QUARC will organize networking events approximately every semester. This page will provide updates, news, and summaries of ongoing events. Please check in regularly for the latest information.
November 2024
– QUARC 5th Network Meeting NM5 –
Celebration of the 5th QUARC NM5 in NVIDIA Germany -Munich – premises. Two intense days for collaboration, mutual challenges, experience sharing and learning within quantum technologies and PQC
September 2024
– Acceptance of papers from QUARC team members at industry-relevant conferences in Europe and the USA –
We are happy to welcome the acceptance of three research papers, showcasing our QUARC Project team’s dedication to extending the boundaries in cloud-edge computing, DPU offloading, and MPI message matching. These papers will be presented at leading industry conferences later this year:
Paper: “Integrating PQ-Plugins for IPsec in the Cloud-Edge-Continuum“
Conference: CEC Workshop within the ICNP Conference, October 28th, Charleroi, Belgium
Authors:
Abraham Cano Aguilera
Carlos Rubio Garcia
Raphaël Frantz
Idelfonso Tafur Monroy
José Luis Imaña Pascual
Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos
Paper: “Protocol Buffer Deserialization DPU Offloading in the RPC Datapath”
Conference: ISC 2024 IXPUG Workshop 2024, November 17th-22nd, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Authors:
Raphaël Frantz
Marcin Copik
Jerónimo Sánchez García
Idelfonso Tafur Monroy
Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos
Gil Bloch
Salvatore Di Girolamo
Paper: “Offloaded MPI Message Matching: An Optimistic Approach”
Conference: ExaMPI Workshop on Extreme MPI, 17th, 2024, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Authors:
Jerónimo Sánchez García
Salvatore Di Girolamo
Rami Nudelman
Torsten Hoefler 🇨🇭
Gil Bloch
Congratulations to all authors and co-authors for their hard work and dedication. We’re looking forward to sharing our insights with the community and contributing to the future of post-quantum security, DPU offloading, MPI message matching, and cloud-edge computing.
August 2024
– Participation of Daniel Lawo in ECOC2024 50th European Conference on Optical Communication –
From September 22nd to 26th, the 2024 ECOC Conference was held in Frankfurt, Germany, organized by Piero Castoldini, from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
Our QUARC DC representative, Daniel Lawo, presented on the topic “Harnessing Data Processing Units: Introducing SmartNICs in the Optical Networking Arena” to an engaged audience of academics and industry technologists. In his presentation, Daniel highlighted how Data Processing Units (DPUs) are revolutionizing networking with their versatility, ease of programming, and exceptional processing power.
Congratulations, Daniel!
– Daniel Lawo’s article publication Wireless and Fiber-based Post-Quantum Cryptography Secured IPsec Tunnel –
We are proud to announce that Daniel Lawo, our QUARC doctoral candidate, has published his latest work in the article Wireless and Fiber-based Post-Quantum Cryptography Secured IPsec Tunnel in the journal Future Internet special issue Edge Intelligence: Edge Computing for 5G and the Internet of Things,
Daniel recently joined NVIDIA Germany to work on Confidential Computing topics, leveraging his expertise in post-quantum cryptography.
In collaboration with Eindhoven University of Technology, CNIT – Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Telecomunicazioni, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, and Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Daniel demonstrated quantum-resilient wireless-fiber links operating at linerate (Half a Giga in the air, 100G fiber).
Read more about his latest achievement here
– Jerónimo Sánchez García 11 month-status presentation at AAU, Copenhagen –
Jerónimo Sánchez García presented the current status of his research at his 11-month PhD status seminar which took place at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. The discussant was Rasmus L. Olsen, who engaged with Jero with in-depth questions and observations on the PhD topic.
Sokol Kosta and Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos are guiding and supervising Jero in his research endeavours in the QUARC Project.
We are proud to follow this important career milestone for our DC Jero, Congratulations!
July 2024
– Participation of Daniel Lawo in the ICTON Conference in Bari, Italy –
This summer, our QUARC member Daniel Lawo had the opportunity to participate in the ICTON Conference and delve into the world of photonics in the beautiful surroundings of Bari, Italy.
https://icton2024.fbk.eu/home
As an expert in PQC, Daniel presented QUARC’s recent research paper “The Zero-Tax Data Center: A Use Case Through Quantum Resilient Communications,” introducing a novel approach to data center management and networking as well as communication that is safe from quantum threats. This paper is a QUARC collaborative effort with authorship from Daniel, Abraham Cano Aguilera, Dimosthenis Illiadis-Apostolidis, Jerónimo Sánchez García, Michał Podleś, Raphaël Frantz, Idelfonso Tafur Monroy, José Luis Imaña Pascual, Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos and Sokol Kosta
The paper explores the concept of zero-tax data center through the offloading of networking functions to the network. Especially, the use of post-quantum cryptography algorithms securing connections with quantum resistance and the way by which the management of its complicated processing is transferred from host to network using data-processing units
June 2024
– Participation of Dimosthenis Iliadis, Raphaël Frantz and Jerónimo Sánchez in the Second CINI Summer School in HPC at Università di Trento, Italy –
Part of the QUARC Project team, Dimosthenis Iliadis-Apostolidis, Raphaël Frantz, Jerónimo Sánchez García attended the Second CINI Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica Summer School in HPC held at Università di Trento, Italy.
This event provided the perfect platform to attend engaging presentations and discussions, especially concerning the networking issues within the HPC and (Distributed) AI environments at the supercomputer and data center scales.
From the seminar, one major lesson garnered was about the challenge of migrating data from one node to another and the issue of communication expenses in the data centers. A major difficulty lies in guaranteeing that GPUs are supplied with data timely, hence the matter of keeping the throughput optimum, and the (tail) latency low.
We extend our thanks to the the organisers of the summer school CINI Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica, for the opportunity to learn valuable insights on HPC and networking which will be instrumental in strengthening PQC at the WSC level.
May 2024
– QUARC 4th NM hosted by Aalborg University Copenhagen and Joint Workshop with CLEVER Project –
Last week, the QUARC Project concluded its 4th Network Meeting at Aalborg University from May 28th to 30th. One of the highlights was a joint workshop with the CLEVER project on May 29th, where both teams explored innovations and challenges posed by Edge Computing and Post-Quantum Cryptography. This event brought together experts Luca Valcarenghi, Michelangelo Guaitolini, Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos, and Abraham Cano Aguilera to discuss their cutting-edge research and insights.
We hosted more than 30 participants from partners of the EU KDT-JU CLEVER project and the MSCA DN QUARC Project, fostering dynamic interactions throughout the series of events. As part of the training activities for QUARC, we conducted a course on Presentation Training for Scientists, delivered magnificently by Sia Søndergaard, Mette Ilene Holmriis, and Peter Vistisen, as well as a course on Security and Privacy in PQC, taught by José Luis Imaña Pascual.
This collaboration between CLEVER, from the Chips Joint Undertaking, and QUARC, from the Marie Curie Doctoral Networks, exemplifies leading R&D meeting the training platform for the next generation of human capital in Europe. Hosted at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, the week focused on Accelerated Computing for extreme use cases, culminating in an open workshop where groundbreaking research and views on Edge Computing and PQC were shared.
– Participation of Dimosthenis Iliadis-Apostolidis in Marsal Project Plenary Meeting in Thessaloniki –
Dimosthenis Iliadis-Apostolidis attended the 7th and final plenary meeting of the MARSAL project in Thessaloniki, Greece, with Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos from NVIDIA in May. This event was good opportunity to connect with various experts and explore potential collaborations, particularly for the QUARC Project. Discussions centered around the use of P4 for switches and DPUs, highlighting the ongoing relevance of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Programmable Networks in both academic and industrial research.
The MARSAL project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program, aims to advance the management and orchestration of network resources for 5G and beyond. By utilizing a converged optical-wireless network infrastructure, MARSAL addresses the access and fronthaul/midhaul segments of the network. The project introduces distributed processing cell-free massive MIMO architectures, integrated with virtualized RAN elements and aligned with the O-RAN concept. It also proposes elastic virtual infrastructures that transparently combine optical and wireless technologies, along with networking, management, and security.
March 2024
– New article publication by Daniel Lawo, Raphaël Frantz, Abraham Cano Aguilera and Michał Podleś –
Congratulations Daniel Lawo, Raphaël Frantz, Abraham Cano Aguilera and Michał Podleś together with José Luis Imana Pascual and JJ Vegas Olmos, for the publication of the article 𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘤𝘰𝘯/𝘒𝘺𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘋𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘶𝘮/𝘒𝘺𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘕𝘝𝘐𝘋𝘐𝘈’𝘴 𝘋𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘵 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮.
Due to the imminent availability of quantum computers, implementing post-quantum cryptography is crucial. The article presents two software stacks featuring Dilithium/Kyber and Falcon/Kyber, which are deployed on high-performance data center processors. Following the digital signature and key exchange processes, these processors communicate at a rapid rate of 100Gb/s linerate.
– Dimosthenis Iliadis-Apostolidis 11th month PhD status seminar at Aalborg University –
Congratulations, Dimos, for a successful status seminar!
Dimos presented his progress on his PhD project, which has spanned 11 months. His research focuses on “Edge Computing Offloading for PQC Communication Channels” as part of the QUARC Project. Israel Leyva-Mayorga, assistant professor at Aalborg University, provided valuable insights as a discussant, fostering an interesting dialogue upon the topic of PQC.
– QUARC DC participation in the SALTCSMLNHP 2024 conference –
We are proud of Dimosthenis Iliadis-Apostolidis’ participation in the SALTCSMLNHP 2024 conference , that took place in Dublin, Ireland, in March 20th-22nd.
Dimosthenis conference paper, in collaboration with Khalid Manaa (NVIDIA), Matty Kadosh (NVIDIA), JJ Vegas Olmos (NVIDIA), Iacovos Ioannu (University of Cyprus) and Sokol Kosta (Aalborg University), proposes runtime adjustments to enhance DPU performance, offering solutions to address these challenges and improve overall efficiency:
𝘛𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘋𝘗𝘜𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘰𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗4 𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦
At the conference, several researchers showed interest for NVIDIA‘s Data Processing Units (DPUs), especially about their role in today’s Warehouse Scale Computers (WSCs).
Dimos had also the opportunity to listen to groundbreaking research on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-based Processing, along with some really interesting keynotes in Supercomputing and the challenges of designing hybrid Classic-Quantum systems.
Dimos’ participation in the SALTCSMLNHP conference was made possible by the Otto Mønsted Foundation .
February 2024
– QUARC DC participation in OFC Conference –
The QUARC Project is proud of the participation of Abraham Cano Aguilera in the Optical Fiber Communication Conference® and Exposition March 25th in Sand Diego California. Abraham had the opportunity to present his work “𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘦-𝘙𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘥-𝘵𝘰-𝘌𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵-𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘮 𝘌𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘺𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘖𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘍𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘜𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘋𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘴 (𝘋𝘗𝘜𝘴)”.
Abraham provided a detailed technical insight into the development of 92.3-Gbits/s line-rate, end-to-end post-quantum cryptography optical fiber link. Through the utilization of hardware accelerators and processing offloading, this innovation marks a significant advancement in secure data transmission over optical networks.
Congratulations, Abraham!.
December 2023
– QUARC project’s accomplishments highlighted in the Danish publication Ingeniøren –
Link to the article here
The feature underscores significant progress of the QUARC teams in Aalborg University, Eindhoven University of Technology and NVIDIA in quantum-safe encryption, emphasizing the successful exchange of encryption keys at a remarkable speed of 100 Gbit/s and the innovative implementation of post-quantum cryptography on network cards before data reaches servers.
Our congratulations to the QUARC team at Aalborg University, at Eindhoven University of Technology, and NVIDIA for their groundbreaking contributions to the future of data security.
November 2023
– Participation of Daniel Lawo and Abraham Cano in the Benelux RF Conference –
Participation of our Doctoral candidates Daniel Lawo and Abraham Cano Aguilera in the Benelux RF Conference.
The annual gathering occurs in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and brings together high-tech professionals and companies from Belgium and the Netherlands. The focal point of discussions revolves around the utilization and advancement of cutting-edge RF technologies.
We are proud of our Doctoral Candidates’ input and work presentation: “Post-Quantum secure protocols for communication between data processing units” and “Implementation and Comparison of Dilithium/Kyber and Falcon/Kyber PQC software stack on data processing units”. Well done, Abraham and Daniel!
– QUARC 3rd Network Meeting hosted by NVIDIA Denmark –
A great time to meet face-to-face, present the work done, share knowledge and experiences, and attend relevant lectures.
– Launch of the QUARC LinkedIn Profile –
The QUARC project has launched its LinkedIn profile for sharing the latest updates, events, and advancements from our team of Doctoral Candidates (DCs) in Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC).
QUARC Project LinkedIn profile
– Launch of the QUARC Project Youtube Channel –
The QUARC Project is proud to announce the launch of our YouTube channel, where presentations of all our Doctoral Candidates are available to the public.
October 2023
– Welcome to our new Doctoral Candidate, Michał Podleś –
We welcome Michał Podleś, as he onboards QUARC as our new DC at Eindhoven Technological University. Enjoy the ride!
September 2023
– The 2nd Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science –
Participation of Sokol Kosta in The Italian Conference on Big Data and Data Science (ITADATA2023), at its second edition, held in Naples on September 11-13, 2023, is the annual event supported by the CINI Big Data National Laboratory that aims to put together Italian researchers and professionals from academia, industry, government, and public administration working in the field of big data and data science, as well as related fields (e.g., security and privacy, HPC, Cloud).
– SIGCOMM 2023 –
Participation of our Doctoral candidate Dimos in the SIGCOMM, the ACM’s professional forum for the discussion of topics in the field of communications and computer networks, including technical design and engineering, regulation and operations, and the social implications of computer networking. The SIG’s members are particularly interested in the systems engineering and architectural questions of communication.
Learn more about the SIGCOMM conference here.
Dimosthenis was granted participation in the conference, including coverage of travel and accommodation expenses. Great achievement, Dimos!
PhD supervisors: Khalid Manaa, matty kadosh, Juan Jose (JJ) Vegas Olmos, Sokol Kosta, Knud Erik Skou
August 2023
– Welcome to our new Doctoral Candidate, Jerónimo Sánchez García –
August 15th – Jerónimo Sánchez García, welcome on board as DC in QUARC first your first academic stay at Aalborg University Copenhagen, welcome to QUARC!
– DC Abraham Cano Aguilera’s first publication –
Congratulations Abraham on your first paper, “First end-to-end PQC protected DPU-to-DPU Communications” to appear at the prestigious Electronic Letters.
Link to article: First end-to-end PQC protected DPU-to-DPU communications
July 2023
– QUARC 2nd Network Meeting –
2nd Network Meeting hosted by Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.
A great time to meet face-to-face, present the work done and programmed and attend relevant lectures.
March 2023
– Welcome to our new Doctoral Candidate, Dimosthenis Iliadis-Apostolidis –
Today, March 15th 2023, Dimosthenis Apostolidis-Iliadis joins QUARC as its first DC at Aalborg University. Enjoy the ride !
January 2023
– Welcome to our new DCs, Abraham Cano, Xavi Arnal and Daniel Lawo –
First meeting with the first Doctoral Candidates at TUE: welcome onboard Abraham Cano Aguilera, Xavi Arnal i Clemente and Daniel Lawo, enjoy the ride!
September 2022
– QUARC kick-off meeting –
July 2022
– QUARC pre kick-off meeting –
Pre-kick off meeting at TUE to sync on the recruitment plans, R&D plans and timeline for the project.
