HiPEAC Vision 2015 HIGH PERFORMANCE AND EMBEDDED ARCHITECTURE AND COMPILATION Editorial board: Marc Duranton, Koen De Bosschere, Albert Cohen, Jonas Maebe, Harm Munk This document was produced as a deliverable of the FP7 HiPEAC Network of Excellence under grant agreement 287759. January 2015 The editorial board is indebted to Dr Max Lemke and to Dr Sandro D’Elia of the Complex Systems and Advanced Computing unit of the Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission for their active support to this work. © 2015 HiPEAC CONTENTS contents 3.3. TECHNOLOGY 29 SILICON-BASED TECHNOLOGY: MORE AND MORE ROADBLOCKS 29 executive summary PROPOSED COURSE OF ACTIONS 31 STORAGE 39 1. introduction 1 COMMUNICATION 40 FACING A NEW SOFTWARE CRISIS AND ITS COURSE OF ACTION 43 2. about challenges, context and actions 3 2.1. PRIMARY CHALLENGES 4 4. the position of europe 49 DEPENDABILITY BY DESIGN 4 4.1. STRENGTHS 49 MANAGING SYSTEM COMPLEXITY 5 STRONG EMBEDDED ECOSYSTEM 49 ENERGY EFFICIENCY 5 PUBLIC FUNDING FOR R&D AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 49 ENTANGLEMENT BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND VIRTUAL WORLD 6 ONE OF THE BIGGEST MARKETS 50 2.2. SECONDARY CHALLENGES 6 GOOD EDUCATION 50 MULTIDISCIPLINARY 6 4.2. WEAKNESSES 51 HOLISTIC 7 EUROPE IS FULL OF HORIZONTAL SPECIALISATION 51 TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 7 LOSS OF COMPETITIVENESS IN SOME DOMAINS 51 MATURITY LEVEL 8 BORDERS AND DIFFERENT LANGUAGES 51 2.3. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS 9 WEAK ACADEMIA-INDUSTRY LINK 51 ON THE RESEARCH CONTENT OF EU PROJECTS 9 EUROPE IS WEAK ON COMMERCIALISATION 51 ON THE IMPACT OF EU PROJECTS 9 EUROPE LACKS A SILICON VALLEY 51 ON THE VISIBILITY OF EU PROJECTS 9 4.3. OPPORTUNITIES 51 COST EFFECTIVE CUSTOMISATION 51 3. rationale: change keeps accelerating 11 LEVERAGING FREE/CHEAP/OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE 52 3.1. SOCIETY 11 SOCIETAL CHALLENGES 52 MISUSE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MIGHT DESTROY CONVERGENCE 52 OUR PRIVACY 11 MICRO- AND NANO-ELECTRONICS 52 GOVERNMENTS WANT TO CONTROL THEIR (AND OTHERS) 4.4. THREATS 52 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 13 COMPETING WITH FREE/CHEAP/OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE 52 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MIGHT EVENTUALLY DESTROY FINANCIAL CRISIS 53 MORE JOBS THAN IT CREATES 14 AGEING POPULATION AND SHRINKING WORK FORCE 53 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY WILL HAVE AN INCREASING IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT 15 5. glossary and abbreviations 55 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY WILL BRING IMPROVED EFFICIENCY TO SOLVE SOCIETAL CHALLENGES 16 6. references 59 FULFILLING HUMAN NEEDS THANKS TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 18 7. process 64 3.2. MARKET 20 VERTICALISATION IS PROGRESSING 20 8. acknowledgements 65 THE MARKET CARES ABOUT APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES, NOT ABOUT PLATFORMS 21 NO MORE CLOUDLESS DAYS 21 COMPUTING BUILDS ON INTERACTION + REACTION 23 COMPUTING BECOMES INCREASINGLY COGNITIVE 25 HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING: FROM BIG-DATA TO EXAFLOP COMPUTING 28 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY If there is one thing that characterizes the development of technology on these processes may become possible, again, information technology, it is the unrelenting, always accelerating through the Internet of Things. change. Computing systems keep pervading society deeper and Finally, Cyber-Physical Systems and robotic systems, whereby deeper, and have acquired a strong foothold in everyday life. The humans, computers and the physical world interact, will enable smartphone and tablet revolution, which was enabled by the assisting or replacing human actors in dangerous, tedious, or wide availability of Internet access, has made life without dirty jobs. These systems still need a considerable amount of information technology unthinkable. With the Internet of Things research and development, might rely on cloud resources, and on the doorstep, we are facing the challenge of the exponential will necessitate measures to protect the privacy and security of growth of the amount of online data. With the advent of Cyber- their users. Physical Systems, computing systems are not just monitoring, but actively controlling parts of the world around us. Finding CHALLENGES AND ACTIONS one’s way in the growing amount of data and determining a course of action requires cognitive systems that can make DEPENDABILITY, SECURITY decisions based on available information much faster than Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things require the humans can. highest possible levels of security, safety and reliability for their Yet, some of the key technologies that have fuelled the exponen tial adoption. In particular, security has to become one of the primary growth of computing systems seem to be heading for a wall design features of whole systems. Systems have to be dependable dictated by physical limits, creating serious technological by design. challenges for computing power, storage capacity and commu- nication speed: we are nearing the end of the information MANAGING SYSTEM COMPLEXITY technology world as we know it. Society has become almost In information science, we are entering the era of systems of completely dependent on information technology. In reaction to systems, with the accompanying exponential growth in complexity. several breaches of trust and integrity, society is increasingly We need new system paradigms, such as reactive systems and concerned about privacy and security. To address these issues, we feed back systems to manage this increase in overall complexity. need a holistic view of the complete system, both of hardware and software. Designing trustworthy systems will require better POWER AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY security tools. Europe, with its strong presence in software We need to overcome energy as the limiting factor for increasing security and with one leading processor architecture is well system performance. Instead of over-designing systems and positioned to play a prominent role here. targeting best effort, we need to design methodologies and tools Information technology is accelerating the replacement of jobs, that allow for systems to scale to the desired Quality of Service. particularly middle class ones, by computers and robots. Depen- We need to investigate methods that allow for information flow ding on society’s ability to create new jobs as has happened in the and optimization across system layers. Instead of being locked-in past, this may either result in a shift to different jobs or in a silicon-based Von-Neumann architectures, we need to investigate growing unemployment rate. However, as compared to the past, other architectures based on alternative technologies, such as the pace of technological development is still accelerating, neuromorphic architectures, Bayesian systems, etc. allowing society less and less time to adapt. This will require considerable flexibility from the educational system, policy ENTANGLEMENT BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND makers, legal frameworks and unions, to name just a few. VIRTUAL WORLD The human race is increasingly depleting Earth’s resources. The Information systems will sense, monitor, and even control the production of ICT devices, for example, has an almost insatiable physical world via Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of hunger for rare elements. On the other hand, information techno- Things. Dealing with large amounts of unstructured data will logy also, increasingly, has the ability to optimize the usage of require new approaches to bridge the gap between the physical scarce resources, ranging from real-time tailoring of energy world and computer systems. As these systems also exercise produc tion to consumption, to recycling and the reusing of control over the physical world, safety is a fundamental concern equipment. Further unleashing the power of information and becomes a primary design constraint. executive summary i MULTIDISCIPLINARY ON POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS Information systems have moved out of the realm of computer science and moved into the hands of experts in other disciplines. RESEARCH PROJECT CONTENT Yet, many systems still need to be adapted to the human-in-the- Experience from participants of past and current European loop paradigm, letting knowledgeable experts concentrate on projects indicates a concern over the protection of intellectual the what-to-solve instead of the how-to-solve. This requires a property rights in projects. Based on those concerns, we multidisciplinary approach to application development. recommend careful examination of IP rights in projects, especially in the light of the business models of the project participants. HOLISTIC Additionally, IP rights containment is less problematic with a Systems are becoming distributed systems-of-systems of hetero- limited number of project participants. Therefore we recommend geneous architectures with a wide variety of applications and that some projects can have a limited number of participants, communication infrastructure. To make effective and especially possibly even bilateral concerning IP rights. efficient use of such complex architectures, we have to develop Many participants recommend focusing projects on topics that holistic approaches to system design, allowing for non-functional seek to develop basic, non-discriminative technology, or projects information flow to enable (dynamic) optimizations. that pursue technology development that is too expensive to be carried out by a single company. TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION Several technologies that have fuelled the exponential perfor- PROJECT IMPACT mance growth of computer systems in the past decades are The HiPEAC community is typically involved in development at facing physical walls. We need to develop new, disruptive