London *BSD meetup, next Thursday (15/11/12)

[Sevan / Venture37 <venture37%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hiya,
Anyone fancy meeting up next week?
I thought we might piggy back on the back of OSHUG, the meeting moves on 
to the pub after the talks so it wont just be listening to talks.

Sevan

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [oshug-announce] OSHUG #22 — Embedded (Erlang, Parallella, 
Compiler Options and Energy Consumption).
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:43:34 +0100
From: Andrew Back <arback%computer.org@localhost>
To: oshug-announce%oshug.org@localhost

Hello,

The next OSHUG meeting will be on Thursday 15th November (but not at
our usual venue!) Details and registration link below.

Regards,

Andrew

//

OSHUG #22 — Embedded (Erlang, Parallella, Compiler Options and Energy
Consumption)
15th November 2012, 18:45 - 20:30 at Erlang Solutions, New Loom House,
101 Back Church Lane, London, E1 1LU, UK.

Sponsored by Electronics, Sensors, Photonics KTN: http://www.espktn.org

— Registration: http://oshug.org/event/22

Embedded systems continue to grow in importance as they play an
ever-increasing role in everyday life: more computing is done on the
move as smartphone functionality catches up with desktops and services
move to the Cloud; the Internet of Things is set to herald an age in
which networked objects create and consume data on our behalves.
These, and many other applications, are driving an insatiable demand
for more powerful and energy-efficient embedded solutions.

At the twenty-second OSHUG meeting we will hear how Erlang can be used
to bring concurrency to multi-core embedded systems, we will learn
about the Parallella project which aims to make parallel computing
accessible to everyone, and we will hear about vital research into
optimising compiler options for energy-efficiency.

- Erlang Embedded — Concurrent Blinkenlights and More!

Managing the resources and utilising the increasingly popular
multi-core and heterogeneous aspects of modern embedded systems
require new sets of tools and methodologies that differ from the
traditional C/C++ flow.

Erlang provides features that are highly relevant to solve these
issues and yet it is pretty much unknown in the embedded domain —
which is surprising considering that it was originally designed for
embedded applications at Ericsson!

This talk aims to provide an overview of Erlang and the current state
of its usage in the embedded domain and talk about our plans to help
speed up the adoption rate of Erlang in embedded projects.

Omer Kilic works on Erlang Embedded, a Knowledge Transfer Partnership
project in collaboration with University of Kent. The aim of this
project is to bring the benefits of concurrent systems development
using Erlang to the field of embedded systems; through investigation,
analysis, software development and evaluation.

Prior to joining Erlang Solutions, Omer was a research student in the
Embedded Systems Lab at the University of Kent, working on a
reconfigurable heterogeneous computing framework as part of his PhD
thesis (which he intends to submit soon!)

Omer likes tiny computers, things that 'just work' and real beer.

- Parallella — Supercomputing for Everyone

The Parallella computing platform is based on the Adapteva Epiphany
processor. Implemented in 65nm or 28nm silicon, Epiphany offers 16 or
64 cores and delivers up to 50 GFLOPS/watt, and the entire Parallella
board complete with a dual-core ARM A9 host will consume around 5
watts.

This talk will present the Epiphany architecture and explore the
challenges of developing an effective GNU tool chain, and discuss the
use of open source, and an approach to engineering that developed one
of the fastest chips in the world from concept to second generation
silicon for just a few million dollars.

Dr Jeremy Bennett is the founder of Embecosm, and an expert on
hardware modelling and embedded software development. Prior to
founding Embecosm, Dr Bennett was Vice President of ARC International
PLC and previously Vice President of Marconi PLC.

In his earlier academic career, he pursued academic research in
computer architecture, modelling and compiler technology at Bath and
Cambridge Universities. He is the author of the popular textbook
"Introduction to Compiling Techniques" (McGraw-Hill 1990, 1995, 2003).

Dr Bennett holds an MA and PhD in Computer Science from Cambridge
University. He is a Member of the British Computer Society, a
Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Information Technology Professional
and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

- Measuring the impact of compiler options on energy consumption in
embedded platforms

Energy efficiency is the highest priority for modern software-hardware
co-design. The potential for compiler options to impact on power
consumption of running programs has often been discussed. However
there has never been a comprehensive analysis of the magnitude of that
impact, or how it varies between processor architectures and
compilers.

This presentation will describe a project undertook during the the
Summer of 2012 at the University of Bristol Department of Computer
Science and funded by Embecosm, to explore the effect of compiler
options on energy consumption of compiled programs.

The talk will discuss the accurate measurement of power consumption on
a range of small embedded systems. The whole setup was under control
of an XMOS board, making it possible to run the tens of thousands of
tests needed for statistical robustness in just a few weeks. The
results of these tests will be discussed, the implications for
compiling embedded systems, and the potential for future research in
this area.

This research was unusual, in that it was funded as a completely open
project. A wiki detailed progress from week to week, the relevant open
source communities were kept regularly informed, and the results will
be published in open access journals. The talk will also cover the
issues around funding and running an academic research project in this
manner.

James Pallister is a graduate of the University of Bristol, where he
achieved joint First Class Honours in Computer Science and
Electronics. During the summer of 2012, he led Embecosm's research
program into the impact of compilers on energy consumption in embedded
systems, which was a development of James' work at the University of
Bristol with the XMOS multi-core processor.

Mr Pallister has returned to Bristol in October 2012, where he is
studying for a PhD in low-power multi-core system design. He remains a
Technical Advisor to Embecosm.

Simon Hollis is a lecturer in the Microelectronics Research Group,
Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol. His interests
lie in the creation of energy-efficient embedded systems, processor
interconnects and parallel languages and run-times.

He is the creator of the RasP and Skip-link Networks-on-Chip, and is
currently working on the Swallow many-core system, which targets 480
processing cores in under 200W. A main aim of the research is to
re-investigate the memory/communication balance in large scale
computing systems.

Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:45 or shortly after as the event
will start at 19:00 prompt.

— Registration: http://oshug.org/event/22

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