EDRA successfully delivered an end-to-end framework for mapping applications onto Amazon’s FPGA-supported cloud platforms. Moreover, the project deployed a pioneering MVP that enables faster processing of workloads related to phylogenetics. This research domain is crucial for understanding organism evolution, and especially of viruses like the SARS-CoV-2 and its mutations. As such, the project socio-economic impacts with respect to its developed technology and achievements are the following:
• Economic and business impact: The project has delivered the EDRA framework, a genuine technology for rapid and (semi) automatic hardware-accelerated deployment of applications to cloud resources. The framework allows essentially the quick launch of cloud-supported services for SMEs and corporations, thus enabling faster and better services for end users, a key aspect for economic growth.
• Increased value creation from FET projects by picking up innovation opportunities: Based on the framework developed by EDRA, the team formulated a go-to-market strategy for offering hardware-acceleration services to the cloud for demanding applications. Moreover, EDRA released an MVP that enhances research on phylogenetics, an important area that can assist on the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak and other potential pandemics.
• Improved societal and market acceptance: The COVID-19 outbreak demonstrated that scientists need access to powerful computational resources with fast turnaround times of results on drug analysis and model simulation. EDRA’s MVP addresses today’s the important need for more computational power towards faster analysis of virus evolution.
• Contributing to the competitiveness of European industry/economy: EDRA picked up on the fact that major cloud providers, such as Amazon and Alibaba, started offering services that support FPGAs; the DAE framework allows the offer of generic low-risk hardware-acceleration services on the cloud for customers that wish to remove their application back end from their premises.
• Stimulating, supporting and rewarding an open and proactive mind-set: EDRA’s ability for quick deployment of hardware-accelerated applications, allow SMEs and corporations to investigate and propose new services to end-users with minimum investment risk, strengthening even more the European industry sector.
• Scientific impact: EDRA’s MVP is a genuine solution that allows biologists and researchers in phylogenetics to increase their productivity, while at the same time reducing IT costs. The majority of the software tools used for experiments are compute-bound, hence the additional processing power that EDRA’s MVP provides can further assist on understanding the origins of lethal viruses. This is a valuable asset for constraining the spread of potential new pandemics, should anytime happen.
Finally, EDRA has already initiated the process of launching a spin-off towards entering the market based on the formulated business plan. The spin-off plans to deploy the MVP to Amazon’s marketplace, where biologists and researchers on phylogenetics will be able to download it on a pay-as-you-go charging policy, and instantly conduct their experiments up to 2.5x faster compared to the currently available software-optimized configurations.
