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Section: Partnerships and Cooperations
National Initiatives
The Cairn team has currently some collaboration with the following laboratories: CEA List, SATIE ENS Cachan, LEAT Nice, Lab-Sticc (Lorient, Brest), LIRMM (Montpellier, Perpignan), ETIS Cergy, LIP6 Paris, IETR Rennes, Ireena Nantes; and with the following Inria project-teams: Aric, Compsys, Swing, Symbiose, TexMex.
The team participates in the activities of the following research organization of CNRS (GdR for in French "Groupe de Recherche"):
GdR SOC-SIP (System On Chip & System In Package), working groups on reconfigurable architectures, embedded software for SoC, low power issues. See http://www2.lirmm.fr/~w3mic/SOCSIP/index.php . Cairn is the leader of the group on reconfigurable architectures.
GdR ISIS (Information Signal ImageS), working group on Algorithms Architectures Adequation.
GdR IM (Informatique Mathématiques), C2 working group on Codes and Cryptography and ARITH working group on Computer Arithmetic
ANR Blanc - PAVOIS (2012–2016)
Participants : Arnaud Tisserand, Emmanuel Casseau, Romuald Rocher, Philippe Quémerais, Jérémie Métairie.
PAVOIS (in French: Protections Arithmétiques Vis à vis des attaques physiques pour la cryptOgraphIe basée sur les courbeS elliptiques) is a project on Arithmetic Protections Against Physical Attacks for Elliptic Curve based Cryptography. It involves IRISA-Cairn (Lannion) and LIRMM (Perpignan and Montpellier). This project will provide novel implementations of curve based cryptographic algorithms on custom hardware platforms. A specific focus will be placed on trade-offs between efficiency and robustness against physical attacks. One of our goal is to theoretically study and practically measure the impact of various protection schemes on the performance (speed, silicon cost and power consumption). Theoretical aspects will include an investigation of how special number representations can be used to speed-up cryptographic algorithms, and protect cryptographic devices from physical attacks. On the practical side, we will design innovative cryptographic hardware architectures of a specific processor based on the theoretical advancements described above to implement curve based protocols. We will target efficient and secure implementations for both FPGA an ASIC circuits. For more details see http://pavois.irisa.fr .
ANR INFRA 2011 - FAON (2012-2015)
Participants : Raphaël Bardoux, Arnaud Carer, Matthieu Gautier, Pascal Scalart.
The FAON (Frequency based Access Optical Networks) project objectives are to demonstrate the technology and feasibility of a new type of Passive Optical Network (PON) for broadband access which uses a Frequency based shared access technique known as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM). These goals completely fall into the line of the expected capacity increase in PON which is today forecasted to go from 100 Mbps per user to 1 Gbps. For more details, see http://www.anr-faon.fr/ . Faon involves Orange Labs, CEA-LETI, University of South Brittany (Lab-STICC laboratory) and University of Rennes 1 (Foton laboratory and Cairn team). Cairn aims at developing a high-rate architecture at the receiver side. Specific receiver algorithms (synchronization and equalization) and FPGA implementation are the key issues that will be addressed.
Equipex FIT - Future Internet (of Things)
Participants : Vaibhav Bhatnagar, Arnaud Carer, Matthieu Gautier, Ganda-Stéphane Ouedraogo, Olivier Sentieys.
FIT is one of 52 winning projects from the first wave of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research's "Équipements d'Excellence" (Equipex) research grant programme. FIT involves UPMC, Inria, LSIIT and the Institut Mines-Telecom and runs over a nine-year period. FIT offers a federation of several independent experimental testbeds to provide a larger-scale, more diverse and higher performance platform for accomplishing advanced experiments. For more details, see http://fit-equipex.fr/ . Inria (Cairn and Socrate teams) develops the cognitive radio testbed that will provide a full experimental environment for evaluating the coexistence and the cooperation between heterogeneous multistandard nodes. To this aim, a fully open architecture based on software defined radio nodes is developed. Cairn aims at proposing an FPGA based software defined radio with high level specifications. Cognitive radio testbed development is supported by an ADT funding of Inria.
ANR Ingénérie Numérique et Sécurité - ARDyT (2011-2015)
Participants : Sébastien Pillement, Arnaud Tisserand, Philippe Quémerais.
ARDyT (in French: Architecture Reconfigurable Dynamiquement Tolérante aux fautes) is a project on a Reliable and Reconfigurable Dynamic Architecture. It involves IRISA-Cairn (Lannion), Lab-STICC (Lorient), LIEN (Nancy) and ATMEL. The purpose of the ARDyT project is to provide a complete environment for the design of a fault tolerant and self-adaptable platform. Then, a platform architecture, its programming environment and management methodologies for diagnosis, testability and reliability have to be defined and implemented. The considered techniques are exempt from the use of hardened components for terrestrial and aeronautics applications for the design of low-cost solutions. The ARDyT platform will provide a European alternative to import ITAR constraints for fault-tolerant reconfigurable architectures. For more details see http://ardyt.irisa.fr .
ANR Ingénérie Numérique et Sécurité - COMPA (2011-2015)
Participants : Emmanuel Casseau, Steven Derrien, Sébastien Pillement.
COMPA (model oriented design of embedded and adaptive multiprocessor) is a project which involves Cairn , IETR (Institut d'Electronique et de Télécommunications de Rennes), Lab-STICC (University of Bretagne Sud), CAPS Entreprise, Modae Technologies and Texas Instruments. The goal of the project is to design adaptive multiprocessor embedded systems from dataflow models. Reconfigurable video coding (RVC) standard will be targeted as application use case. We will then more specifically focus on the use of the portable and platform-independent RVC-CAL language to describe the applications. We will propose transformations in order to refine, optimize and translate the application model into software and hardware components. Task mapping, instructions and processor allocation, and constrained scheduling will also be investigated for runtime execution and reconfiguration.
ANR Ingénérie Numérique et Sécurité - DEFIS (2011-2015)
Participants : Olivier Sentieys, Daniel Menard, Romuald Rocher, Nicolas Simon.
DEFIS (Design of fixed-point embedded systems) is a project which involves Cairn , LIP6 (University of Paris VI), LIRMM (University of Perpignan), CEA LIST, Thales, Inpixal. The main objectives of the project are to propose new approaches to improve the efficiency of the floating-point to fixed-point conversion process and to provide a complete design flow for fixed-point refinement of complex applications. This infrastructure will reduce the time-to-market by automating the fixed-point conversion and by mastering the trade-off between application quality and implementation cost. Moreover, this flow will guarantee and validate the numerical behavior of the resulting implementation. The proposed infrastructure will be validated on two real applications provided by the industrial partners. For more details see http://defis.lip6.fr .
ANR ARPEGE - GRECO (2010-2013)
Participants : Olivier Sentieys, Olivier Berder, Arnaud Carer, Trong-Nhan Le.
Sensor network technologies and the increase efficiency of photovoltaic cells show that it is possible to reach communicating objects solutions with low enough power consumption to foresee the possibility of developing autonomous objects. Greco (GREen wireless Communicating Objects) is a project on the design of autonomous communicating object platforms (i.e. self-powered sensor networks). The aim is to optimize the power consumption based on (i) a modeling of the performance and power of the required blocks (RF front-end, converters, modem, peripherals, digital architecture, OS, software, power generator, battery, etc.) (ii) heterogeneous simulation models and tools, and (iii) the use of a real-time global “Power Manager”. The final validation will be performed on various case studies: a monitoring system and an audio communication between firemen. A HW/SW prototyping (based on an Cairn 's PowWow platform with energy harvesting) and a simulation associating a precise modeling (virtual platform) of an object inserted in a network simulator-like environment will be developed as demonstrators. Greco involves Thales, Irisa-Cairn , CEA List, CEA Leti, Im2nP, LEAT, Insight-SiP. For more details see http://greco.irisa.fr .
S2S4HLS
Participants : Emmanuel Casseau, Steven Derrien, Daniel Menard, Olivier Sentieys, Antoine Morvan, Chenglong Xiao, Jean-Charles Naud.
NANO2012 Program - S2S4HLS (2008-2012)
High-level synthesis (HLS) tools start to be used for industrial designs. HLS is analogous to software compilation transposed to the hardware domain. From an algorithmic behavior of the specification, HLS tools automate the design process and generate a register transfer level RTL architecture taking account of user-specified constraints. However, design performance still depends on designer's skill to write the appropriate source code. The S2S4HLS (Source-to-Source for High-Level Synthesis) project intends to process source code transformations to guide synthesis hence leading to more efficient designs, and aims at providing a toolbox for automatic C code source-to-source transformations. The project is focused on three complementary goals to push the limits of existing HLS tools: loop transformations for performance optimization and a better resource usage, automatic floating-point to fixed-point conversion and synthesis of multi-mode architectures. S2S4HLS is organized into three sub-projects targeting these three objectives. The project is in close collaboration with STMicroelectronics and Compsys team at Inria Rhône-Alpes, within the overall Inria-ST partnership agreement. It is financed by the Ministry of Industry in the Nano2012 program. Cairn is responsible of the project and involved in the three workpackages.
NANO2012 Program - RecMotifs (2008-2012)
Participants : François Charot, Antoine Floc'h, Christophe Wolinski.
The RecMotifs project aims at the generation of application specific extensions targeting the STxP70 processor from STMicroelectronics. Cairn will study advanced technologies algorithms for graph matching and graph merging together with constraints programming methods. The project is in close collaboration with STMicroelectronics within the overall Inria-ST partnership agreement. It is financed by the Ministry of Industry in the Nano2012 program.
ANR Architectures du Futur Open-People (2009-2012)
Participants : Daniel Chillet, Robin Bonamy, Olivier Sentieys.
The Open-People (Open Power and Energy Optimization PLatform and Estimator) project aims at defining a complete platform for power estimation and optimization. The platform will be composed of hardware boards to support measurements for the applications. End-users will be able to upload their applications through a web portal, and to control the power measurements of the execution of their applications on a specific electronic board. The Open-People project will also propose a complete power component model library which allows end-users to estimate the power consumption of some parts of the applications without making measurements. This will allow to quickly evaluate the different design choices regarding the power consumption. Finally, through the web portal http://www.open-people.fr , Open-People will propose software tools to apply power optimizations. In this project, Cairn team will develop power model for FPGA components using dynamic reconfiguration. Open-People involves LabSticc (Lorient), Trio (Nancy), Cairn (Rennes/Lannion) and Dart (Lille/Valenciennes) teams from Inria, Leat at Nice, Thales (Colombes) and InPixal (Rennes). Cairn is in charge of power models and optimization for reconfigurable architectures.
Images and Networks competitiveness cluster - 100GFlex project (2010-2013)
Participants : Olivier Sentieys, Arnaud Carer, Remi Pallas, Pascal Scalart.
Speed and flexibility are quickly increasing in the metropolitan networks. In this context, 100GFLEX studies the relevance of a new transmission scheme: the multiband optical OFDM at very-high rates (up to 100 Gbits/s). In this project we will study efficient algorithms (e.g. synchronization) and high-speed architectures for the digital signal processing of the optical transceivers. Due to the high rate of analog signals (sampling at more than 10Gsample/s), synchronizing and processing is real challenge. 100Gflex involves Mitsubishi-Electric R&D Center Europe, Institut Télécom, Ekinops, France Télécom, Yenista Optics, Foton and Cairn .