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Component-based Highly Productive Methodology for Software Development in Grid and Cloud Computing

Summary of the impact

The invention of a novel component-based model and approach for rapid distributed software development are the core research results for this case study. Using our methodology we have built a fully functional platform — the Grid Integrated Development Environment (GIDE) — which has been used for the development of user applications by several industrial partners. The main economic impact of our work is the new component-based development process resulting in much higher productivity and shorter development cycle. In addition, the four new international standards approved by ETSI provide impact on the wider professional community in the areas of grid and cloud computing.

Submitting Institution

University of Westminster

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

Industrial application of computational models and experimental techniques for catalyst development and optimisation

Summary of the impact

The development and application, by a UCL and Royal Institution (UCL/RI) team, of a powerful range of computational and experimental techniques has had a major impact on understanding of catalysis at the molecular level. The translation of these approaches to industry — achieved through fellowships, collaborations and employment of trained UCL/RI scientists — has had substantial impact on the development and optimisation of key catalytic systems used in energy, environmental, bulk and fine chemicals production. Computational modelling software has been commercialised by Accelrys following interaction with the UCL/RI team. Products and processes at Johnson Matthey have been developed and enhanced over a shorter timescale, ultimately leading to good returns and a sustained market position. The approaches also provided evidence that platinum-containing vehicle emission catalysts are not a source of chloroplatinates in the environment and can therefore continue to be used.

Submitting Institution

University College London

Unit of Assessment

Chemistry

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Chemical Sciences: Inorganic Chemistry, Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry, Physical Chemistry (incl. Structural)

Grid Computing

Summary of the impact

Grid computing research conducted by the High Energy Physics (HEP) Group at the University of Cambridge, Department of Physics has enabled software company IMENSE to develop and commercialise a range of content based image recognition products. The research gained substantial media interest and was featured at the BA Festival of Science 2008.

Submitting Institution

University of Cambridge

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

Gateway technologies for high-performance computing in business, industry and science

Summary of the impact

Gateway technologies have enhanced the ability of end-users to engage with high-performance computing (HPC) programs on massively distributed computing infrastructures (DCIs) such as clusters, grids and clouds. The technologies are focussed on the needs of business, industry, organisations and communities; enabling them to extract added business and social benefit from custom high-value services running on a wide range of high-performance DCIs. Typically, such services are based on computational workflows tailored to specific business needs. DCIs may comprise resources already owned (eg. clusters) combined with resources rented on a pay-as-you- go basis (eg. clouds). Several companies and organisations worldwide are currently using the technologies.

Submitting Institution

University of Westminster

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software, Information Systems

Research advances in Participatory Cyber-physical Computing resulting in innovative applications in Monitoring Biodiversity, Healthcare, Urban Development, Transportation and Art

Summary of the impact

Research undertaken between 2002 and 2012 at Birkbeck has helped establish a participatory approach to cyber-physical computing as the predominant methodology for the construction of mobile and pervasive computing systems. Cyber-physical systems intimately interlink material entities and their information representations as existing on the Internet. Our specific research contributions in systems architecture, privacy protection and human dynamics have demonstrated how the user's activity can be exploited as the core ingredient in building such systems. Our research has resulted in the implementation of applications that are used to monitor biodiversity across the globe, to assess and support Parkinson's disease patients in the UK, to improve the well-being of office workers in London, to engage the public in a debate about the costs and benefits of pervasive computing, and to inform legislatures in the UK and the US.

Submitting Institution

Birkbeck College

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Mathematical Sciences: Applied Mathematics
Information and Computing Sciences: Distributed Computing, Information Systems

Case Study 2: Reconfigurable Computing for High Performance Applications (Reconfigurable Computing)

Summary of the impact

In the last 20 years, reconfigurable technology has transformed High-Performance Computing and Embedded Systems Design. Research of the Custom Computing and Reconfigurable Systems groups at Imperial made pivotal contributions to this transformation, targeting particularly Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. Since 2008, the impact of this research has been to

  1. underpin design flow for partial run-time reconfigurable designs for Xilinx FPGA devices;
  2. contribute to the start-up company Maxeler, pioneering reconfigurable computing systems and cloud services for high-performance computing in the financial and other sectors;
  3. enable near real-time risk analysis for JP Morgan's global portfolio to analyse and manage risk much faster than previously possible;
  4. achieve about 250 times speedup for Chevron's seismic modelling for oil and gas exploration, compared to the alternative use of CPU-based machines;
  5. accelerate a financial market integrity platform for BlueBee and HL Steam in hardware.

Submitting Institution

Imperial College London

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software
Technology: Computer Hardware

Energy supply industry design capability and chip manufacturers’ market performance are significantly enhanced by integrated computer hardware and software

Summary of the impact

Effective industrial design and simulation require efficient and versatile computing systems. As a result of research performed by our team experienced in High Performance Computing (HPC), novel software structures and aligned hardware architectures have led to significant benefits to the energy supply industry and to microprocessor manufacturers.

As a result of our research with supercomputing, simulation times for electric field patterns in power components have reduced more than 30-fold, with accurate complex 3-D outputs for an increased range of configurations, thereby enabling our partner company to achieve results not possible with commercial software and to reduce product development costs by $0.5M - $5M p.a.

Our research has been incorporated by Intel into their numerical libraries and now made available to the general public supported by their latest processor architectures. Intel now has a 82% share of processors, according to the November 2013 Top500 list.

Submitting Institution

University of Bedfordshire

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software

Case 4 - Reconfigurable Computing for High Performance Applications

Summary of the impact

In the last 20 years, reconfigurable technology has transformed High-Performance Computing and Embedded Systems Design. Research of the Custom Computing and Reconfigurable Systems teams at Imperial made pivotal contributions to this transformation, targeting particularly Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology. Since 2008, the impact of this research has been to

I1) underpin design flow for partial run-time reconfigurable designs for Xilinx FPGA devices;

I2) contribute to the start-up company Maxeler, pioneering reconfigurable computing systems and cloud services for high-performance computing in the financial and other sectors;

I3) enable near real-time risk analysis for JP Morgan's global portfolio to analyse and manage risk much faster than previously possible;

I4) achieve about 250 times speedup for Chevron's seismic modelling for oil and gas exploration, compared to the alternative use of CPU-based machines;

I5) accelerate a financial market integrity platform for BlueBee and HL Steam in hardware.

Submitting Institution

Imperial College London

Unit of Assessment

Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Metallurgy and Materials

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computation Theory and Mathematics, Computer Software
Technology: Computer Hardware

Sustainable Cloud Computing

Summary of the impact

This impact case study delivers a sustainable approach to the provision of large-scale Cloud Computing resources, through an international research collaboration. Such a platform enables the widening of participation in Higher Education (HE) across nations, by transforming the provision of IT system resources. The transformation is achieved through the effective sharing and utilisation of flexibly reconfigurable computing resources, whilst reducing the impact upon global carbon emissions. Significantly, the international nature of this research has been recognised by considerable funding from both Chinese and UK agencies. Additionally, the creation of closer research links between international partners has resulted in industrial commercialisation.

Submitting Institution

University of Derby

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Computer Software, Data Format, Information Systems

xlinkit for fast, cheap, reliable banking with automated verification of over-the counter derivatives trading

Summary of the impact

The Software Systems Engineering Group at UCL developed and patented xlinkit, an approach that supports the validation of XML documents in general and over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions expressed in the Financial Products Markup Language (FpML) in particular. The widespread adoption of FpML (95% of financial market participants now use it for OTC transactions) has brought about a substantial reduction in market and credit risk for financial institutions, by reducing the time required to confirm derivative transactions from up to 10 days to at most one day. In the year to June 2012 about $440 trillion OTC transactions were executed worldwide. [text removed for publication]. Message Automation, which markets a product including tools based on that patent, has received £3 million revenue in the same period.

Submitting Institution

University College London

Unit of Assessment

Computer Science and Informatics

Summary Impact Type

Economic

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Computation Theory and Mathematics, Information Systems

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