Project description
Revisiting the cloud for a new hardware era
Cloud computing has transformed how businesses and individuals access computing power, but its architecture is showing its age. While datacentre applications quickly adopt new hardware and protocols, cloud systems evolve only incrementally, leading to wasted efficiency, unpredictable performance and limited innovation. Funded by the EU, the CloudNG project will redesign cloud infrastructure to take full advantage of modern datacentres. Its approach introduces new abstractions that integrate emerging hardware without added complexity, bringing cloud users the same quality of service as bespoke applications. By rethinking resource allocation, elasticity and sustainability metrics, CloudNG is making the faster and better equipped to support tomorrow’s digital economy cloud.
Objective
Datacenters are evolving fast allowing ultra-low latency, high bandwidth, and more programmability, while introducing new interconnects that radically change how we build distributed systems. Datacenters primarily host two types of workloads: cloud computing and bespoke applications. Cloud computing offers on-demand and elastic access to shared compute, networking, and storage resources, is ubiquitous and growing at an exponential pace. Bespoke datacenter applications, such as websearch, are special-purpose services developed and deployed by tech companies. There is a dichotomy between those two types of workloads regarding the evolution of the datacenter software and hardware ecosystem, with bespoke applications fully adopting recent advancements, while cloud computing only evolving incrementally and failing to absorb new hardware and protocols. This is due to fundamental differences between the two settings, and design choices in the existing cloud architecture and the way it has evolved, which end up harming efficiency, reducing the performance and quality of service cloud tenants receive, and slowing down cloud evolution.
CLOUDNG designs the next generation of cloud infrastructure to fully leverage the modern datacenter. It accelerates and introduces novel abstractions that encapsulate emerging hardware and protocols without exposing their internals, and offers quality of service equivalent to bespoke applications without compromising ease of use. It re-envisions the cloud architecture and proposes new ways to implement resource allocation and elasticity by specifically designing for the datacenter environment, thus enabling superior performance, performance predictability, new cloud products, and measurable sustainability through appropriate metrics and incentives, while preparing the cloud for a new hardware era.
This is an ambitious project pushing the state of the art in cloud and datacenter research, yet, a necessary step towards future cloud innovation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
SW7 2AZ London
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.