Three day conference to explore themes for the connected world

HiPEAC17 will see the launch of the HiPEAC Vision 2017, a technology roadmap which lays out how technology affects our lives and how it can, and should, respond to the challenges facing European society and economies, such as the ageing population, climate change and shortages in the ICT workforce.

The Vision 2017 proposes a reinvention of computing.

"‘We are at a crossroads, as our current way of making computers and their associated software is reaching its limit," said Editor of the Vision, Marc Duranton of CEA. "New domains such as cyber-physical systems, which entangle the cyber and physical worlds, and artificial intelligence require us to trust systems and so develop more efficient approaches to cope with the challenges of safety, security, privacy, energy efficiency and increasing complexity. It really is the right time to reinvent computing!"

The Vision 2017 also highlights the economic importance of Europe remaining at the forefront of technological innovation. In that vein, HiPEAC17 is not a traditional academic conference; the network brings together computing systems research teams based in universities and research labs with those based in industry so as to ensure that research is relevant to market needs. Indeed, the network has recently given a Technology Transfer Award to Horacio Pérez-Sánchez of the Universidad Católica de Murcia for his team’s work on computational drug discovery technologies, work supported by the EU-funded Tetracom initiative, which facilitated the transfer of research results from university labs to commercial application.

HiPEAC17 will also serve as a platform for HiPEAC’s recruitment service, which aims to help match European companies and research teams with the people with the skills they need, something that often proves to be a hurdle to business development.

Highlights of the conference include:

• Launch of Matryx Computers, pre-integrated (hardware and fully-featured OS) computer platforms based on FPGA, by Embedded Computing Specialists (Brussels);
• New startup Zeropoint Technologies (Stockholm), which is innovating ultrafast memory compression systems;
• RWTH Aachen spinoff SILEXICA, just awarded $8mn in series A funding and celebrating the release of its next generation SLX Tool Suite for multicore platforms;
• Keynotes from well known experts Kathryn McKinley (Microsoft), Sarita Adve (University of Illinois) and Sandro Gaycken (Digital Society Institute, ESMT Berlin) will focus on data centre tail latency, memory hierarchies in the era of specialisation, and the ‘as yet unsolvable problem’ of cybersecurity.