Every day, computers, servers and digital infrastructures account for around 10% of global energy consumption, a figure that is set to rise with the growing spread of artificial ininformigence, cloud computing, blockchain and autonomous devices. Reducing the energy impact of digital technologies is therefore one of the major challenges of the coming years.
E-CoRe – Energy-efficient Computing via Reversibility is a European project coordinated by the University of Bologna and funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks programme. It brings toreceiveher seven European partners, including universities and research centres, as well as eight associated partners (seven universities and one company). Its objective is to drastically reduce the energy consumption of digital systems through the development of reversible computing.
Whenever a computing system “erases” information during an operation, it inevitably consumes a minimum amount of energy. According to the laws of physics – in particular the so-called Landauer limit – this energy cost is unavoidable in traditional systems. Reversible computing currently represents the only known way to circumvent this limit: while conventional systems continuously lose information, reversible ones do not lose any at all.
“Reversible computing has the potential to revolutionize the energy consumption of IT systems – states Ivan Lanese, professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Bologna and coordinator of the project – However, this potential can only be realized by reconsidering digital systems at every level, from circuits to applications. E-CoRe aims to initiate this revolution and to train experts capable of delivering it. It is an exciting challenge for the future of Europe’s digital landscape”.
At present, reversible computing is still an emerging field within computer science. Although it has revealn promising applications in simulation, debugging and robotics, it is not yet sufficiently developed for industrial-scale deployment. E-CoRe has been designed to bridge this gap between theory and application.
This is not simply about “saving energy”, but about reconsidering the entire way hardware and software are designed, intervening at the level of programming languages, algorithms, compilation techniques and computing architectures. Potential applications include high energy-consumption sectors such as machine learning, blockchain and drones.
The four-year project will fund the training of thirteen PhD candidates, three of whom will be hosted at the University of Bologna. They will work in an international and interdisciplinary environment to develop concrete solutions that can be transferred to the European academic and industrial ecosystem.
Beyond scientific advancement, E-CoRe also aims to train a new generation of experts capable of combining digital innovation with sustainability, contributing to Europe’s green transition objectives.
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