XLAB joined the consortium of the European H2020 research project M2DC - Modular Microserver DataCentre. M2DC is a new EU research project founded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme which was launched in January 2016.
For the kick-off of the M2DC project, almost 40 experts representing 14 companies and research institutions from 7 European countries gathered on February 3rd and 4th at the Supercomputing and Networking Centre in Poznań, the core of the fourth largest metropolitan area in Poland.
The goal of the M2DC project is to push the boundaries of the current Cloud and HPC efficiency by means of modular heterogeneous micro-server architectures and reconfigurable hardware that will cost-effectively tackle any kind of computation problem with the minimal use of resources. Such platform would allow setting up appliances that combine x86, ARM, GPU and FPGA architectures to run relevant applications in a cost-effective and energy-efficient way.
XLAB will contribute to M2DC with its computer security and cloud expertise. Other contributions to the project include: - Analyzing and designing the infrastructure and application requirements; -Providing IDS solution that will be integrated with the M2DC platform (network traffic analysis and malicious attacks detection); - Integration of the middleware with the cloud management systems and hardware platform; and - Analyzing and benchmarking the system for the integrated appliances.
Additionally, as a dissemination and exploitation leader, XLAB will design and execute the communication and dissemination, and manage the IPR and business development of the project.
The consortium is composed of key field players such as Microchip designers and manufacturers of microchips ARM, Huawei and CHRISTMANN, research institutions such as the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, the Instytut Chemii Bioorganicznej Polskiej Akademii Nauk (and its Supercomputing Centre), the Politecnico di Milano and Universität Bielefeld, as well as a number of industry SME with extensive experience in the field.
**Everyone interested in Cloud and High-performance computing can fallow the progress and results of the project at:
Website:** http://www.m2dc.eu
Social channels: 
The project’s partners are:
The M2DC project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 688201
