61

Future Real-Time Safety-Critical RISC-V Computers

A holistic approach for Cyber-Physical Systems of Systems

Welcome to the virtual Computing Systems Week

Join

the HiPEAC

virtual

events

OCTOBER 2020

Innovation Europe The impact of COVID-19 on the HiPEAC Jobs Portal

EPEEC Programming Guidelines for Parallel Applications

4 11 12

contents

3 WelcomeKoen De Bosschere

4 Innovation Europe First Milestones towards Future Real-Time Safety-Critical

RISC-V Computers

6 Innovation Europe AMPERE: A holistic approach for real-time, high-

performance and energy-efficient Cyber-Physical Systems of Systems

8 Innovation Europe SMART4ALL is a four-year innovation action promoting

marketplace-as-a-service in South East Europe

10 Innovation Europe HENSOLDT Cyber presents MiG-V, the first RISC-V

Processor “Made in Germany“ for Security Applications

11 Peac Performance EPEEC Programming Guidelines for Parallel Applications -

Increasing application developers’ productivity

12 HiPEAC futures Impact of Covid-19 on HiPEAC Jobs Portal

14 HiPEAC futures Acaces 2020 Career Session

16 HiPEAC futures Three-minute thesis

17 News Simulating COVID-19 and flu spread using HiDALGO

Or how technology can support decision-making for an effective response to a pandemic

17 News CPS Convergence and Society

18 News Welcome to the virtual Computing Systems Week hosted

by Tampere University

19 News Afterthoughs on the ACACES2021 virtual summer school

20 HiPEAC Conference 18-20 January 2021, Budapets

HiPEAC is the European network on high performance embedded architecture and compilation.

hipeac.net @hipeac hipeac.net/linkedin

HiPEAC has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 871174.

Cover image: Laura Vanzo, Visit Tampere

Design: www.magelaan.be

Editor: Rebecca Gorby & Vicky Wandels

Email: communication@hipeac.net

HiPEACINFO 612

Afterthoughs on the ACACES2021 virtual summer school

Virtual Computing Systems Week hosted by Tampere University

Acaces 2020 Career Session

14 1918The word of the year 2020 will probably be COVID-19. It started like yet another

virus, but after some time, it became clear that it was the so-called “big one”. COVID-

19 became a humbling wake-up call. We sometimes believe that we are the masters of

the universe, but we are not. A particle of 100 nm was, in no time, able to change the

lifestyle of seven billion people on planet Earth, caused more than one million of deaths,

ended thousands of businesses, and even changed the course of elections. The impact

of the virus is on a par with the impact of a major natural disaster. Eventually, we will

outsmart the virus with a vaccine, but it will take at least another year before the virus

is under control. Inoculating seven billion people (twice) is no small task. Even at a rate

of one shot per minute, it will take more than 100 000 person years, and depending

on immunity response, this process might have to be repeated regularly. This means

that unfortunately, COVID-19-related issues will not disappear the day after the first

vaccines become widely available.

By the time we will have acquired enough immunity, the world will have changed:

new leaders will be in power, new businesses will have emerged, millions of people will

have changed jobs, and the world economy will have evolved. Now is the right time

to think outside the box and to propose bold revisions, to work towards a sustainable

economy, to reduce inequality and injustice, to remedy the excesses of globalization and

to create a better society. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for visionary leaders.

I hope they will rise soon.

It is crucial that we learn lessons from this pandemic: global problems can only be

solved through solid science and global collaboration. COVID-19 is just one example of

a global problem. Climate change is another, as is the reduction of biodiversity. COVID-

19 teaches us that there are no simple solutions for complex problems and that we need

the joint creativity (science, politics, economy, media, education, etc.) of the whole

world to find solutions for such problems. Fortunately, complex solutions will always

require advanced computing, and that means that the computing industry will have a

bright future, and will become even more relevant for society than it already is. I hope

that we are all looking for new business opportunities in these turbulent times.

Take care,

Koen De Bosschere, HiPEAC coordinator

welcome

HiPEACINFO 61 3

FIRST MILESTONES TOWARDS FUTURE REAL-TIME SAFETY-CRITICAL RISC-V COMPUTERS

Innovation Europe

The space industry, like other industries that make use of

microelectronic circuits, depends to a great extent on American

technology. Historically, the United States has had a lead

in the sector by delivering state-of-the-art technologies. An

example of this is the GAIA (Global Astrometric Interferometer

for Astrophysics) mission that was forced to use American

technology due to a lack of an European alternative. This

scenario can be problematic for European actors when the

United States is able to exclude other players from the use of its

technology, as well as to prevent licensing.

In recent years, European developments within space-

computing have progressed and American space missions also

currently use European technology for on-board processing. As

the space industry progresses to more advanced system-on-chip

architectures, the current lead manufacturers for space-grade

processors in terms of performance is the United States again.

At the same time, the trend towards higher integration does not

only require high-performance. There is an increasing need for

cybersecurity and partitioning as multiple software functions

that were previously run on separate components in isolation

are moved to the same system-on-chip.

Under such conditions, the De-RISC project was born. The

project aims at productizing the first market-ready European

Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) level B space-

certifiable software-hardware platform using the RISC-V

open-standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and entirely

developed by European companies. Furthermore, the project

also aims at providing avionics grade readiness, seeking

DO-178C level B certification and even anticipating its usage in

other critical domains, like automotive or railways.

Currently, the project has been running for about one year,

and it is already achieving its first milestones. Platform

requirements have been fully defined and early versions for

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) of the integrated

multicore with enhanced quota and performance monitoring

units are being tested and further developed. It is expected

that by the end of the project, in 2022, the platform will reach

readiness level TRL8.

The De-RISC platform rests on two fundamental pillars: high-

performance and safety. Performance is delivered by a 64-bit

multicore architecture composed of a single scalable General-

Purpose Processor (GPP), which in turn is comprised of four

NOEL-V cores (i.e. Cobham Gaisler’s RISC-V version of their

insignia processor, the LEON-5). Additionally, three levels of

cache (core-private, GPP-shared and system-shared) and new

processor cores with fully pipelined IEEE-754 Floating point

units allow the platform to provide an increase in computational

performance, compared to current systems.

European technologies for a better-integrated world

HiPEACINFO 614

Innovation Europe

monitoring units, will increase the amount of available tools to

system integrators and platform users by providing fine-grain

evidence of correct timing behavior.

The platform is required to have a critical configuration

that permits the user to either eliminate or bound temporal

interference, and where core-local activities are not affected by

another core’s activity. An example of this is the case of the

Level 2 cache, which will allow partitioning across cores to

avoid data evictions to critical tasks. This critical configuration

also allows the user to disable cache coherency (maintained

within the GPP) for certain memory areas without shared data

in situations where cores mutually invalidate cache lines, hence

making it difficult to predict latencies.

As the development of the platform continues, more features

tackling security concerns and resource partition will be

implemented to reach platform readiness.

The project is composed by Cobham Gaisler (Sweden), fentISS (Spain),

Thales Research & Technology (France) and the Barcelona

Supercomputing Center (BSC) (Spain), each partner contributing

crucially to the project’s success. Gaisler is in charge of developing the

hardware platform, while fentISS develops the software stack. BSC adds

to the platform with enhanced hardware safety features and Thales

validates the design with space use cases, like a telemetry and

telecommand application, which provides a wide spectrum of functional

testing.

PROJECT NAME: De-RISC: Dependable Real-time Infrastructure for

Safety-critical Computer

START/END DATE: 01/10/2019 – 31/03/2022

KEY THEMES: RISC-V, System-on-Chip

PARTNERS: fentISS, BSC, Thales Research and Technology,

Cobham Gaisler

BUDGET: € 3,444,625

www.derisc-project.eu

Functionality-wise, the platform will support plenty of well-

known standard Input/Output (IO) peripherals (e.g. I²C, SPI,

2x CAN-FD interfaces, 2x SpaceWire interfaces, 2x SpaceFibre

interfaces) allowing its applicability to other domains beyond

space. The system-on-chip platform also provides a fault-

tolerant DDR2 and DDR3 controller with strong error detection

and correction capabilities.

On the safety side, De-RISC combines state-of-the-art software

and hardware solutions to control the added high-performance

features. The XtratuM hypervisor, together with XRE (XtratuM

Run-time Environment, for bare metal applications) and LithOS

operating system, all of them developed by fentISS, will fully

support the platform, which will be ported from their current

SPARC implementations, and will provide temporal and

spatial isolation to critical applications, hence enforcing safety

measures. Additionally, the inclusion of enhanced observability

and controllability mechanisms, like advanced performance

Image 1. Detail from De-RISC's architecture showcasing a scalable

General-Purpose Processor (GPP) element composed of RISC-V cores.

De-RISC's platform will feature one GPP with four cores.

Image 2. XtratuM with XRE and LithOS running on top of the

De-RISC hardware platform.

HiPEACINFO 61 5

Innovation Europe

Cyber-Physical Systems of Systems (CPSoS) are enabling

technologies to address societal and industrial challenges

across multiple application domains like autonomous and

safe mobility as well as smart manufacturing and sustainable

production, among others. The applications running in these

systems require not only high levels of performance, but also the

fulfillment of non-functional requirements like dependability,

real-time response, resiliency, safety and energy-efficiency.

Although highly parallel heterogeneous embedded architectures

like Digital Signal Processor (DSP) fabrics and Field

Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) accelerators can provide the

performance capabilities needed in CPSoS, these are commonly

developed using model-driven technologies that facilitate the

description of the system, but lack the mechanisms to effectively

describe parallelism and certain non-functional requirements.

Furthermore, parallel programming models also leave non-

functional requirements aside.

The AMPERE project is developing a new generation of

software programming environments for low-energy and highly

parallel and heterogeneous computing architectures, capable of

implementing correct-by-construction advanced Cyber Physical

Systems (CPS).

The key innovation of the AMPERE software architecture will be

its capability of transforming the system model description of

the CPS based on specific model-driven languages to the parallel

programming models supported by the underlying parallel

architecture. Moreover, the AMPERE software architecture will

fulfill the non-functional requirements (i.e., real-time, safety,

energy-efficiency, security, reliability) imposed due to the cyber-

physical interactions and captured in the system description.

Figure 1 shows the components of the AMPERE software

architecture and their flow, described next:

• Domain Specific Model Language (DSML). Enhanced model-

driven languages that describe non-functional constraints

(e.g., performance, energy, time, etc.) in the context of

parallel heterogeneous computing.

• Code synthesis tools, compilers and analysis tools. Tools

capable of extracting control- and data-flow information,

as well as transforming the code to maximize multi-criteria

optimization and correctness.

• Runtime libraries. In charge of: (1) orchestrating parallel

execution according to the model, (2) efficiently managing

offloading to accelerator devices, and (3) supporting efficient

accelerator execution while preserving non-functional

requirements.

• Operating system and hypervisor. Support a variety of

architectures and accelerators, as well as safe and secure real-

time management of hardware resources.

AMPERE will be tested in two use cases:

• Automotive: Intelligent Predictive Cruise Control (PCC). This

use case, provided by Bosch, is an example for the increasingly

autonomous decision-making capabilities of advanced

automotive systems. It is composed of four components:

Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), the powertrain control

subsystem, the advanced PCC and Traffic Sign Recognition

(TSR) subsystems. The PCC extends the ACC functionalities

using data from the electronic horizon (topographical data

like curvature, inclines or speed limits) to provide information

about the route ahead. The deep learning TSR detects road

signs and provides limits to the PCC, considering, for example,

construction sites.

AMPERE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH FOR REAL-TIME, HIGH-PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY-EFFICIENT CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS OF SYSTEMS

Figure 1. AMPERE software development ecosystem.

HiPEACINFO 616

Innovation Europe

PROJECT NAME: AMPERE: A Model-driven development framework for

highly Parallel and EneRgy-Efficient computation supporting

multi-criteria optimization.

START/END DATE: 1/01/2020 – 31/12/2022

KEY THEMES: Computing technologies and engineering methods for

Cyber-Physical Systems of Systems

PARTNERS: Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) (coordinator),

Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), ETH Zürich (ETHZ),

Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Evidence SRL, Bosch GMBH,

Thales, Thales Italy SPA and SYSGO SRO.

BUDGET: € 4.9M.

WEBSITE: ampere-euproject.eu

• Railway: Obstacle Detection and Avoidance System (ODAS).

This use case, provided by Thales Italy, consists of a real

demonstrator on the Florence Tramway Network implementing

and ODAS supporting the tram driver and improving the

level of safety of the transportation system. It incorporates

two main subsystems, the Sensor Data Fusion (SDF) and

the AI Analytics (AI) components. The SDF collects a large

mass of raw data from multiple advanced sensors, while the

AI components incorporate machine learning (e.g., SVM) and

deep learning (e.g., CNN) algorithms to identify and track

objects, and extract information to be displayed to the tram

driver.

The AMPERE team during the first meeting of the project in Barcelona, Spain.

HiPEACINFO 61 7

Innovation Europe

The goal of the project is to build capacity among European

stakeholders via the development of self-sustained, cross-border

experiments that transfer knowledge and technology between

academia and industry.

SMART4ALL Management Team: Nikolaos Voros, Project

Coordinator (University of Peloponese, Greece) – Michael

Huebner, Project Sub-coordinator (Brandenburg University

of Technology, Germany) – Christos Antonopoulos, Technical

Manager (University of Peloponese, Greece) – Georgios

Keramidas, Tecnical Manager (Aristotle University of

Thessaloniki, Greece)

The project targets Customized Low Energy Computing (CLEC)

in the Cyber-Physical (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT)

domains by combining a set of unique characteristics that join

together i) different cultures, ii) different policies, iii) different

geographical areas and vi) different application domains. The

SMART4ALL vision will be realized mainly through funded

Pathfinder Application Experiments (PAEs) that will enable the

transformation of academic knowledge into industry, especially

targeting South Eastern European countries that are currently

underrepresented in European funding instruments. In this way,

community building, strategy development, and ecosystem

learning are envisioned for boosting high-quality research and

development in South Eastern Europe (SEE).

SMART4ALL IS A FOUR-YEAR INNOVATION ACTION PROMOTING MARKETPLACE-AS-A-SERVICE IN SOUTH EAST EUROPE

Digited Anything

Digited Transportation

Digited Agriculture

Digited EnviromentSMARTALL vision

Thematic Pillars of SMART4ALL

HiPEACINFO 618

Innovation Europe

In this direction, SMART4ALL knowledge and technology

transfer experiments are expected to improve the level of

support in SEE, by providing better services through the

creation of local DIHs or representative nodes of already

existing European DIHs. The goal is to reveal new examples

and best practices with high potential of becoming market

success stories either at the local or the regional level. In

addition, SMART4ALL will help to identify efficient methods

for discovering and encouraging SMEs that will take advantage

of the proposed digital development process.

Innovative Market PlaceSMART4ALL offers a unique concept called Marketplace-as-a-

Service (MaaS). MaaS is the key differentiator of SMART4ALL

from existing approaches since it reduces the development

effort, e.g. to move from an idea to a prototype. SMART4ALL

MaaS includes cloud services, related platforms, tools and

middleware frameworks, and design service facilities mainly

focusing on open-source technologies. Moreover, services

(customized to the four thematic pillars of the project) are

included in the MaaS e.g., personalized links to relevant

events, customized web pages, and matchmaking (technology

suppliers-technology receivers) activities.

Open Calls StructureSMART4ALL has defined a robust process to choose up to 88

PAEs by launching three Types and nine Open Calls addressing

the four main prioritized verticals.

There will be three types of PAEs:

- KTEs – Knowledge Transfer Experiments: A novel type of

experiment that allows smaller projects, or less mature ideas,

to be presented and tested. KTEs act as internships and short-

term training programmes for unemployed people for vacant

digital jobs (expected duration: three months, budget: up to 8,000€).

- FTTEs – Focused Technology Transfer Experiments: Within

these types of experiments, one party transfers to the

receiving partner a specific hardware (HW) or software (SW)

technology in order to enable improved products or processes

(expected duration: up to nine months, budget: up to 80,000€).

- CTTEs – Cross-domain Technology Transfer Experiments:

Complex multidisciplinary transfers and productization of

novel CLEC technologies to wider markets (expected duration: 12 months, budget: up to 80,000 €).

Cut off Dates

SMART4ALL will organize nine open calls and three per each type

of calls: https://smart4all-project.eu/opencalls-apply-now/

SMART4ALL offers funding of 2,2 million Euros via nine open calls and

novel coaching services from leading experts in ethics, technology,

funding and business development. It will support 88 cross-border

pathfinder application experiments (PAEs) from European consortia.

https://smart4all-project.eu/

SMART4ALL Market as a Service Conceptual Architecture

SMART4ALL process for 3rd parties’ PAEs selection and execution

HiPEACINFO 61 9

Innovation Europe

HENSOLDT CYBER PRESENTS MIG-V, THE FIRST RISC-V PROCESSOR “MADE IN GERMANY“ FOR SECURITY APPLICATIONS

HENSOLDT Cyber GmbH, a developer of highly secure

embedded systems for the IT market, announced that it

successfully designed and produced the first RISC-V processor

“Made in Germany”. Named MiG-V, it addresses the security

needs of connectivity applications in areas like the Internet of

Things.

It enables customers to build connectivity-oriented security

applications in areas like the Internet of Things.

MiG-V is protected against malicious manipulations during

design and manufacturing via advanced logic encryption. This

way, Kill Switch threats like hardware Trojans are excluded,

creating a secure solution for gateways, interfaces to the

external world, and other products.

The core of the MiG-V is based on the CV64, an open-source

RISC-V core developed by ETH Zurich, originally named Ariane.

It is implemented as an RV64IMAC with a 64-bit integer CPU

and standard extensions for integer multiplication and division

(M), atomic (A) and compressed instructions (C). It is produced

using a 55nm CMOS process. The design was supported by Chief

Scientist Prof. Rainer Leupers from RWTH Aachen University.

Connectivity Oriented PeripheralsThe MiG-V system-on-chip integrates 1 MB of internal SRAM,

2 MB Flash memory and an SDRAM controller with a clock

speed of up to 100 MHz. Communication interfaces include two

10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC controllers, one QSPI and three

SPI controllers with up to 30 MHz and one SPI slave interface

with up to 40 MHz, as well as three UART controllers and one

I2C controller. The chip operates at 3.3V supply voltage.

“MiG-V is a milestone in the development of general-purpose

embedded processors, because it helps to create a secure IT

instead of IT security” says Sascha Kegreiß, CTO at HENSOLDT

Cyber. “Together with TRENTOS-M, our seL4 microkernel-

based operating system, customers can design systems in

various areas with a built-in security level hardly ever achieved

before” Kegreiß adds.

Initial tests were completed successfully, and further integration

and detailed evaluations are underway. Once completed, the

start of the mass production of the MiG-V processor will be

scheduled.

For more information about HENSOLDT Cyber’s MiG-V:

www.hensoldt-cyber.com/mig-v

About HENSOLDT Cyber

Founded in 2017, HENSOLDT Cyber GmbH is a German company based

in Taufkirchen near Munich that develops embedded information

technology products meeting the highest security requirements. These

integrate a highly secure operating system with security hardened

hardware, thus creating a secure IT instead of IT security for the global

IT market. The company combines more than 50 years of experience in

defense and security electronics of the HENSOLDT Group with world-

class expertise in hardware and software development. HENSOLDT

Cyber currently employs around 40 people at various locations.

Further information about the company can be found at

www.hensoldt-cyber.com

simone.rudow@hensoldt-cyber.com

HENSOLDT Cyber MiG-V processor

Marian Rachow, CEO - Sascha Kegreiß, CTO

HiPEACINFO 6110

Peac Performance

These recommendations contribute to

the project’s goals by establishing a clear

path to get application codes suited

for parallelization and exploitation

of heterogeneous resources. They are

relevant to application developers

interested in high productivity, as their

aim is to facilitate the compilers’ work and

improve the applications’ performance in

terms of execution time.

“The EPEEC guidelines will allow to

increase the programmer’s productivity

while developing modern applications”

said Antonio J Peña, Coordinator of

EPEEC and Lead of the Accelerators

and Communications for HPC Team at

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

“The publication of the EPEEC guidelines is

an important milestone for the application

developers because it will guarantee a

smooth transition from the sequential

version or poorly efficient parallel version

of each code to a highly scalable version

ready to leverage the capabilities of

exascale-class heterogeneous parallel

hardware”, said Stéphane Lanteri, EPEEC

Principal Investigator (INRIA).

The document presents a high-productivity

approach for the development of high-

performance applications based on parallel

programming best practices used by

expert developers in the High Performance

Computing (HPC) community. It introduces

the EPEEC methodological framework,

which splits the parallelization process into

three steps:

1. Prepare the code for parallelism: to

code the application in such a way

that reduces the cost/effort of parallel

software development and maintenance.

2. Create a first parallel version of your

code: to develop a parallel version of

existing sequential code that runs faster.

3. Optimize your parallel code: to fine-

tune the parallel code to obtain peak

performance of the target hardware

platform.

In addition to high-productivity and

the development of a high-performance

programming environment, EPEEC’s goals

include the efficient and energy-aware

management of hardware heterogeneity,

both in terms of processing elements and

memory subsystems, further favouring

coding productivity.

The EPEEC Programming Guidelines for Parallel

Applications are available on the project’s

website: https://epeec-project.eu/results/

programming-guidelines

EPEEC Programming Guidelines for Parallel Applications -Increasing application developers’ productivity

The work towards a highly productive programming environment for heterogeneous exascale computing carried out by the European project EPEEC has reached an important milestone with the publication of the EPEEC Programming Guidelines for Parallel Applications.

EPEEC’s methodological framework for parallelization

HiPEACINFO 61 11

The restrictions that were implemented are having a severe impact1 on

economies and the labour market all across the European Union (EU);

however, the outcomes in some countries may vary, because of their

specific characteristics, economic structures and institutions. This will

result in unequal impacts in terms of the overall job market.

Although the previsions are pessimistic for the next few months, current

employment statistics haven’t yet been affected by the gloomy outlook,

with the EU reporting only a 0,5% increase in the unemployment rate

compared to December 2019 (up to 6.7% in June, from 6.2%). This can

be explained by the containment measures and aid packages provided

by the EU to support the governments, as well as some legal issues of

what constitutes an “unemployed person” in Europe, as per the

following2,3. The European Commission expects a shrinking of Gross

Domestic Product (GDP) in the Union of about -8,7% by the end of the

year, but a growth of 6.1% in 2021.4

The HiPEAC Jobs Portal (https://www.hipeac.net/jobs/#/), though it

focuses on a less vulnerable field of work– Information and Systems

and Computer Engineering – when compared to others like Tourism,

Retail and Hospitality, has also been affected by the pandemic. As you

can see in Figure 1, the number of jobs posted this year, when compared

to 2019, has decreased by 50 vacancies - especially remarkable during

March and April- the months when Europe was most affected by COVID-

19, which resulted in the lockdown of many of the European countries.

Also, in terms of traffic to our jobs portal, the number of visitors has

decreased notably when compared to previous year(s) (see Figure 2).

An interesting comparison that can be also be made is between the

different types of employers using the portal – academia, for universities

and government institutions, and industry or small and medium-sized

enterprises (SME´s) for privately owned companies – there is a 30%

reduction in the private sector job openings in 2020 when compared to

the previous year, indicating that the private sector could be more

affected by the pandemic, and subsequently has been more conservative

with hiring policies and less open to publish more positions during this

period. It also indicates that industry is more linked to physical events

and tradeshows compared with academia, as major events such as

DATE and CSW were either moved online or postponed until after the

lockdown period (Figure 3).

Nonetheless, there is hope of a recovery as the institutions, companies

and overall job market adapt themselves to this new reality.

The impact of COVID-19 on the HiPEAC Jobs PortalIn a seemingly connected and globalized world, the

impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society is undeniable. From travel restrictions to schools,

shopping malls, offices and major companies shutting down, the pandemic has affected everyone

around the globe – postponing the free circulation of people and affecting, of course, the European

economy and job market.

HiPEAC futures

HiPEACINFO 6112

The implementation of the HiPEAC Internship Programme – now

with remote/virtual opportunities (https://www.hipeac.net/jobs/#/

characteristics. And all in all, it is still too early to see the longer-term

effect.

HiPEAC continues readjusting itself, as new features are incorporated,

such as the possibility to incorporate career-related videos5. HiPEAC

will keep innovating and remodeling its activities in order to overcome

this downturn, as we are fully committed to provide the best possible

service to our community. Our support to the partners in the network

will only increase over the course of the year – with tailor-made support

for new job postings, as well as with help with both the promotion and

the development of these opportunities. For any support needed,

contact recruitment@hipeac.net

Figures and charts

The impact of COVID-19 on the HiPEAC Jobs Portal

HiPEAC futures

1 The impact of COVID-19 confinement measures on the EU labour market https://ec.europa.eu/

jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/jrc.120585_policy.brief_impact.of_.covid-19.on_.eu-labour.market.pdf]2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/10159296/3-30012020-AP-EN.pdf/

b9a98100-6917-c3ea-a544-ce288ac096753 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics4 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1269 - Summer 2020

Economic Forecast5 https://www.hipeac.net/news/6927/career-job-related-videos-now-available-at-hipeac/

Reference taken from the OECD report of worker security and the

COVID-19 crisis at http://www.oecd.org/employment-outlook/#report)

DON’T MISS OUR UPCOMING ACTIVITIES

BY FOLLOWING US:

hipeac.net/linkedin

@hipeacjobs /@hipeac

hipeac.net/jobs

recruitment@hipeac.net

Figure 1: Number of jobs posted on the HiPEAC jobs portal

Figure 2: Weekly number of page views of the HiPEAC jobs portal

HiPEACINFO 61 13

ACACES 2020 CAREER SESSIONAn overview of professional perspectives with different career backgrounds

Introduction: On 15 July, we invited Andrea Kells from Arm, Frank K. Gürkaynak from ETH Zürich, and Ray Garcia from Buoyant Capital to share with our

students different perspectives on career paths, in a virtual career session at ACACES. From industry,

academia and at the entrepreneurial level, we had the opportunity to hear first-hand from these

talented professionals their opinions on setting up a career strategy.

HiPEAC futures

From the academic perspective, we learned that focusing on

research allows you to work as a professional and specialize in a

certain field.

Frank told us that “University is an opportunity, as you'll be

surrounded by a lot of interesting people and you have the chance

to learn a lot. For this specific field of work, you have to understand

what you are doing and why are you doing it that way, as that is the

only way to achieve academic results.”

He also said that, as a teacher, many students often come to his

office to discuss grades – but in the end, they are only feedback for

the student – low grades mean that you should “work more” while

good grades mean that “you are getting it”.

ACADEMIC“For this specific field of work,

you have to understand what

you are doing and why are you

doing it that way, as that is

the only way to achieve

academic results.”

14 HiPEACINFO 61

HiPEAC futures

The entrepreneurial perspective by Ray Garcia is, of course, a very

independent approach – each person must define their own

definition of failure and success to build their career strategy. This

will change from individual to individual and both failure and

success are “based on their own terms, and in reality most of our

life is in between and we cycle between these two things”.

Ray also suggested that our students should master a skill and

then share it with everyone else. They should find people who

have succeeded in a certain area - and know it better than anyone

- should repeat it.

ENTREPRENEUR

From the industry perspective, Andrea claimed that “You own your

career path. It is your responsibility and not anyone else’s – it

doesn’t belong to your boss, partner or family”. So, as it is a broader

field, students are recommended to filter what they like doing with

as much importance as what they don´t, because in the end they

will find the perfect fit.

So don´t despair if you haven’t found what you like doing, and as

well don´t be afraid to change the work you’re doing - that choice

“doesn’t need to be set in stone”.

Industry and big company level is a constantly growing type of

work and you have to “cultivate knowledge, dare to try new things

and make connections and build a network of contacts to succeed.”

INDUSTRY

In terms of work/life balance, although it depends on your

personal attributes and stage of your life - academia is more

balanced as working hours can be managed - while industry

has more specific schedules and the entrepreneurial sphere

is more flexible, it depends on the work rate you choose to

have and the objectives you want to reach.

We also talked about CV's in different areas and the

importance of publications. The latter is really important

to assess communication skills and knowledge on a specific

topic. You should also do research on the position and

institution to which you are applying - to be prepared to sell

yourself to that position and to understand the challenge

you are confronting.

Koen de Bosschere, HiPEAC coordinator, concluded the

session by challenging everyone to “have a dream and to

pick a role model”, as that will guide you to set up your

career path. Young people should start early to contact high-

ranking people in order to understand the professional world

in which they are interested. “Know your own value, don’t

be afraid of the unknown, be flexible, act professionally and

show leadership – and volunteer a lot”. If you show these

characteristics, other people will help you achieve your

goals. Lastly, “be passionate about your work” because if you

love what you do, you will do it gladly and with great results.

We would like to thank Andrea, Frank and Ray for sharing

their valuable knowledge with us, and hope that we can

meet them next year!

For more career-related information you can follow the HiPEAC

Jobs Twitter page at @hipeacjobs and check the multiple job and

internship opportunities at https://www.hipeac.net/

You can also watch the full session at: https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=pQOGmX3p2sA&feature=youtu.be&t=1

“Master one thing better than your

peers, then share it with everyone.”

“Cultivate knowledge, dare to try

new things and make

connections and build a network

of contacts to succeed.”

15HiPEACINFO 61

Three-minute thesis

The HiPEAC network includes almost 1,000 PhD students who are researching the key topics of tomorrow’s computing systems. In this issue, we find out how heterogeneous parallel computing systems lend to the fast analysis of vast amounts of data

NAME: João Gante

RESEARCH CENTRE: INESC-ID/ Instituto

Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

SUPERVISORS: Leonel Sousa and

Gabriel Falcão

The Interplay Between Positioning and Beamforming in Millimetre Wave Communications

The contextOne of 5G's highlights is the introduction of millimetre wave

(mmWave) communications, unlocking untapped bandwidth.

However, with mmWave transmissions, the propagation

properties change dramatically: the resulting radiation not only

has severe path loss properties, but also reflects on most visible

obstacles. Fortunately, systems that work at those frequencies can

employ large arrays of antennas, on top of which beamforming

can be applied. Beamforming is a signal processing technique

that allows the system to steer and focus the transmitted beam

pattern, so as to mitigate the aforementioned drawbacks – for

instance, the radiation can be aimed towards a certain obstacle,

such that the resulting reflection reaches the desired destination.

The recent focus in mmWave communications also led to the

proposal of new positioning systems. The accuracy achievable

in certain conditions is remarkable, having sub-meter precision

in indoor and ultra-dense outdoor scenarios. However, there

was no mmWave positioning system that was able to perform in

outdoor scenarios under practical constraints.

Originality/ChallengesFrom past research, it was known that beamforming delivers

spatial selectivity. Our research started with the reverse question:

can we derive spatial information from beamformed signals? To

do so, we created a positional fingerprint signal, “beamformed

fingerprint”, which captures the power delay profile for multiple

beamforming patterns at a given position. If a dataset with the

sampled beamformed fingerprints alongside their corresponding

positions is known, then deep neural networks and supervised

learning can be applied. In fact, a significant part of the research

was with respect to the collection of said dataset, which implied

accurate 3D city models and precise propagation simulation.

Average error vs. average energy required per position fix for the

discussed outdoor positioning technologies.

Analogies/ApplicationThe concept of fingerprinting was known to the community,

and it is used to build low accuracy local positioning systems.

With beamforming, we can increase the spatial resolution

of the collected signal, akin to a LIDAR with higher angular

resolution. Likewise, the mmWave signal reflects on obstacles,

just like the light in LIDAR systems: we can see the proposed

work as an analogous system to collect information from the

surrounding environment, where the transmitter (base station)

and the receiver (mobile device) are placed in different locations

and the goal is to locate the receiver. In our work, the proposed

system achieves a smaller average error than low-power GPS

implementations, at 1.78 m. However, most importantly, it is

at least 47x more energy efficient than those implementations,

with larger gains for sporadic positioning uses, enabling smaller

devices to leverage positioning capabilities.

HiPEAC futures

HiPEACINFO 6116

Simulating COVID-19 and flu spread using HiDALGOOr how technology can support decision-making for an effective response to a pandemic

The current pandemic has highlighted the relevance of technology

for detection, prediction and prevention to support decision makers

in providing appropriate responses, taking into account health and

care capabilities.

In this sense, the European Union-funded project HiDALGO has

reused its expertise with agent-based modelling to develop FACS,

the Flu and Coronavirus Simulator, guided by the outcomes of SEIR

(Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered) models operating at

the national level.

FACS approximates viral spread, incorporating geospatial data

sources from OpenStreetMap. In this way, the most crowded places,

such as residential areas, office buildings, parks or shopping centres

are identified as hot spots due to the high number of people who

can concentrate in them, as well as traceability routes to reach

these points.

So basically, COVID-19 spread is modelled at the local level,

providing estimations of the spread of infections and hospital

arrivals, given a range of public health interventions. The predictions

made by executing simulations can be used by decision makers to

identify peaks of contagion, set appropriate measures to reduce

spread and provide necessary means to hospitals to prevent

collapses.

The tool is publicly available under BSD 3-Clause license in GitHub

and the algorithms used to implement the simulations are explained

in this paper.

CPS Convergence and SocietyOn the wider Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) stage in Europe, there

are some significant exchanges taking place in the final months of

2020 in preparation for the future of these products. Attention points

include orchestrating the research of this application domain,

evolving the supporting culture and measuring the CPS industry

pulse. Of particular focus is the adaptation of production and

assembly approaches, to be primed for new technologies, including

those required for restoring natural balance and minimising the

fallout from climate change.

A workshop was held in early September bringing together the two

communities of CPS and Systems of Systems (SoS). Prior consensus

from the CPS community indicated that one of the six key identifying

features of a CPS is the aspect of coordination and collaboration.

This means that SoS technology is a fundamental need for CPS with

implications for the way forward. There were two principle

discussions. One concerned the bottlenecks for the transfer of SoS

technology to CPS products and the other concerned the synergies

shared by the two communities – particularly related to the system

engineering challenges. A second consultation will take place in

November to support consensus before a formal report is published.

If you would like to participate, either check out the HiPEAC virtual

booth at EFECS for details, or contact us directly.

Back to the previously noted CPS focuses, an online HiPEAC

conference on CPS is organized by Tampere University in October.

There are plans for a session on ‘CPS and Sustainability’ in relation

to the Green Deal of the European Commission. We will consider

how the technology-pull landscape is evolving. This includes

interesting questions such as how CPS providers will need to adapt

for sustainability by increased long-term governance. There is also

the question of how CPS will need to better support sustainability in

society – for example wide-scale digital twin representation for

cause-effect analysis. Come and join us!

News

HiPEACINFO 61 17

The Computing Systems Week will be hosted

in Tampere, Finland. Due to the COVID-

19 situation, the event will be virtual. We

asked the local organization chair Prof.

Jari Nurmi of Tampere University what’s

up in Tampere.

What makes Tampere a good location for Computing Systems

Week (CSW)?

Tampere is the mother of industrialization in Finland, sometimes

called the “Manchester of Finland” because of its old red-brick

factory buildings. It has been the frontrunner in the development

and the adoption of many technologies, such as the introduction

of the first electric lights in Northern Europe and the famous

early “smartphone” (although they were not called smartphones

at the time) Nokia Communicator. Even the early days of Tampere

were very international; there were entrepreneurs, investors and

engineers from Germany, Russia, Sweden, Scotland, etc. Now the

old factories are mostly used as offices, restaurants, boutiques,

(cinema and live) theaters and museums. Information and

Communications Technology (ICT) is the industry of the day,

whereas the machine, paper and textile industries have mostly

disappeared. One big advantage of Tampere is its compact city

center; everything is within convenient walking distance.

What is the local technology ecosystem like in Tampere?

There are some big companies such as Nokia, but also a wide

ecosystem of smaller technology companies developing software,

hardware and services for the digitalizing society. The small and

medium-sized enterprise (SME) and start-up scenes flourish

on the ruins of the former Nokia mobile phone development

departments, ramped down after Microsoft acquired them. A

lot of engineering resources were suddenly available for new

companies to start and old ones to expand or transform their

operations in the city. There is also a long and strong tradition on

industry-academia collaboration in Tampere, especially involving

the engineering units of Tampere University (TAU).

What are some of the most interesting projects happening at

Tampere University?

There are the traditional strongholds of photonics and signal

processing (including Machine Learning). In the computing area

there are also the Transport-Triggered Architecture and Kactus2

open-source design tools, both with a long development history at

TAU. At the moment, there are multiple Marie Skłodowska-Curie

innovative training networks coordinated in Tampere, for instance

A-WEAR on wearable computing with security constraints,

ImmerSafe on immersive visual technologies for safety-critical

systems, and FibreNet on robotic systems for microscale material

testing. We will also start a new training network on Approximate

Computing in the autumn. There is also a unique concentration

of positioning research for both satellite-based navigation and

indoor localization. That is also reflected in the settling of many

positioning technology companies in the city.

What should we do and see in Tampere?

It is very unfortunate that due to the pandemic you cannot

try and see now all the typical things of Tampere, but luckily

there is a virtual replacement for that, Virtual Tampere. I hope,

though, that you will soon have another chance to visit the city

and get a real taste. You should try the traditional black sausage,

mustamakkara, though not everyone will be a fan! There are

also nice pubs with microbreweries in-house. There are a lot of

students in the city, so you might see groups of them in overalls

partying, any time of the year. In the winter season ice-hockey

is worth mentioning, there are two teams from Tampere playing

in the Finnish hockey league. What you would see without

even trying is the construction of two tram lines through the

city, scheduled to open in 2021, as well as a few other major

construction sites. There are some rare museums in Tampere, too,

such as the world’s first spy museum, an ice-hockey museum,

probably the only Lenin museum in the world, and the Moomin

museum. In the museum center Vapriikki you can see many

others, like the computer gaming museum and an exhibit on

the 1918 civil war, which came to its bloody end in Tampere.

Tampere is surrounded by two big lakes, and the rapids between

them cross the city center, providing nice sceneries for walking

by water. There is also the high sand ridge of Pyynikki with an

old observation tower on the top – most people go there for its

café with excellent doughnuts. Another place with great views

over the city and its surroundings is the Näsinneula tower, the

symbol of the city. From the bar at the top of the highest hotel

in Tampere you can also take a look over the whole city center. I

hope you can soon visit the city and experience these, all of them

are within walking distance!

Welcome to the virtual Computing Systems Week hosted by Tampere University

News

HiPEACINFO 6118

The ACACES summer school has run without interruption since

2005. This year, it had to be organized as a virtual summer

school. This change created challenges and opportunities: one of

the challenges was that the participants were no longer sharing

the same time zone, which created extra constraints, especially

for the teachers. We decided to organize a morning, afternoon

and evening track to accommodate teachers and attendees from

distant time zones. Another challenge was how to create the

summer school experience without being physically together.

That turned out to be much more difficult.

Fortunately, there were also opportunities. We could drop the

registration fee, which almost immediately tripled the number of

applications to the summer school. We could spread the summer

school over more days as we were no longer constrained by time

and space and we decided to run it as a single-track summer

school during two weeks instead of a three-track summer school

during one week. We now have recordings of every course that

we can use to further promote them.

After the summer school, we analysed the logs and we organized

a post-summer school survey. This led to some interesting

insights.

1. There were many no-shows, but we still had more active

participants than in the past. If we were to organize ACACES

again as a virtual summer school, we will consider charging a

low registration fee to reduce the number of no-shows.

2. The attendance in the first week was considerably higher than

in the second week. The extra week did not give us the extra

participation we were hoping for.

3. The appreciation score per course was very high and on

average higher than in the previous years. There is no reason

to assume that the quality of this year’s courses was different

from the quality in previous years. The explanation is probably

that participants only took (and evaluated) their favourite

courses while in a physical summer school, they take a full

program including courses that they would have skipped in a

virtual summer school.

4. Many participants mentioned that they could afford the virtual

summer school while they would never be able to afford the

physical summer school.

5. All recorded courses were published on the HiPEAC YouTube

channel after the summer school. Some courses have already

attracted more viewers on YouTube than there were participants

in the streaming version.

6. People who attended the summer school in the past very much

missed the social aspects of the school: living together for one

week, discussing research, and the food. We tried to encourage

interaction between participants with an instant messaging

platform, but that was no substitute for face-to-face discussion

at the summer school. Some students very much enjoyed the

scavenger hunt game organized by one of the teachers during

the break.

The conclusions are (i) that most attendees were very happy with

the virtual summer school, (ii) that the social dimension and the

networking was largely absent, (iii) that the recorded courses on

YouTube add value to the school. The virtual summer school was

a very interesting experiment, but in 2021 we hope to be able to

organize a physical summer school again.

https://www.hipeac.net/acaces/2020/#/

Afterthoughs on the ACACES2021 virtual summer school

News

HiPEACINFO 61 19