Name of the participant: Paul R. Genssler
Description of the IT research project: Mobile communication has become an integral part of everyday life and the economy. New requirements, such as lower latency, will be crucial for the development of new technologies. Future 5G communication networks will have to meet even higher requirements, not only from the user’s point of view, but also from the operator. The networks will no longer be centrally organised. Blockchain technologies can be of crucial importance to enable decentralized synchronization of the many base stations, to ensure security and to prevent manipulation. However, this also means that the base station must take over more functions, which is bought at the expense of a higher demand for computing power. This is associated with longer development time, higher acquisition costs and higher energy consumption. These problems multiply with the growing demand for new base stations.
The aim of the project “CHAMP: Accelerating Blockchain Technology for Next Generation Mobile Core Network with Near-Memory Processing” is to enable an increased functional scope through the use of advanced concepts of computer architecture while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. For this purpose, memory is expanded with computing capacities to minimize data transfers – i.e. data is processed close to memory. The effects of this so-called “near-memory processing” are to be investigated in this project; on the one hand the possible gains in computing power and energy efficiency, but also the effects on the security of the system. This is because the direct access of the new computing units to the memory means that basic security mechanisms such as the Memory Management Unit (MMU) are undermined and the CPU is no longer the central control instance. New mechanisms must therefore be developed and their impact on speed and energy efficiency must be investigated.
Software Campus partner: KIT, Huawei
Implementation period: April 2020 – March 2022