LORELEI · Low-energy and Reliable reconfigurable processing systems

This proposal deals with electronic embedded systems, i.e., with electronic systems which have been designed to perform a dedicated task.These systems must match specific constraints demanded by the targeted application, and may include cost, performance, real-time capabilities, volume, weight, and power. The last parameter emerged as a crucial one in the last decade, not only because of the increasing popularity of portable devices, but also because of the growing concerns about energy. At the same time, the reliability issue is becoming increasingly important, due to the widespread adoption of embedded systems in applications where failures may cause relevant damages, either to persons, or to the environment, or even from an economical point of view, where low cost devices must still ensure quality of service. Finally, new semiconductor technologies will be increasingly less reliable, which means that the chance of manufacturing fault-free components will be very low, thus reducing significantly the yield of the electronic products production process: this is raising the issue of producing reliable systems with unreliable components, possibly resorting to redundancy and using components where faults have been located and can be managed. This proposal aims at creating a network of research groups with international excellence in this area, and plans to combine their complementary knowledge with three main goals:•Developing new techniques able to provide effective solutions when embedded systems are required for which the traditional constraints have to be complemented with specific constraints in terms of power/energy consumption and reliability•Training new researchers in this area, while educating them to cooperate at the international level•Supporting the exchange of ideas and techniques inside and outside the project consortium, involving not only the academia, but also the interested companies.