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SLICES-NL

Scientific Large Scale Infrastructure for Computing/Communication Experimental Studies

SLICES-RI is a flexible platform designed to support large-scale, experimental research focused on networking protocols, 5G/6G and radio technologies, data collection, parallel and distributed computing and in particular cloud and edge-based computing architectures and services. SLICES will engage, in a long-term and sustainable and aligned way, communities involved in (i) novel Digital Infrastructure technologies and paradigms (ii) future Internet large-scale testbed development and operation; (iii) the operation of platforms for research reproducibility as a service, (iv) research data management infrastructure and services. It will also link them with transversal (vertical) applications and provide synergies between academia, industry and business actors.

Website SLICES-NL

Infrastructure and User Services

SLICES is been developed to provide fully programmable remotely accessible infrastructure to the research community, for ensuring seamless access to the experimental resources. For this purpose, open source software shall be employed, based on the paradigms of existing testbed access schemes, user authentication and authorization. This software will be appropriately tailored with new modules for managing the new equipment described in the previous section. 

In terms of integration of the various components, the software tools shall encompass single-sign in procedures, with access certificates issued by a single authority. The resource discovery, reservation, and allocation shall comply with the access policies for SLICES (to be further specified during the project) and be interchanged with the respective facility authorities through a standardized process. 

The SLICES infrastructure is designed according to policies, recommendations and best practices published by EOSC community, including Open Science, Open Data and FAIR principles and recommendations. SLICES will benefit from he current EOSC platform (based on EOSC EU Node) and services that are actively supported by European Union and provide support for research data sharing and new computation environment for Generative AI. To support experimentation on advanced and emerging technologies SLICES provides Experimental Research automation and Reproducibility as a Service.

Examples/description of the type of research 

Research areas enabled by using SLICES:
1. Hyper-converged digital infrastructures and high performance networking

  • Programming models, domain-specific languages, etc. for large-scale infrastructure
  • Large scale experimentation on distributed infrastructure and/or the computing continuum, including hybrid cloud or public cloud providers
  • Experimental research reproducibility as a service 
  • Federated multi-cloud and inter-cloud infrastructure integration and management
  • Sustainable cloud services with energy consumption monitoring and optimization
  • Decentralised network/storage/compute optimisation in edge/fog environments
  • Mobile/wireless communications, 5G/6G 
  • Optical networks 
  • Quantum networks
  • Quality of service, performance, dependability, and maintainability as a service

2. Federated Data Analytics and Deep Learning, in particular for infrastructure optimisation, predictive maintenance, and smart cities 

  • Resource management and scheduling for large-scale infrastructures, including using AI/ML/DL techniques
  • Generation of data to train algorithms; Digital Twins for scientific object/processes
  • Generative AI and LLM: performance and energy optimisation, supporting infrastructure 

3. Data Infrastructure and Data Spaces

  • Trusted data exchange and processing with policy/rules enforcement, preserving data sovereignty and protecting data privacy
  • Data management and quality assurance aspects 

4. New security and compliance models for Complex Cyber Infrastructure 

  • Distributed Cyber Security techniques and architectures, multi-domain AAI and trust mechanisms
  • Techniques for secure (confidential and verifiable) computation and communication (hardware, crypto, post-quantum secure)

5. Trustable and explainable Internet based on open networking technologies 
6. Support of education on key technologies of the future data centric and cloud enabled infrastructures by provisioning educational platforms and resources for universities on demand

How to access the infrastructure 

Access to SLICES-NL facilities is based on the federated identity services such as OpenConnex (managed by SURF), which is integrated with institutional access control and identity management including European Eduroam and eduGAIN, EGI Federated Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (FedAAI). In general, SLICES-NL services and nodes have federated access control infrastructure, the necessary federated access control policies will be established based on the mentioned best practices and operation of the European AAI. 

All access mechanisms are remote, federated and based on the user personal or institutional identities and credentials, taking into account that most Dutch institutions have already implemented/require two-factor authentication. 

Disciplines

Computer science
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