UniServer has the ambition to design, implement and bring in market the hardware and software ecosystem of the next generation energy efficient and error resilient micro-servers. To achieve the delivery of such a unique working prototype, UniServer follows a holistic, vertical approach, spanning all layers of a computing system, from the circuits, microarchitecture and firmware up-to the virtualization environment, operating system and applications. The work is structured in 7 work packages each consisting of a number of tasks that try to enable, realize, optimize and finally evaluate the developed technologies at the various layers (HW, Firmware, Hypervisor, OpenStack) as depicted in the following Figure.
Separate work packages (WPs) focus on each layer (WP3 – WP6 for the hardware, firmware, hypervisor and OpenStack). These WPs typically consist of a task that specifies the hooks within the specific layer and the appropriate interface links to the surrounding layers, a task on implementing basic functionality, and finally a task focusing on the optimization and fine tuning of the parameters of the specific technology based on the joint consideration of intra-layer parameters and use of real application data. A full work package (WP7) is then dedicated to cross-layer system integration and evaluation of the system prototype using applications that represent cloud- as well as standalone-processing scenarios. This work package provides feedback to each layer based on inter-dependent, system-wide parameters, in order to achieve the ambitious improvements in performance, energy efficiency, security and scalability, and to explore the respective limits of the system prototype. 5