HIGHER

HIGHER (European Heterogeneous Cloud/Edge Infrastructures for Next Generation Hybrid Services)

HIGHER brings together 11 partners from industry and academia to jointly develop and validate open-source designs for high-density rack-scale systems capable of supporting cloud and edge services at scale in standards-based data center environments. Starting with the ARM RHEA2 and RISC-V EPAC processors from EPI and the RISC-V EUPilot processor chip, HIGHER adopts the Open Compute Project (OCP) Server family of standards to build processor modules for computation and acceleration, alongside a system security/control module, all operating with fully-featured operating systems and runtimes. HIGHER aims to design OCP server mechanics to provide modular rack systems incorporating reusable standards-based infrastructure, encompassing hardware, low-level firmware, and systems software, ensuring trustworthy functionality for managing, securing, and controlling servers. The project’s open-source hardware and software outcomes will enhance European Digital Autonomy and facilitate wide adoption. Furthermore, the project will assemble representative software stacks supporting a range of use cases, including accelerated data processing and analysis for converged Cloud and HPC platforms, Infrastructure-as-a-Service with standardized management and monitoring, Platform-as-a-Service facilitating large-scale data processing for ML inference and data analytics, and memory pool management at the server rack level, with access control safeguards aligned with maturing CXL standards.

HIGHER aims to develop and validate cloud and edge open-source European modules, technologies and complete systems developed based on open standard architectures, coupled with novel open-source runtime software stacks, capable of supporting efficient cloud and edge services and applications. It aspires to play a leading role in advancing the European ecosystem (including open-source HW and SW), providing an alternative to licensing intellectual properties from non-EU third parties, thereby enhansing European Digital autonomy.

Overall, HIGHER will develop novel, mostly open-source, hardware and software modules and systems leveraging technologies developed, among others in the EPI and EUPilot projects, as well as standards established by the Open Compute Project (OCP), enabling the deployment of complete modular open cloud and edge infrastructures. HIGHER will further adopt a socket-based approach for EPI and EUPilot processor chips aiming at developing an EU socket reference, enabling interopperability and smooth processor upgrades.

• RISC-V multicore
• Neuromorphic AI Accelerator
• Programmable array AI Accelerator
• AI Accelerator utilizing a hierarchical processing architecture
• DNN Accelerator
• Reconfigurable hardware
• Near-Memory-Processing

HIGHER will put together representative software stacks for a range of use cases of (i) accelerated data processing and analysis, for converged platforms combining Edge and Cloud processing, (ii) Infrastructure-as-a-Service, with standardised management and monitoring, (iii) Platform-as-a-Service, supporting large-scale data processing for ML inference and data analytics, and (iv) memory pool management, at the server rack level, with access control safeguards, based on current maturing CXL standards.

(a) Use cases built on top of compute, storage and networking resources provided by server and/or racks. (b) Distributed multi-site resources, managed via Meta-OS middleware.

Project info

Coordinator : FOUNDATION FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY – HELLAS (FORTH)
Call & reference : HORIZON-CL4-2024-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01-CNECT
Starting date : 01/01/2025
Duration : 36 Months
Status : Running