ALMA - Simplifying programming for multi-cores

Why must a programmer care for the hardware architecture when programming embedded applications on a multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip?
The ALMA project intends to change that 'MUST' into a 'MAY'. We work to develop a programming tool chain that hides the complexity of applications and architectures from the programmer, and creates optimized code at the same time.

About the ALMA project

ALMA (Greek for ‘leap’) is an acronym for ALgorithm parallelization for Multicore Architectures. Driven by the technology restrictions in chip design, the end of Moore’s law and the quest for increasing computing performance, ALMA is a fundamental step forward in the necessary introduction of novel computing paradigms and methodologies.

The ALMA tool-chain will implement parallelization and optimization algorithms for a whole class of multi-cores. ALMA intends to show how various embedded reconfigurable multi-cores from Recore Systems and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology can be efficiently programmed using the same tool-chain and the same application code.

Focus on practical applications

To ascertain that programmers can directly apply the programming tool chains that the ALMA consortium develops in the course of the project, ALMA targets two cases in market domains with different, complementary requirements. One is from the field of telecom, and intends to support the fast development of next generation of Point-to-Point / Point-to-Multipoint wireless communication systems, and the other application is in the area of multi-object detection and tracking.