£5.6m PRiME project aims to advance multi core computing systems

Dubbed PRiME (Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded systems), the EPRSC funded initiative brings together research groups from the Universities of Southampton, Imperial College, Manchester and Newcastle, as well as industry partners ARM, Imagination Technologies, Microsoft Research, Freescale and Altera. The five year project will undertake creative 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, explained: "Electronics and software have a tremendous impact on life, from the internet to consumer electronics, healthcare 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."