Technology Foundation STW has awarded a grant worth 6 million euros to Robust design of cyber-physical systems (CPS), a research programme in which scientists from the University of Amsterdam’s Informatics Institute (IVI) are collaborating with six other universities, three knowledge institutions and eleven companies.

About Robust design of cyber-physical systems

Making robust cyber-pysical systems is of great importance to the industry. Cyber-physical systems include, among other things, smart grids for the electricity supply of the future, intelligent transport systems, or medical imaging — extremely diverse systems which all consist of a complex mix of sensors and actuators, which monitor some aspect of the environment that may pose a threat.

Contribution of the IVI

As part of this programme, the Computer Systems Architecture research group of the IVI, headed by Dr Andy Pimentel, is involved in research on distributed and cooperative controllers for networked cyber-physical systems and its application for the design of temperature-dependent workload schedulers for data centres (server farms). This group will develop a simulation and exploration environment that will allow different implementations and strategies to be studied for smart scheduling tasks in server farms based on performance and temperature requirements. The CPS programME is led by the University of Twente.

About STW

Technology Foundation STW funds excellent technical-scientific research, which could possibly be applied in practice. STW has a separate budget available for Perspective programmes every year. Common characteristics of these programmes are: developing new technology through a multidisciplinary approach, cooperation or financing by private parties and special activities aimed at valorisation and entrepreneurship. The intended result of the STW Perspective programme is that it will contribute to solving problems in innovation sector and in society.