How to earn up to €6000 while working on an open source HW/SW project.

For the past 2 years, together with researchers all over Europe, we have been working on the Open Transprecision Computing (OPRECOMP) project supported by the H2020 program (#732631). As part of this project, we have secured funding from the EC to support a "summer of code program" where we are looking for open source projects in the domain of transprecision computing and we hope to support at least 10 projects with €4000 to €6000. If you are in a hurry, please jump over to the announcement on our project www site (https://oprecomp.eu/open-source/).

First of all, what is Transprecision computing? It is all about using the right precision for computing and adapt the numeric precision (and the associated memory and computation energy overhead) throughout the computation to the requirements of the application. The idea is similar to approximate computing (trading off accuracy with performance), but also considers where the precision is adapted throughout the operation. As a simple example consider iterative algorithms that try to minimize the error with each iteration. The longer you iterate the smaller your error will become. So you can start your computations with coarser representations (i.e. half precision floating point) and move to higher precision formats (i.e. double precision floating point) as the computation progresses. Our goal is to find cases where working in this way can gain significant savings without noticeable loss in accuracy.

There are many aspects to this problem which we are trying to tackle as part of this project. Can we automatically detect which variables to change in a given application? Can we develop new number representation formats (posits, bfloat and many variations) that are efficient to implement in hardware? Can we demonstrate applications with this approach that show significant benefits? These are some of the problems that we are tackling as part of the Oprecomp project with partners that specialize in different areas.

In our 3rd year of the project, we would now also like to enlist the help of students, professionals and enthusiasts through a sponsored "summer of code" activity. The idea is simple, send us your ideas on what you want to do with transprecision computing until 1st of March 2019 using the online application form on the project www site (https://oprecomp.eu/open-source/). The applications will be reviewed and we will support at least 10 projects with €4000 to €6000 and announce them by 1st of May. We will have a kick-off meeting as part of the Week of Open Source Hardware (WOSH) that we are planning between 11th and 14th of June 2019 in Zurich, and we will provide an opportunity to all participants to take part and present their results at the Oprecomp Summer School which will take place in early September in Perugia, Italy. The summer school is organized by NIPSlab of University of Perugia, and in addition to an excellent technical content, it is also a lovely destination (see picture) and boasts an excellent cuisine.

It will be possible to work and build on projects that we are developing, we will assign a tutor for each project and will try to support (to the best of our ability) your requirements to complete the project. Do you have an idea that needs a GAP8 board, or some of our PULP chips, or an FPGA board? Describe what you need as part of your project proposal, and we will see what we can do.

There are some restrictions on who is eligible for the funding. Members of the OPRECOMP consortium are NOT eligible, and since funding is coming from EC, you have to be within the EU or associated countries of the H2020 programme to apply, you can read more about eligibility and acceptance criteria on https://oprecomp.eu/open-source/.

I think this is a great idea to be able to work together, and I hope to get many interesting applications. Submit an application, come visit us in Zurich during the Week of Open Source Hardware, develop some cutting edge open source hardware or software, join the Oprecomp summer school in Perugia, and get also get paid. Did we say we will support at least 10 projects with up to €6000 each.

Do not forget to follow us on twitter (@oprecompProject, @pulp_platform) for up to date news on what we are doing.