Modern big data workflows are characterized by computationally intensive kernels. The simulated results are often combined with knowledge extracted from AI models to ultimately support decision-making. These energy-hungry workflows are increasingly executed in data centers with energy-efficient hard-ware accelerators since FPG As are well-suited for this task due to their inherent parallelism. We present the H2020 project EVEREST, which has developed a system development kit (SDK) to simplify the creation of FPGA-accelerated kernels and manage the execution at runtime through a virtualization environment. This paper describes the main components of the EVEREST SDK and the benefits that can be achieved in our use cases.

Abstract Web search is a crucial technology for the digital economy. Dominated by a few gatekeepers focused on commercial success, however, web publishers have to optimize their content for these gatekeepers, resulting in a closed ecosystem of search engines as well as the risk of publishers sacrificing quality. To encourage an open search ecosystem and offer users genuine choice among alternative search engines, we propose the development of an Open Web Index (OWI). We outline six core principles for developing and maintaining an open index, based on open data principles, legal compliance, and collaborative technology development. The combination of an open index with what we call declarative search engines will facilitate the development of vertical search engines and innovative web data products (including, e.g., large language models), enabling a fair and open information space. This framework underpins the EU‐funded project OpenWebSearch.EU, marking the first step towards realizing an Open Web Index.

Developing and optimizing software applications for high performance and energy efficiency is a very challenging task, even when considering a single target machine. For instance, optimizing for multicore-based computing systems requires in-depth knowledge about programming languages, application programming interfaces (APIs), compilers, performance tuning tools, and computer architecture and organization. Many of the tasks of performance engineering methodologies require manual efforts and the use of different tools not always part of an integrated toolchain. This paper presents Pegasus, a performance engineering approach supported by a framework that consists of a source-to-source compiler, controlled and guided by strategies programmed in a Domain-Specific Language, and an autotuner. Pegasus is a holistic and versatile approach spanning various decision layers composing the software stack, and exploiting the system capabilities and workloads effectively through the use of runtime autotuning. The Pegasus approach helps developers by automating tasks regarding the efficient implementation of software applications in multicore computing systems. These tasks focus on application analysis, profiling, code transformations, and the integration of runtime autotuning. Pegasus allows developers to program their strategies or to automatically apply existing strategies to software applications in order to ensure the compliance of non-functional requirements, such as performance and energy efficiency. We show how to apply Pegasus and demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness in a complex case study, which includes tasks from a smart navigation system.

High-Performance Big Data Analytics (HPDA) applications are characterized by huge volumes of distributed and heterogeneous data that require efficient computation for knowledge extraction and decision making. Designers are moving towards a tight integration of computing systems combining HPC, Cloud, and IoT solutions with artificial intelligence (AI). Matching the application and data requirements with the characteristics of the underlying hardware is a key element to improve the predictions thanks to high performance and better use of resources. We present EVEREST, a novel H2020 project started on October 1, 2020, that aims at developing a holistic environment for the co-design of HPDA applications on heterogeneous, distributed, and secure platforms. EVEREST focuses on programmability issues through a data-driven design approach, the use of hardware-accelerated AI, and an efficient runtime monitoring with virtualization support. In the different stages, EVEREST combines state-of-the-art programming models, emerging communication standards, and novel domain-specific extensions. We describe the EVEREST approach and the use cases that drive our research.

The ANTAREX project developed an approach to the performance tuning of High Performance applications based on an Aspect-oriented Domain Specific Language (DSL), with the goal to simplify the enforcement of extra-functional properties in large scale applications. The project aims at demonstrating its tools and techniques on two relevant use cases, one in the domain of computational drug discovery, the other in the domain of online vehicle navigation. In this paper, we present an overview of the project and of its main achievements, as well as of the large scale experiments that have been planned to validate the approach.

Designing and optimizing applications for energy-efficient High Performance Computing systems up to the Exascale era is an extremely challenging problem. This paper presents the toolbox developed in the ANTAREX European project for autotuning and adaptivity in energy efficient HPC systems. In particular, the modules of the ANTAREX toolbox are described as well as some preliminary results of the application to two target use cases. 1

The ANTAREX project relies on a Domain Specific Language (DSL) based on Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) concepts to allow applications to enforce extra functional properties such as energy-efficiency and performance and to optimize Quality of Service (QoS) in an adaptive way. The DSL approach allows the definition of energy-efficiency, performance, and adaptivity strategies as well as their enforcement at runtime through application autotuning and resource and power management. In this paper, we present an overview of the ANTAREX DSL and some of its capabilities through a number of examples, including how the DSL is applied in the context of one of the project use cases.

International audience

Robot Soccer is a very attractive platform in terms of research. It contains a number of challenges in the areas of robot control, artificial intelligence and image analysis. This article presents a look at the overall architecture of the game and describes some results of our experiments in analysis and optimization of strategies using sequence extraction. We have extracted sequences of game situations from the log of a game played in our simulator, as they occurred during the game. Afterwards, these sequences were compared by methods LCS, LCSS and T-WLCS, which are usually used for sequence comparison in the sequence alignment area. Using these methods, we are able to visualize the relations between the sequences of game situations and clusters of similar game situations in a graph. In conclusion, a possible description improvement of these game situations is introduced. Therefore, a possible strategy improvement to ensure a smoother and faster performing of actions defined by these situations is described.

This paper is focused on log files where one log file attribute is an originator of the recorded activity (originator is a person in our case). Hence, based on the similar attributes of people, we are able to construct models which explain certain aspects of a persons behaviour. Moreover, we can extract user profiles based on behaviour and find latent ties between users and between different user groups with similar behaviours. We accomplish this by our new approach using the methods from log mining, business process analysis, complex networks and graph theory. The paper describes the whole process of the approach from the log file to the user graph. The main focus is on the step called `The finding of user behavioural patterns'.

Extraction of social networks from log files and social network analysis then requires the usage of data mining methods focused on areas such as data clustering or pattern mining. Our research is focused on log files where one log file attribute is an originator of the recorded activity and the originator is also a person. Hence, based on the similar attributes of people, we are able to construct models which explain certain aspects of a persons behaviour. Moreover, we can extract user profiles based on person behaviour in the web applications. Working with large user profiles, usually acquired from the web log files, the dimension reduction from original high dimensional space to 2D space could be done using Kohonen SOM. The SOM also provides clusters of similar web profiles of particular users. For large SOM learning it is appropriate to use parallel computing environment. Our version of scalable parallel SOM learning algorithm and experiment with web user profiles are presented in this paper.

Spectral clustering is a data mining method used for finding patterns in high dimensional datasets. It has been applied effectively to solve many problems in signal processing, bioinformatics, etc. In this paper spectral clustering was implemented to find students’ patterns of behavior in an elearning system, to explore the relationship between the similarity of students’behavior and their academic performance.