The strategic goal of the proposed project is to increase the contribution of the host in strengthening of the scientific and technological bases of industry, in order to increase the international competitiveness of European knowledge-based economy. To reach this goal, the project is driven by the following scientific and technical objectives, common to all complementary nEDA projects:

• development of a comprehensive and accurate design methodology, considering high frequency electromagnetic field effects, such as propagation delay, crosstalk, substrate coupling, as industry requires (one of nEDA projects involves top European companies); 
• development and testing of associated software tools, based on advanced parallel algorithms;
• verification of the developed approach  using appropriate benchmarks and measurement.

The specific objective of the proposed project is to provide IT support for the all nEDA projects. In this respect, advanced hardware/software/networking HPC solutions, based on grid technology will be installed for these purposes at the host location. The local staff will be trained in the frame of the ToK project, aiming to integrate the new solutions in their on-going nEDA projects. The defined objectives will be implemented through the recruitment of external 3 experienced researchers, who will be hosted by Politehnica University of Bucharest (PUB). The fellows will be hired to join the existing research teams and to transfer to them knowledge and competences in the precise defined areas. Thus shortage of knowledge will be covered, in the benefit of the host and Community.

            To cover the specific needs for knowledge transfer at PUB in the area of HPC for CSE, SCEE and nEDA minimum three in-coming fellowships, having different profiles will be hired:

·         one experienced researcher in distributed system hardware (PC clustering);

·         one experienced researcher in software for shared-memory parallel systems and Grid computing;

·         a more experienced researcher in HPC applied in Computational Science and Engineering.

In order to obtain the maxim impact at the host and the best employment stability (imposed by the Commission Recommendation on the European Charter for Researchers 2005/251/EC) the optimal length of their appointment is aimed to be up to 2 years (maximum allowed by ToK).

The practical actions planned to implement the knowledge transfer within ToK-4nED project are:

·         common research and development activity in teams working for European projects;

·         courses to the staff  with various topics from the selected area;

·         lectures and training-on-the job for ESRs trained in PUB -  Master and Doctoral programs;

·         demonstration and interdisciplinary training about new environments;

·         consulting, tutoring  and training related to complementary skills;

·         dissemination and exploitation of the research results and own career development activity.

The planned ToK activity is structured in several tasks, each ended by a milestone – M or a deliverable – D.

The involved F1, F2, F3 fellows or Project Management Unit (PMU) responsible for activity are indicated in brackets:

·         Task0 - Project management and ToK coordination (PMU)

·         Task1 - First recruitment action (PMU)

·         Task2 - Design, installing, configuration and administration of the PC cluster (F1)

·         Task3 - Design and configuration of a functional local Grid (F1)

·         Task4 - Configuration and benchmarking of international Grid (F1, F2)

·         Task5 - Second recruitment action (PMU)

·         Task6 – Development/document new procedures for writing parallel scientific software (F1,2,3)

·         Task7 - Research, training and consulting in CSE, SCEE and nEDA (F1,2,3 and local staff)

·         Task8 - Dissemination and exploitation of results (F1,2,3 and local staff)

The whole representation of the project schedule is shown in the following Gantt chart: