Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Encyclopedia
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. The institute carries out research in a number of areas, including networked embedded system
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
s, future Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
technologies, large scale network-based applications, and human-machine interaction. Research projects at SICS are typically carried out in cooperation with both industry and academia
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
.
In January 2005 SICS had approximately 88 employees, of which 77 are researchers and 30 have PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
degrees. The institute is located in the Kista
Kista
Kista is a district of Stockholm Municipality in Sweden. Located northwest of central Stockholm, Kista is divided by the Stockholm Metro blue line into a western part which is primarily a working class and middle class residential area, and an eastern part occupied by commercial ventures, mostly...
district of Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, with the main office in the Electrum building.
Software
A number of well-known software packages have been developed at SICS:- ContikiContikiContiki is a small, open source, highly portable multitasking computer operating system developed for use on a number of memory-constrained networked systems ranging from 8-bit computers to embedded systems on microcontrollers, including sensor network motes...
, an operating systemOperating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
for memory constrained embedded devices - Delegent, an authorization server
- Distributed Interactive Virtual Environment or DIVE in short
- lwIPLwIPlwIP is a widely used open source TCP/IP stack designed for embedded systems. lwIP was originally developed by Adam Dunkels at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and is now developed and maintained by a world wide network of developers led by Kieran Mansley.lwIP is used by many...
, a TCP/IP stack for embedded systemEmbedded systemAn embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
s - MozartMozart Programming SystemThe Mozart Programming System is a multiplatform implementation of the Oz programming language developed by an international group, the Mozart Consortium, which originally consisted of Saarland University, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, and the Université catholique de Louvain.Mozart...
, a multi-platform programming system - NemesisNemesis (computing)Nemesis is an operating system designed by the University of Cambridge, the University of Glasgow, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Citrix Systems....
, a concept exokernelExokernelExokernel is an operating system kernel developed by the MIT Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group, and also a class of similar operating systems....
operating systemOperating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system... - ProtothreadsProtothreadsIn computer science, a protothread is a low-overhead mechanism for concurrent programming.Protothreads function as stackless, lightweight threads providing a blocking context cheaply using minimal memory per protothread ....
, light-weight stackless threads - Quintus Prolog, a PrologPrologProlog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...
implementation - SICStus Prolog, a PrologPrologProlog is a general purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is declarative: the program logic is expressed in terms of...
implementation - SimicsSimicsSimics is a full-system simulator used to run unchanged production binaries of the target hardware at high-performance speeds. Simics was originally developed by the Swedish Institute of Computer Science , and then spun off to Virtutech for commercial development in 1998...
, a full-system simulator originally developed at SICS - uIPUIP (micro IP)The uIP is an open source TCP/IP stack capable of being used with tiny 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers. It was initially developed by Adam Dunkels of the "Networked Embedded Systems" group at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, licensed under a BSD style license, and further developed by a...
, a TCP/IP stack for embedded systemEmbedded systemAn embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...
s
Academic output
The research at SICS results in approximately 100 refereed publications in academic journalAcademic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
s, conferences and workshops per year. Around 2-4 SICS researchers receive higher academic degree
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...
s per year, and 1-3 persons move to academia for tenure
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
d positions.
SICS was ranked as the 15th most acknowledged computer science research institution in the world in an article in December 2004 issue of the highly esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences...
(PNAS). SICS is the only Swedish institution included in the list, and is one of two European institutions ( the other one being INRIA ) alongside 13 well-known American institutions – several of them larger than SICS.
Notable spin-off companies
- Dynarc (1997)
- Effnet (1997)
- VirtutechVirtutechVirtutech was founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science , in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2004, the headquarters was moved to San Jose, California, USA. The Stockholm site remains the company's R&D center. The company's main product is Simics software, used by teams of...
(1998) - PipeBeach (1998)
- Tacton Systems (1998) - knowledge based solutions for sales and product configuration
- BotBox (1999)
- Voxi (1999)
- VerySolid (2004)
- Axiomatics (2006) - security solutions for digital data assets
- Asimus (2006) - search technology
- Peerialism (2007) - scalable and flexible file storage and video streaming solutions
- Gavagai (2008) - scalable and robust representation of semantics of linguistic data
Funding
SICS is jointly owned by Swedish industry and the Swedish government. The industry owners are TeliaSoneraTeliaSonera
TeliaSonera AB is the dominant telephone company and mobile network operator in Sweden and Finland. The company has operations in other countries in Northern, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Spain, with a total of 150 million mobile customers...
, Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
, FMV
FMV
FMV may refer to:*Full motion video, Video sequences in computer games and video games*Fair market value, an estimate of the market value of a property*For Maximum Value , Kroger supermarket's store brand...
(the Swedish Defense Material Administration), Green Cargo, ABB
Asea Brown Boveri
ABB is a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, and best known for its robotics. ABB operates mainly in the power and automation technology areas. It ranked 143rd in Forbes Ranking ....
, and Bombardier Transportation
Bombardier Transportation
Bombardier Transportation is the rail equipment division of the Canadian firm, Bombardier Inc. Bombardier Transportation is one of the world's largest companies in the rail-equipment manufacturing and servicing industry. Its headquarters are in Berlin, Germany....
.
SICS research is funded by the owners, by national funding sources, often Vinnova
Vinnova
Vinnova is the Swedish government agency that administers state funding for research and development. The agency's mission as defined by the government is to promote development of efficient and innovative Swedish systems within the areas of technology, transportation, communication and labour...
(the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation Systems) and SSF
SSF
-Computers:* Shortest seek first, a secondary storage scheduling algorithm to determine the motion of the disk's arm and head in servicing read and write requests-Concepts:*semi-solid forming, a casting method utilizing metal that is 50% liquid...
(the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research), and by industrial collaboration partners. SICS also participates in several European research projects funded by the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
.
External links
- SICS homepage
- Tacton home page
- Axiomatics homepage
- Gavagai homepage
- Peerialism home page
- C. Lee Giles and Isaac G. Councill: Who gets acknowledged: Measuring scientific contributions through automatic acknowledgement indexing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dec. 21, 2004.