#EPSRC #manufacturing A national collaboration of electronics engineers and computer scientists is aiming to develop the next generation of energy-efficient computing systems. Known as Prime (Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded systems), the £5.6 million EPSRC-funded project brings together research groups from Imperial College and the Universities of Southampton, Manchester and Newcastle, as well as industry partners ARM, Imagination Technologies, Microsoft Research, Freescale and Altera.
The five-year project will involve research into the design and implementation of energy-efficient and dependable embedded systems with ‘many-core processors’. Prime director Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi from the University of Southampton says: “Electronics and software have a tremendous impact on life, from the Internet to consumer electronics, health-care and transportation. Embedded systems, many of which will be low-power mobile devices, will be one of the most powerful tools in tackling global societal challenges.
“However, while ‘many-core processing’ is viewed as a way to improve the performance of computing systems, the energy consumption and reliability of these systems with hundreds or thousands of cores has yet to be fully understood. Our vision is to enable the sustainability of ‘many-core systems’ by preventing the uncontrolled increase in energy consumption and unreliability through a step-change in design methods and cross-layer system optimisation.”
The UK electronics industry is worth £23 billion a year and is the fifth-largest in the world.