TEXTAROSSA goals are pursued by working at the various levels of the computing scenario.
1. At the architectural level: two innovative heterogeneous nodes have been set up, one based on the OpenSequana architecture from Atos (x86 processors accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs) and the other, developed by E4, based on ARM processors and Xilinx FPGAs. To maximize energy efficiency, an innovative two-phase liquid cooling system has been developed and tested on both the demonstrator nodes.
2. At the accelerator level: due to the high performance/watt figures of FPGAs, some IPs have been developed: an IP to support variable precision arithmetic (thus reducing memory bandwidth requirements and hardware resources), a cryptographic IP to be used in Homomorphic Encryption (HE) and in Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), a communication IP to allow fast intra and inter FPGA communication, an IP to support the scheduling for task-based computational models.
3. At the programming tool level: High-Level Synthesis flows are being widely addressed within the project to allow seamless access to FPGA accelerators. HLS tools are being used in conjunction with stream-based (FastFlow, APEIRON) and task-based (OmpSs, StarPU) tools, and are targeted by tools developed in the project (TAFFO) to support mixed precision arithmetic.
4. At the application level: many applications from different relevant domains are being implemented on top of the target architectures to demonstrate the effectiveness of all the solutions being developed within the project, where some of them are released as open source.
During the entire project duration, we focused on widening our audience and ensuring the visibility of the TEXTAROSSA project in the international community. Dissemination materials was created, and all activities have been supported by a public website as well as a landing page on three social media: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, which will be active for the next five years. Several international conferences including the collaboration with companion projects were pursued to maximise the spread of TEXTAROSSA achievements. A book is planned for fall 2024.
The plan to continue working on the exploitation of the project's achievements from a commercial perspective includes strengthening the established value chain between ENEA, InQuattro, E4, and POLIMI. This collaboration has already led to the release of a commercial installation at the University of Turin. Additional plans to enhance scientific cooperation among project partners are already underway. Many of these partners are involved in other ongoing EuroHPC projects, such as EU-Pilot, EUPEX, EPI-2, as well as Chips JUs like ISOLDE and Tristan. Moreover, there are ongoing proposals focusing on both platforms and applications for HPC, involving partners such as CNR, FhG, INFN, and ENEA. This interconnected network of collaborations fosters knowledge sharing, synergy, and the advancement of HPC-related research and development efforts.
