“Electronic devices, such as mobile phones or autonomous vehicles, collect a great deal of data each day,” explains the head of the working group in Bremen, Professor Rolf Drechsler. Said data must then be analyzed and processed quickly and reliably. This information is then used to derive new knowledge that can be applied to autonomous, technical systems, amongst other things. An example for this is autonomous driving. “These processes require extremely high-performing electronics that can fulfil their tasks particularly efficiently,” says Drechsler. That is why we need solutions that make special optimization in specific areas of applicability possible. “We can mainly achieve this by teaching the processor, which practically is the computational center of the electronics, new commands that are specially made to fit the area of application,” states the computer scientist. The Computer Architecture working group at the University of Bremen and its 18 partners are working on this in the collaborative research project Scale4Edge. The partners are using the so-called RISC-V command set that is recognized in expert circles. In the field, a command set is understood to mean the amount of commands that the computer directly understands. The RISC-V command set has features that speed up the computer but still reduce the costs and energy consumption. It is on this basis that Scale4Edge will create a development platform with which the data from electronic devices can be analyzed and processed in a quick and reliable manner. The platform is to be open to all users that work in this field and is to work dependably and in an energy efficient way.
Bremen Working Group Functions like TÜV
Drechsler’s working group is responsible for the quality assurance in the project. The group is developing methods for testing and verification of the development platform so that the analysis and further processing of the data from electronic devices can be carried out without any errors. “We are taking on the function of the TÜV, so to speak,” says Drechsler. The fact that the working group has this particular task is down to their competence in this field. The researchers from the University of Bremen are the worldwide leaders on this specialist topic. The Bremen scientists will be using previous research completed on RISC-V by working group members Dr. Daniel Große and Dr. Vladimir Herdt. Said work was accepted well by the expert community and has led to more than ten publications in the past two years – some of which were at the top conferences for system design, such as the Design Automation Conference (DAC) and Design Automation and test in Europe (DATE).
The Scale4Edge project is being funded with roughly 16 million euros over three years by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the “Flagship Initiative for Secure Electronics” (Leitinitiative für sichere Elektronik). The Computer Architecture working group at the University of Bremen will receive around one million euros.
Further Information:
www.bmbf.de/de/karliczek-mit-vertrauenswuerdiger-elektronik-zu-mehr-technologischer-souveraenitaet-11768.html (in German only)
www.elektronikforschung.de/projekte/zuse-scale4edge (in German only)
http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/agra/eng/index.php
Contact:
Prof.Dr. Rolf Drechsler
Computer Architecture Working Group
Faculty of Mathematics/Computer Science
University of Bremen
Phone: +49 (0)421 218-63932
Email: drechslerprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
