Call for Papers

Reconfigurable multi-core architectures for Driver Assistant Systems

Historically, Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) occupied the first place in embedded systems for the automotive industry because of their cost-effective silicon solution.
Increasing levels of complexity and computational demands in automotive applications forced a move to more powerful yet cost-effective processors. As a promising alternative to ASICs, reconfigurable architecture solutions have been proposed to implement complex automotive subsystems.
Recent research activities concentrate on investigating the design of driver assistant system in complex driving scenarios, such as detecting pedestrians or under changing weather and lighting conditions.
However, existing driver assistance systems do not support these complex applications because of their limited functionalities and cost constraints for large-scale automotive use.
This post-doc position aims to contribute in the design of an early warning and collision avoidance system based on multicore on FPGA reconfigurable system.
During the last 3 years, our group succeeded in developing 2 systems for DAS: The recognition system that is able to categorize the obstacles using their obstacle radar signature (ORS) in one hand and the multiple target tracking system (MTT) that is able to track the obstacle positions but with out taking into account their signatures on the other hand.
The proposal here is to come up with a full system where the ORS and the MTT work in a coordinated manner and implementing an efficient dynamically reconfigurable MPSoC heterogeneous system. 
References:
-        H.Liu, S.Niar, Y.ElHillali, A.Rivenk, Heterogeneous Embedded Architecture for Target Recognition in a Driver Assistant System. 2nd International Workshop on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies (HEART) 2011.
-        N.Harb, S. Niar, M. Saghir, Y. El Hillali, R. Ben Atitallah; Dynamically Reconfigurable Architecture for a Driver Assistant System, Symposium on Application Specific Processors (SASP 2011), in conjunction with DAC 2011.
-        J. Khan, S. Niar, M.Saghir, Y. El-Hillali, A. Rivenq, Trade-off Exploration for Target Tracking Application in a Customized Multiprocessor Architecture, EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems 2009.
The candidate should have experience in R&D projects and abilities to project management. The duties include:
-        Designing  an efficient multi-core architecture on FPGA.

-        Designing an efficient cooperation methodology  for cooperation and data exchange between ORS and MTT.
Desired Skills: Experience in embedded system design, multi-core architectures on FPGA (Xilinx), application profiling and compilation for FPGA-based multi-core systems.
Education: A Ph.D in  computer/electrical engineering is required.

Salary: 2500 euros/month

Position: PhD studentships in multi-core, parallel computing, and compilers

University: Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Status: IRCSET Enterprise Partnership Scheme Awards

Starting: September 2012 (or possibly March 2012) Closing date: As soon as possible, but not later than Jan 25th

The Software Tools Group is looking for outstanding students who are interested in PhD studies in the areas of parallel computing and compilers.

We have a PhD studentship position in the area of compilers, tools, and software for multicore and parallel computing. The particular area of interest is stream programming models for parallel computing, and especially for the analysis of large amounts of streaming data.

The project is based in the Software Tools Group, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and in collaboration with IBM Research. Trinity College is a 400-year-old University situated in the centre of Dublin with a large and active research profile in Computer Science. The successful candidate will work as part of a team of leading researchers working in the area of software tools for multi-core and many-core processors. There are also opportunities to work closely with staff at IBM Research, and participate in joint publications.

The ideal candidate should have a good masters (preferably) or BSc in Computer Science with strong software development skills. Experience in the areas of compilers, computer architecture and/or parallel computing are strongly desirable. Good written English is also required. The candidate should be able to work with other people. We are looking for the brightest minds and most committed researchers to do cutting-edge research in collaboration with IBM Research.

The following are required:

- Good primary degree in Computer Science

- C/C++

- Strong programming skills

- Good written English

Knowledge of the following are also highly desirable

- Construction optimizing compilers

- Compilers for parallel computing

- Computer architecture

- Multicore programming

- Stream programming

- GPU programming

- Experience of writing technical papers

The studentships are sponsored by IBM Research and IRCSET under the Enterprise Partnership Scheme (see http://www.ircset.ie/tabid/58/default.aspx). Note that the funding is available for these positions, but the selected candidates must also apply to, and be approved, by IRCSET. The deadline for IRCSET is the begining of February 2012, and IRCSET typically takes 2-3 months to reach a decision.

There is also a possibility of other funding for those interested in starting in, or soon after, March 2012.

Applicants should, in the first instance apply to Dr David Gregg with a CV and other relevant information as far ahead of this deadline as possible. Contact details can be found here:

http://www.cs.tcd.ie/David.Gregg/

Research Scientist Positions Cyber-Physical Systems for Energy Efficient Datacentres

The CISTER Research Centre is currently looking to strengthen its research team in the SENODs project on all levels: Senior Scientist, invited Scientist, Post-Docs. Research grants are available.

*CONTEXT:*

The SENODs (Sustainable ENergy-Optimized Datacentres) project aims at developing an integrated toolset that enables energy efficient operation of large data centres. The project being developed in collaboration with Portugal Telecom (PT), Carnegie-Mellon University and University of Porto and is motivated by the construction of one of the largest European Datacentres by PT.

CISTER’s work in the project focuses on the development of the infrastructure to perform fine-grained monitoring of power consumption, cooling and datacentre environmental variables and use this knowledge to optimize the datacentre operation. Potential topic areas to which you could contribute are:

• Building large-scale sensor/actuator networks;

• Large-scale data collection and data distribution middleware;

• Models of datacentre environmental and workload conditions for

• Development and implementations of mechanisms for energy-efficient layout

optimization and dynamic workload optimization; More info can be found at http://www.cister.isep.ipp.pt.

CISTER envisages that SENODs will be the starting point of a longer-term employment commitment. The successful candidate is expected to develop his/her own research agenda, collaborate with other national and international institutions as well as within the group, and contribute to PhD student supervision.

*REQUIREMENTS:*

The candidate should have a PhD in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering or related fields, with particular expertise in Cyber-Physical Systems. The candidate should also have an international publication record and ability to do independent research. Fluency in written and spoken English is required.

*SALARY, BENEFITS AND APPLICATION PROCEDURE:* The salary will be dependent on the qualification of the candidate. Other benefits include access to private health insurance, social security and 22 days of paid vacation. Informal contact prior to the formal application is encouraged. Please contact one of the academics mentioned below to learn about the application procedure.

*BACKGROUND:*

CISTER (Research Centre in Real-Time Computing Systems), established in 1997, is a top-ranked Research Unit based at the School of Engineering (ISEP) of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (IPP), Portugal. CISTER was, in the 2004 and

2007 national evaluation process, the only research unit in Portugal, in the area of Electrical and Computer Engineering, to be awarded the highest rating of "Excellent". This rating was awarded on account of an outstanding publication record of its researchers, and CISTER is also considered to be one of the leading European units in the area of Real-Time Computing and Embedded Systems. CISTER is currently expanding, both in terms of research activities as well as in facilities, with a new building which not only doubles the current capacity of the centre, but also provides a better environment for research, technology transfer, and networking activities.

*CONTATCS:*

Eduardo Tovar, emt@isep.ipp.pt

Nuno Pereira, nap@isep.ipp.pt

Miguel Pinho. lmp@isep.ipp.pt

Aalto University is seeking to hire two professors in the area of computer science, especially in software systems and engineering. We are looking for both young researchers with high potential and experienced candidates able to provide academic leadership. The appointments will be made to tenure-track or tenured positions at assistant, associate or full professor levels.

Applications are particularly encouraged from individuals with qualifications in one of the following areas:

• software systems including distributed, embedded and mobile systems and services, cloud computing, and energy efficiency

• software engineering including requirements engineering, architectures and efficient development processes for new services, as well as software development and business models in the global market

• topics in core computer science including new approaches to operating systems, programming languages and compilers, multicore programming and databases.

More information can be found

http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/jobs/professors/two_professors_computer_science_software_engineering/

PhD Studentships: Concurrency Engineering of Multi-Core Applications

University of Hertfordshire
Compiler Technology and Computer Architecture Group
Hatfield, United Kingdom

The School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire close to London is one of the oldest Computer Science academic departments in the UK. The University’s predecessor, Hatfield College of Technology, was one of the very first adopters of Computer Science as an academic discipline in the country. The Compiler Technology and Computer Architecture group has a strong reputation for its work on compiler technologies for distributed and parallel computing platforms. It collaborates with leading hardware institutions in academia and industry.

The CTCA group currently coordinates the FP7 European research project ADVANCE (Asynchronous and Dynamic Virtualisation through performance Analysis to support Concurrency Engineering), which is carried out jointly with three other Universities and five companies across Europe. The objective of this project is to develop dynamic optimisation techniques for concurrency engineering. One of the key concepts within the project is S-NET, which is a locally developed coordination language used to separate coordination and computation within multi-core applications.

Requirements for applicants:

Within the project we offer PhD studentships
Personal profile:

• Graduated student in the area of computer science
• Interest in compilers and compiler technology
• Adequate English skills (written and spoken)
• Interest in programming
• Propensity for teamwork

Suggested Period:
PhD studentships are awarded for three years, with a bursary of about £ 13.500 per annum. A home student’s fee will also be covered.

Tasks:
Extension of the flow-programming language S-Net, developed at UH, which is a declarative coordination language that describes the dataflow between functional units of a distributed application. Topics include: adding new mechanisms for robustness such as adaptability within the tool chain of S-NET, extending the expressiveness of S-Net towards embedded computing, as well as further issues of language design and implementation.

Applications:
Further information and an application form can be obtained from Mrs Lorraine Nicholls, 9AB, Tel: +44 (0) 1707 286083, Research Student Administrator, STRI, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts, AL10, l.nicholls @ herts.ac.uk. The topic “Programming Languages and Compilation Technology” has to be given on the application form to reply to this post.
The short-listing process will begin on 1. February 2012. (later applications are still possible, however, in this case please contact directly Dr. Raimund Kirner (r.kirner @ herts.ac.uk) to check availability status)

We are pleased to announce a minimum of 15 funded PhD positions as part of a new Centre for Doctoral Training in Computer Science, the first of its kind in the UK (http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/phd/programmes/cdt/).

These scholarships pay all tuition fees and a stipend award for 4 years.

In addition, the university has announced the President’s Doctoral Scholar (PDS) PhD Award. PDS awards are open to the most outstanding students from across the UK and around the world. These offer funding plus an additional £1000 enhancement to the stipend/living allowance.

http://www.mdc.manchester.ac.uk/funding/pdsaward/

The University of Manchester is one of the UK’s top research-led universities boasting a proud record of excellence in research. It can lay claim to 25 Nobel Prize winners amongst its current and former staff and students, including 4 Nobel laureates who are currently members of its staff. The School of Computer Science was ranked first in England as measured by research strength in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.

The Advanced Processor Technologies (APT) group has a wide range of activities related to Computer Architecture and Systems research. APT continues to influence industry with commercialisation examples such as the ICL Goldrush Database server, Amulet processors (Low-power

architectures) bought by ARM Ltd., Transitive Corporation (Virtualization and Binary Translation) bought by IBM and Silistix Ltd (Networks-on-Chip).

These exciting funded PhD opportunities cover the research areas of the Advanced Processor Technologies Group (http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/)

Examples of current research projects follow:

- SpiNNaker: a universal Spiking Neural Network architecture http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/projects/SpiNNaker/

- Research in Many-cores (Software and Hardware) http://www.teraflux.eu http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/projects/TM

- TEAK A novel self-timed synthesis system

http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/projects/teak/- GALAXY: Globally asynchronous, locally synchronous interface for complex digital system integration.

http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/projects/galaxy/

- iTLS: Intelligent run-time parallelization in managed virtual environments (e.g. Java Virtual Machines).

http://apt.cs.man.ac.uk/projects/iTLS

Deadline for applications:

- President’s Doctoral Scholar: 18/Jan/2012 No restrictions on citizenship.

- Centre for Doctoral Training: As early as possible (no later than

30/Apr/2012)

Funded positions require EU citizenship. PhD applications are evaluated constantly and the first batch of applicants have already been interviewed.

General information about PhD studies at Manchester and how to apply can be found at http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/phd/

Research Group Parallel Computing

Faculty of Informatics

Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) Vienna, Austria

The research group for Parallel Computing at the Institute of Information Systems, Faculty of Informatics of the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) is offering a fully funded 2 year postdoc position (with various possibilities for extension beyond the 2 years) for practical and theoretical research in a theme aligned with the focus of the group, see www.par.tuwien.ac.at.

The research group for parallel computing is a new group at the Vienna University of Technology. Its focus is on means and methods for efficiently utilizing different, real (e.g., clusters and shared memory systems with accelerators and other HW support, GPUs) as well as idealized, (e.g., fully connected communication networks, PRAM) parallel architectures for the solution of given computational problems. This includes the design, development and implementation of parallel algorithms and data structures for fundamental, basic problems (e.g., communication, reduction) and problems incurred by applications, of parallel programming models, interfaces, languages and libraries and their algorithmic support, and the study of parallel architectures.

Some specific, possible themes are algorithms for collective communication on multi-core based parallel architectures, robust collective communication algorithms, language paradigms for hybrid and heterogeneous HPC, performance portability for high-performance interfaces and heterogeneous multi-core systems and lock-free algorithms and data structures, to name a few. Contribution to other activities of the group (research projects including aquisition of new projects), including teaching is expected as part of the position.

The postdoc position is initially offered for 2 years. By good mutual understanding and productive collaboration there are various possibilities for extension beyond the two years.

Salary will be for a full-time 40 hour a week position in accordance with the Austrian standard rate for University employment and according to prior qualifications.

Qualifications:

- A good PhD in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics,

or other related area

- A qualitatively strong publication record in one or more parallel

computing themes, practically or theoretically oriented

- Good theoretical grounding in computer science (algorithms and data

structures, complexity, computability, …)

- Good programming skills in C/C++, Fortran, or Java; knowledge of other

paradigms (functional, logic, data flow) a plus

- Research capability, interest and enthusiasm, demonstrated both

independently and with collaborators

- Some teaching experience and a positive interest in the teaching aspect

Speaking German is not required, but fluency in English (written and

spoken) is a must. Willingness to learn German for foreign applicants is a plus. The application should include a short statement of interests, a suggested research outline (that will be subject to discussion, maxmimum one page), CV, copy of doctoral and diploma theses, and the name of two references than can be contacted for supporting information.

For further questions please contact Prof. Dr. Jesper Larsson Traff.

Deadline for application is 30. January 2012.

Please direct your application to pers1@zv.tuwien.ac.at, including a short outline of research interests and possible direction (maximum one page), CV, PhD and MSc certificates highlighting your relevant background (algorithms, programming interfaces, parallel processing), and list of publications with 1-3 highlighted main results.

    A funded PhD position is open on the Low Power GPU project to investigate parallel software tools for GPUs.  The goal is to reduce power consumption, by a combination of software and hardware methods, such as fusing kernels to increase reuse of on-chip data, and coupling that to a radically different GPU architecture. This project’s aim is to achieve equivalent performance to traditional designs, but consuming 20x less power, on a wider range of applications, while eliminating the programmability issues.
   To realize this, we’re looking for motivated, high quality students to research novel software tools and parallel languages. The investigation will involve compiler techniques, parallel languages, and high performance applications.
   The position is available to start immediately in the Embedded Systems Architecture group ( sean.halle@tu-berlin.de) or Ben Juurlink (b.juurlink@tu-berlin.de). Please start the subject line with “LPGPU Tools”.
Please send your application before   Jan 1, 2012
State your desire to apply for the position, citing the reference number, and include CV, with list of publications, and the names and contact information of two references
e-mail to:  sekr@aes.cs.tu-berlin.de
or regular mail to:  Präsidenten der Technischen Universität Berlin,
Fakultät IV,  Institut für Technische Informatik und Mikroelektronik,
FG Architektur eingebetteter Systeme,
Prof. Dr. Juurlink,
Sekr. EN 12, Einsteinufer 17, 10587 Berlin.
To ensure equal opportunities between men and women, applications from women with the respective qualifications are explicitly desired.
Handicapped applicants with equal qualifications are preferred.
Please send only copies and not originals of documents, as they will not be returned by mail.
The vacancy is also available in the internet at http://www.personalabteilung.tu-berlin.de/menue/jobs/.

2 Permanent Faculty Positions at the University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics =====================================================================

The University of Edinburgh, a global top 20 University located in one of the world`s fine cities, is making a major investment in the future of its academic staff with the appointment of prestigious tenure-track positions across all disciplines.

In Informatics it has 5 positions available, 2 of which are in:

* Computer Systems

including (but not limited to) Operating Systems, Runtime Systems,

Virtualisation, Cloud systems, Data centres, Managed Languages, Multi-core

* Computer Networks and Communication

including (but not limited to) Internet, Network routing, Protocols,

Traffic Management, Mobile sensing and networks, Ad hoc networks, Cloud,

Excellent candidates in related areas are also strongly encouraged to apply.

Background and Details

———————-

These positions are prestigious and entitled Chancellor’s Fellowships.

These Fellowships are intended to support outstanding candidates at the start of their independent academic career. Up to 100 positions are available across the University

A Chancellor`s Fellow will already show the ability to conduct world-leading research and exhibit clear potential to become an international leader in their discipline. The Fellow will be able to concentrate on research in the first instance, acquiring the full duties of University Lecturer across the period of the Fellowship. Subject to satisfactory review at the end of 3 years, the Fellow will move to an open contract on the University academic staff.

Appointment will normally be made on the Lecturer (Assistant Professor) scale (£36,862 – £44,016), dependent on experience, and in exceptional circumstances a more senior appointment may be made. Some positions are available with immediate effect and it is expected that successful applicants will be in post from August 2012.

Application procedure

———————–

Applications containing a detailed CV and a 1-page outline of a proposed research programme should be made online at www.jobs.ed.ac.uk to meet one of the closing dates below

16th January 2012 (recommended)

29th February 2012

16th April 2012

The advert is at:

http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3015150

and this page has a link to further Information at

http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.furtherdetails&vacancy_ref=3015150

From the further information page you will find another link at the bottom "Strategic Areas for Appointment" to an annex that lists the priority areas for recruitment including Computer Systems and Networks

Enquiries

———

For informal enquiries please contact Prof. Michael O’Boyle mob@inf.ed.ac.uk

Increasing levels of complexity and computational demands in automotive applications forced a move to powerful yet cost-effective embedded system.

Our recent research activities concentrate on investigating the design of driver assistant system in complex driving scenarios, such as detecting pedestrians or under changing weather and lighting conditions.

However, existing driver assistance systems do not support these complex applications because of their limited functionalities and cost constraints for large-scale automotive use.

The work to be done in this post-doctorate position aims to contribute in the design of an early warning and collision avoidance system. During the last 3 years, our group succeeded in developing two systems for DAS : the recognition system that is able to categorize the obstacles using a complex and expensive obstacle radar signature (ORS) in one hand and the multiple target tracking system (MTT) that is able to track the obstacle positions but with out taking into account their signatures.

The proposal here is to come up with a full system where the ORS and the MTT work in a coordinated manner. This cooperation between the 2 parts is very effective as it may reduce system cost and enhance accuracy of the DAS.

The job include :

- designing an efficient cooperation methodology and approach for cooperation and data exchange between ORS and MTT,

- designing an efficient multi-core architecture on FGPGA.

Contacts

www.cisit.org http://www.cisit.org/?q=recruitement

smail niar @univ-valenciennes.fr

Employment

Gross monthly wages : 2500 €

Duration :12 months

Employer : CNRS France