Terranova and King's College London: a partnership for process optimisation

The partnership

The partnership between Terranova and King's College of London represents an important synergy between the corporate and academic worlds. King's College London, founded in 1829, is one of the most prestigious universities in the UK and the world. This renowned institution is an integral part of the University of London and has a long tradition of academic excellence and innovation.

King's College London has trained many distinguished alumni who have made a significant impact in various fields. Among its most famous alumni are Florence Nightingale, pioneer of modern nursing, and physicist Peter Higgs, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the Higgs boson.

King's College London's reputation for excellence also extends to scientific research, with innovative collaborations and projects spanning medicine, technology, engineering and the humanities. This tradition of cutting-edge research makes King's College London the ideal partner for Newfoundland in a project to improve the efficiency of software processes by harnessing multidisciplinary expertise and advanced technologies.

The Problem

Software applications usually require the execution of numerous parallel tasks to retrieve data or perform calculations. Often, these applications are installed on the same devices, competing for resources.

Tasks are thus executed in order of arrival, using only a few control parameters to regulate the number of tasks executed simultaneously or the effort required. However, this type of organisation does not allow optimal utilisation of resources, which frequently alternate between moments of saturation and moments of under-utilisation.

The project aimed at process optimisation

The collaboration with King's College of London began by initiating a project consisting of five units, each assigned to a different student. These activities ranged from classifying tasks on the basis of the effort required, to estimating the utilisation and status of the servers required to complete these processing tasks at the software level, distinguishing between internal and external resources and thus differentiating the type of metrics that could be used. Finally, optimisation techniques related to the scheduling of activities in both the single-resource and multi-resource scenarios were analysed. For each of these aspects, the students analysed the problem, studied possible solutions in the literature and developed prototypes to compare the resolution techniques identified.

Throughout the process, our team provided support, describing the proposed problem, answering doubts and queries, and directing the students' activities towards the best performing solution. At the end of the project, the students delivered reports and code snapshots to be used as a starting point for the analysis and development of more complex solutions that can be implemented in production.

The collaboration with King's College London allows us, once again, to combine high-level academic research with practical application in our industry, bringing concrete benefits to both the scientific community and our company.

Lucio Michetti, R&D Manager Terranova