Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HiPEAC (High Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation )
Reporting period: 2019-02-01 to 2020-02-29
The top-level objectives of HiPEAC are:
[O0] Stimulating collaboration between academic and industrial communities, and connecting them to the innovation community.
[O1] Growing the industrial and innovation communities, the stakeholder members group, and the underrepresented groups.
[O2] Connecting the communities by offering quarterly high-quality networking events, by stimulating mobility, and by promoting an active Jobs portal.
[O3] Sharing information in and between the communities, using different communication channels for different messages.
[O4] Roadmapping, or building a vision for the future of the computing systems community in Europe.
The HiPEAC objectives are translated into a joint program of activities consisting of four programs, supplemented by appropriate management processes.
The work package on Growing the communities focuses on attracting more industrial members, members from the innovation community, stakeholder members and underrepresented groups like members from new member states (NMS) and female members.
At the start of HiPEAC5, a membership action plan was developed defining how we will reach out to representatives in these different target groups and how we can convince them to join the network and engage them in HiPEAC activities.
Between 1 Feb. 2019 and 329 Feb. 2020, HiPEAC welcomed 50 new members, 17 of them from industry, 4 from the innovation community and 5 from NMS. The community has been growing steadily. Currently, HiPEAC has 13 partners, 624 members and 125 associate members. Of the 624 members, 200 are members from companies. Furthermore, we have 1 015 HiPEAC PhD students and 445 affiliate members. See hipeac.net/members.
WP2: Connecting the communities
The work package on Connecting the communities focuses on building connections between members and between member types, and engaging the members into network activities. Therefore, this work package contains the activities that are known to knit the community closer together: networking, training, and two mobility activities: collaborations and jobs. The purpose of all these activities is to connect members and communities, especially the academic and industrial researchers, and the researchers with the innovation community.
The HiPEAC2020 Conference in Bologna brought 608 attendees together. At the 15th HiPEAC Conference, 44 papers were presented in the main conference track and 24 workshops and 13 tutorials took place.
HiPEAC also organized two computing systems weeks (CSWs) - one in Spring and one in Autumn. These CSWs consist of a main track organised on a central theme, thematic sessions, technology seminars and industrial partnership program sessions. The primary goal of the large networking events is to bring the HiPEAC community together under one roof on a regular basis, and thereby create an opportunity to meet and make collaboration plans. We organized two CSWs in 2019. The event in EDinburgh, UK attracted 223 participants while the CSW in Bilbao, Spain attracted 104 participants.
The ACACES 2019 summer school was held from 14 July to 20 July 2019 in Fiuggi, Italy. The summer school attracted 290 applications, which resulted in 225 participants accepting the invitation to attend the event. 1'47 PhD students received a HiPEAC grant. 21 people from industry, representing 15 different companies, attended.
The 2019 internship call resulted in the awarding of 6 students for an internship grant. All of them were granted to SMEs.In addition, 34 students were selected for a collaboration grant.
WP3: Dissemination
The work package on Dissemination contains tasks like communications, roadshow, awards, and maintaining the website. All these activities are meant to share news about the community, and to promote the community internally, and externally.
A dedicated communication officer assures the high quality of the HiPEAC communications and thereby reaches out to a wide, diverse audience outside of the immediate HiPEAC community. This is done by focusing on several activities: (1) branding and corporate image, (2) development of promotional material, (3) Updating the website with regular news and other content, (4) social media, (5) creation of videos and photography, (6) publishing the monthly HiPEAC newsmail, (7) the HiPEAC magazine, (8) working on media relations, (9) organisation of outreach activities, (10) dissemination of information through existing mailing lists, (11) development of a contact database.
The roadshow disseminated the achievements of the HiPEAC members beyond the community and attracted new members by attending 3 international trade shows.
The award program was successful. 63 papers received a HiPEAC Paper Award and 8 memberswere selected for a HiPEAC technology transfer award.
The HiPEAC technical staff officer has worked to further improve the website. The main contents are served via a public AP which makes the information accessible to the public
WP4: Roadmapping
The work package on Roadmapping is a work package with longer-term goals. It contains technology watch and roadmapping activities that led to the HiPEAC Vision 2019. By working together with other stakeholders, it also has a structuring effect on the community.
A tangible result of the vision building process is the HiPEAC vision, a document that describes the HiPEAC vision on high-performance embedded architecture and compilation for the coming decade. The 7th version of the vision was published in January 2019. See hipeac.net/vision. In January 2019, it was sent to 1.000 researchers worldwide. In addition, a short video and flyer were produced. These were used during several dissemination events informing experts all over the world about the recommendations defined in the HiPEAC Vision 2019.
This task also organised two consultation meetings with HiPEAC members and external invitees in collaboration with stakeholders (DG Connect, ETP4HPC, EXDCI, Eurolab4HPC, Platforms4CPS, …).
WP5: Management
The work package on Management guarantees that all the work packages and tasks are carried out as described in the description of action, that the tasks in the different work packages interact and synchronise with each other, and that all deliverables and milestones are on time and of good quality.
HiPEAC creates software development environments and tools allowing easy development of applications for parallel and heterogeneous architectures. Tools should be usable in realistic use cases, and should significantly increase the productivity in efficiently programming and maintaining advanced computing systems as compared to the state of the art at the start of the project.
HiPEAC creates a higher share of European SMEs and mid-caps in the reference markets, both on the supply and the demand side.