FORTH is one of the largest research centers in Greece, with modern facilities, highly qualified staff, and global recognition as a top-level research institution.
KALEAO designs and manufactures advanced computing systems and offers world wide web scale computing solutions based on innovative approaches.
Regarding these developments, Manolis Katevanis, Head of the CARV Laboratory and Deputy Director of the Institute of Informatics (IIT) of FORTH, said: “We are proud of the 33-year history of FORTH and the IIT, as well as of the CARV Laboratory in which many prototype circuits (hardware) and software (software) were built. We are also very pleased with our collaboration with KALEAO, a truly innovative company that is at the cutting edge and vanguard of modern high technology, and we look forward to many further joint innovations. We feel that we have achieved one of our goals, to create in Crete a research and development environment at the forefront of global high technology, attractive to scientists and computer engineers in the design of hardware and software systems, to whom I extend an open invitation to come and participate in the creation of a constantly evolving and dynamic technological event.".
In this FORTH statement, Professor John Goodacre, co-founder and Scientific Director of KALEAO, added: “We are particularly pleased with our development center in Crete and our collaboration with FORTH, through which the design of key components of our flagship product, KMAX, emerged. The growing research agenda of the CARV Laboratory at FORTH and the new KALEAO development center in Heraklion, we expect to bring even greater collaboration between FORTH and industry, which will create exciting new academic and employment opportunities in silicon semiconductor technology (the material used to build all computers and telecommunications today) in Crete, this beautiful island that can now be called the new “Silicon-Island””.
FORTH has begun its collaboration with the founders of KALEAO on EuroServer, a research project of the European Union's FP7 program. EuroServer focuses on innovation and the realization of new computing systems that enable the energy-efficient provision of services in the very large-scale server market.
One of the objectives of EuroServer is research and innovation in the key components of “micro-servers” based on ARM processors (the most popular “cores” of smartphones). FORTH, as a member of the project, designed several prototype circuits of central importance for EuroServer, including important parts of the operating system software. These systems take advantage of the very high energy savings offered by ARM processors, to meet the low-power requirements of the IT infrastructure set by the industry.
“The biggest problem with data centers today is the increasing electricity consumption they require,” added Professor Manolis Katevainis. “It is estimated that if US data centers were a country in their own right, this country would be 12th in the world in electricity consumption, somewhere between Italy and Spain.”.
To reduce their energy consumption, data centers must build their servers using new platform approaches and more cost-effective components. KALEAO leverages ARM technologies in a platform that can provide data centers and IT infrastructure with unprecedented computing capabilities in energy efficiency, space density, flexibility, and simplicity.
Last week, KALEAO announced its new commercial product, KMAX, which offers a rack-compatible platform with true technology convergence and software that features the simplicity of consumer devices. The energy-efficient ARM-based KMAX offers 192 octa-core servers and 48 solid-state drive (SSD) bays, all of which fit into just 3U (units) of rack space.
"Today's data centers contain hundreds to tens of thousands of servers and are the backbone of information and communications technology," commented Professor John Goodacre, adding that "KALEAO's KMAX model offers a platform with true convergence of technologies and the simplicity of consumer products, resulting in reduced total cost of ownership and operation, while at the same time offering a rich catalog of services, including those of the World Wide Web, databases, social networks, telephony, online transactions, and intelligent data storage.".
FORTH is a founding partner of HiPEAC, the European Network for Architecture and Compilation of High-Performance and Embedded Computing, which coordinates European research in these areas, and KALEAO is also a member of the same network. FORTH's technological innovation continues through its participation in a group of three European projects, funded by the Horizon 2020 programme, which further develop the above technological approach: ExaNeSt, ExaNoDe, and ECOSCALE.
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