Future and Emerging Technologies - EXTRA

H2020 FET

The EXTRA project (Exploiting eXascale Technology with Reconfigurable Architectures) is coordinated by Prof. Dirk Stroobandt of Ghent University and has 9 partners from 6 different EU countries. The project runs from September 1, 2015 until August 31, 2018.

FET EXTRATo handle the stringent performance requirements of future exascale High Performance Computing (HPC) applications, HPC systems need ultra-efficient heterogeneous compute nodes. To reduce power and increase performance, such compute nodes will require reconfiguration as an intrinsic feature, so that specific HPC application features can be optimally accelerated at all times, even if they regularly change over time.

In the EXTRA project, we create a new and flexible exploration platform for developing reconfigurable architectures, design tools and HPC applications with run-time reconfiguration built-in from the start. The idea is to enable the efficient co-design and joint optimization of architecture, tools, applications, and reconfiguration technology in order to prepare for the necessary HPC hardware nodes of the future.

Our goal is to provide the European platform for run-time reconfiguration to maintain Europe’s competitive edge and leadership in run-time reconfigurable computing.

Objectives

The main objective of the EXTRA project is to develop an open source research platform for continued research on reconfiguration architectures and tools. Therefore, we identify three Key Objectives (KO) for the success of EXTRA.

  • KO1: We target the development and promotion of an open reconfigurable technology exploration platform that combines a reconfigurable architecture description with reconfigurable design tools and thus allows to evaluate and optimize reconfigurable applications.
  • KO2: We aim to make significant contributions to the development of reconfigurable architectures, reconfigurable tools, and the optimization of reconfigurable HPC applications.
  • KO3: We will validate both the platform and our proposed improvements using the EXTRA ecosystem to implement three HPC applications, with the aim to improve performance, area and power efficiency.


    Role of Ghent University

    Ghent University is the coordinator of the EXTRA project and is technically mainly working on the reconfigurable architecture. We will integrate our parameterized reconfiguration technique in the platform concept and will help with the integration of vendor tools within the EXTRA reconfigurable tools platform.

     

    Contact

    Prof. Dirk Stroobandt
    Ghent University, ELIS Department, Computer Systems Lab, Hardware and Embedded Systems group
    Phone number: +32 9 264 34 01
    E-mail: