ALMA consortium develops tool chain for embedded multi-core processors

Several research facilities and companies have joined forces within ALMA (ALgorithm parallelization for Multicore Architectures) to develop a new tool chain, based on the Scilab open source software, for programming with embedded multi-core processors. The project, which received €3.2 million in funding from the EU, has the goal of making the same efficient tool chain available for different multi-core processor architectures and simplify the development of software for embedded multi-core processors.

ALMA plans to enhance Scilab, which was originally developed for numerical mathematics applications, to include downstream optimisation stages that allow the intelligent parallelisation of applications and their distribution across several processors. It will also focus on close cooperation between software and hardware. The project will concentrate on two case studies in the areas of image processing/object recognition and mobile communication.

Launched in September 2011, ALMA is set to run for three years. The ALMA consortium is coordinated by Jürgen Becker and Michael Hübner from the Institute for Information Processing Technology (ITIV) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). In addition to KIT, contributors to the project include the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB), Rennes University, the University of the Peloponnese, the Technological Educational Institute of Messolonghi, and companies Recore Systems and Intracom SA Telecom Solutions.

(crve)