides the higher education and This expertise is available for others to tap into. Institutional man- research sectors around the world with information on develop- agers who would like guidance or advice on developing policies ments and with advice and guidance on implementing policies and and procedures can request help from EOS in developing policy and processes that encourage the opening up of scholarship. It also pro- procedures in their own institution. vides a forum for discussion and debate amongst its members and will be taking that discussion into the wider community. More information: http://www.openscholarship.org

58 ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 In Brief

UK Government Moves 1971) and provide today interesting reading about the visions and plans of that time. to Put Data on the Web The celebration included a retrospective keynote by The Office of the Prime Minister in the UK announced in Christiane Floyd, University Hamburg, on the changes to June 2009 that Tim Berners-Lee will “help drive opening of informatics over the years and a future oriented keynote by access to Government data on the Web over the coming Johann Eder, University Klagenfurt, on ‚Grand Challenges months.” The announcement is an important step in helping in Informatics’. Additionally four pioneers from academia, to fulfill the vision for a Web of Linked Open Data built on four visionaries from academia, and six high ranking indus- W3C's open Semantic Web standards, exposed by Berners- trial specialists were interviewed on stage as to the history, Lee in his TED 2009 talk (http://www.ted.com/index.php/ status and future of computer science. talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html). “Government data - the people’s data - is an important component to the A Festschrift (in German) containing both the material from larger Linked Open Data movement,” said Berners-Lee. “I the celebration and additional historical material on the look forward to working with multiple government agencies development of Informatics Curricula will be available in and local enthusiasts to help early adopters bring their data to fall 2009 from the Austrian Computer Society at the bigger picture.” In April, Berners-Lee engaged similarly http://www.ocg.at. with the US government offering to help them join the “rapidly growing Linked Open Data cloud, to which US recovery data will be a welcome addition.” W3C's own eGovernment Interest Group has also been actively building an interna- ERCIM Cor Baayen Award Winner tional network of support to work with governments on issues of transparency, accountability, and efficiency through Named Top Young Innovator open data. by MIT Technology Review More about W3C's eGovernment activities at: http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/

40 Years Informatics Curricula in Austria

In 1969 the first official informatics curricula were started in Austria. This anniversary was celebrated at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in April 2009. The Austrian universities celebrated this event together with 300 attendees. In Photo: Sara Arnald 1969, university curricula were initiated via law and the Johannes Kepler University Linz began with the first official Adam Dunkels, senior scientist at SICS, Sweden, has been computer science curriculum in October 1969, soon fol- recognized by MIT Technology Review magazine as one of lowed by other Austrian universities. In spring 1971 a large the world’s top innovators under the age of 35 for his work workshop was hosted by the Ministry of Science in order to on Internet-connectivity for embedded systems and wireless define and design computer science courses: The results sensors. Selected from more than 300 nominees by a panel of were collected in a 180-strong proceeding volume (Stetter, expert judges and the editorial staff of Technology Review, H. and Weinmann A.:Informatik - Aspekte und the TR35 is an elite group of accomplished young innovators Studienmodelle - Symposium zur Vorbereitung einer neuen who exemplify the spirit of innovation. Studienrichtung in Österreich, Publication Series of the Technical University Wien, Springer Vienna-New York, Adam Dunkels is known for his minimal software that allows any device to be connected to the Internet. His software is used by hundreds of companies including Cisco, BMW, NASA, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, and ABB, in such diverse applications as air planes, car engines, satel- lites, and TV set top boxes. In 2008, he received numerous awards for his work, including the Xerox Chester Carlson prize, the ACM EuroSys Roger Needham award, and the ERCIM Cor Baayen award. Adam Dunkels is one of the founders of the IPSO Alliance, which TIME Magazine ranked as one of the most important innovations of 2008.

Additional information about past and present TR35 winners and judges is available at www.technologyreview.com/tr35/. Christiane Floyd and Johann Eder. View winner Adam Dunkels in the TR35 Listing.

ERCIM NEWS 79 October 2009 59 ERCIM – the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of European research and development, in information technology and applied mathematics. Its national member institutions aim to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry.

ERCIM is the European Host of the World Wide Web Consortium.

Austrian Association for Research in IT Irish Universities Association c/o Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft c/o School of Computing, Dublin City University Wollzeile 1-3, A-1010 Wien, Austria Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland http://www.aarit.at/ http://ercim.computing.dcu.ie/

Norwegian University of Science and Technology Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, ISTI-CNR Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa, Electrical Engineering, N 7491 Trondheim, Norway Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy http://www.ntnu.no/ http://www.isti.cnr.it/

Portuguese ERCIM Grouping Czech Research Consortium c/o INESC Porto, Campus da FEUP, for Informatics and Mathematics Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, nº 378, FI MU, Botanicka 68a, CZ-602 00 Brno, Czech Republic 4200-465 Porto, Portugal http://www.utia.cas.cz/CRCIM/home.html ÿ Polish Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Wydział Matematyki, Informatyki i Mechaniki, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, ul. Banacha 2, 02-097 Warszawa, Poland Science Park 123, http://www.plercim.pl/ NL-1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands http://www.cwi.nl/ Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Danish Research Association for Informatics and Mathematics Harwell Science and Innovation Campus c/o Aalborg University, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom Selma Lagerlöfs Vej 300, 9220 Aalborg East, Denmark http://www.scitech.ac.uk/ http://www.danaim.dk/ Spanish Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, D3301, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Fonds National de la Recherche Campus de Montegancedo s/n, 6, rue Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, B.P. 1777 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain, L-1017 Luxembourg-Kirchberg http://www.sparcim.es/ http://www.fnr.lu/

Swedish Institute of Computer Science FWO FNRS Box 1263, Egmontstraat 5 rue d’Egmont 5 SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden B-1000 Brussels, Belgium B-1000 Brussels, Belgium http://www.sics.se/ http://www.fwo.be/ http://www.fnrs.be/

Swiss Association for Research in Information Technology Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas c/o Professor Daniel Thalmann, EPFL-VRlab, Institute of Computer Science CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland P.O. Box 1385, GR-71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece http://www.sarit.ch/ http://www.ics.forth.gr/ FORTH

Fraunhofer ICT Group Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Friedrichstr. 60 Számítástechnikai és Automatizálási Kutató Intézet 10117 Berlin, Germany P.O. Box 63, H-1518 Budapest, Hungary http://www.iuk.fraunhofer.de/ http://www.sztaki.hu/

Institut National de Recherche en Informatique Technical Research Centre of Finland et en Automatique PO Box 1000 B.P. 105, F-78153 Le Chesnay, France FIN-02044 VTT, Finland http://www.inria.fr/ http://www.vtt.fi/

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