These new techniques will allow for improvements in applications such as industrial manufacturing processes, railway traffic monitoring, and the diagnosis of mental illnesses.
The RePhrase project aims to improve software development for parallel and heterogeneous architectures. “Heterogeneous parallel architectures are those used in machines that combine different computing devices, such as the well-known multi-core processors and graphics cards used to perform calculations,” explains José Daniel García, the lead researcher on the UC3M team, from the Computer Architecture, Communications and Systems (ARCOS) research group in the university's Department of Computer Science.
UC3M's participation in this new project focuses on solving specific problems when developing applications on parallel computers, paying special attention to the use of the C++ programming language, which has been identified by the participants as an excellent alternative for this type of device.
Biomedical Applications
The results of this research can be applied in various fields, such as improving industrial manufacturing processes, monitoring railway traffic, or optimizing applications for the diagnosis of mental illnesses. In this last case, UC3M collaborates closely with another research team from the Biomedical Research Networking Center for Mental Health (CIBERSAM) at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, applying the developed techniques to improve diagnostic methods based on magnetic resonance imaging.
“The application we are working on involves the computer processing of brain images captured using magnetic resonance imaging,” explains Professor Francisco Javier García Blas, from the Computer Science Department at UC3M, one of the project members. Currently, these systems take hours to perform the computer analysis of the images, and the researchers' goal is to reduce this time to minutes. In other words, it's about “achieving faster diagnoses in the case of diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression,” the researcher points out.
The RePhrase project , which began in April 2015 and runs for three years, unites the efforts of eight academic and industrial institutions from Austria, Spain, Hungary, Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom, including the participation of IBM. It is funded by the European Union with over €3.5 million under project 644235 of the Horizon 2020 research program and continues the work of the REPARA project, which focused on simplifying the programming of heterogeneous parallel computers.
