Researchers publish pioneering advances in many-core computing

Computing experts from the University of Southampton have published the latest progress in energy-efficient parallel computation in a new book with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

The book, which is edited by the School of Electronics and Computer Science’s Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi and Dr Geoff Merrett, includes the findings from a multi-million pound research programme investigating the management of power and reliability in future many-core mobile and embedded systems.

Many-Core Computing: Hardware and Software offers valuable insight for engineers, designers, architects and managers within academia and industry.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: “We have entered a significant and exciting age in computing, as the focus has moved away from performance-centric serial computation and towards energy-efficient parallel computation. This important new book draws upon findings from the Southampton-led PRiME Programme Grant, with most of the chapters either a direct result of research undertaken on this project, or else the collaborations and discussions that we had during it.”

PRiME collaborators held a focussed one-day workshop on many-core systems in 2018 from which the editors invited some of the distinguished speakers to contribute to the book.

Dr Geoff Merrett, Head of Southampton’s Centre for the Internet of Things and Pervasive Systems, added: “It was great to work with such a fantastic collection of international leaders in the field of many-core computing in order to bring this book together, and the result is an essential resource on the state and future of the field spanning hardware technologies all the way through to software systems.”

The new book opens with programming models, operating systems and their applications. The authors present runtime management techniques, followed by system modelling, verification and testing methods, and architectures and systems, before concluding with some examples of innovative applications.

PRiME brought together four UK universities and five companies with world-leading expertise in advanced electronics and computer systems, utilising £5.6m of funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) between 2013 and 2018.

Researchers in ECS will continue to exploit some of the breakthroughs achieved through PRiME as part of a recently announced EPSRC International Centre on Spatial Computational Learning. The team will be investigating how to ensure that machine learning applications remain energy efficient and make best use of available hardware.