Expected Outcome:

Projects are expected to contribute to both of the following outcomes:

• Prototypes of cloud and edge servers demonstrated in relevant centralised and distributed environments and allowing full computing infrastructure deployments based on European processor technology, thereby establishing a full Open Computing Architecture stack, which supports emerging processing architectures (e.g. RISC-V).
• Standards and best practices consolidating the European Open Computing Architecture, as well as its interfaces to current industry standards.

Scope:

Proposals should facilitate the emergence of a full European Open Cloud and Edge Computing Architecture by

• Developing open source alternatives to enable the physical use of emerging processors in cloud and edge server systems. Such modules include basic input/output systems, pre-boot execution environments, power-on authentication, etc., supporting heterogeneous processor architectures, and
• Demonstrating actual cloud and edge systems in real life or emulated computing environments exploiting the benefits of an extended open source stack (socket to application) on emerging processor architectures (e.g. RISC-V).

Research should interface with relevant existing standards and contribute to standardisation where appropriate.

Proposals should include a clear business case and exploitation strategy.

Proposals are expected to develop synergies and relate to activities and outcomes of the KDT/Chips and the EuroHPC Joint Undertakings, the European Processor Initiative and the European RISC-V working group. They should complement the development of European HW and related low-level software as done under the KDT and EuroHPC JUs, to make these exploitable for cloud and edge servers and make use of previous developments under Horizon Europe.

Specific Topic Conditions:

Activities are expected to start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 6 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.