In brief
TelecommunicationsThe collaboration between the Compagnie des Signaux-Systèmes d'Information (CS-SI) and INRIA in the area of telecommunications was formalized through an outline agreement. The goal of the agreement is to facilitate contractual collaborations in order to transfer the knowledge required to design new products to the Compagnie des Signaux. Two INRIA projects will participate in the initial types of cooperation. Project Résédas of INRIA Lorraine/Loria was chosen to contribute to the work on modeling and prototyping for management systems for multiprotocol networks and services. Project Rodéo of INRIA Sophia Antipolis will intervene within the IP project set up by CS-Telecom. In both cases, doctoral candidates, receiving financial support from CS, will work within the research projects. Other types of cooperation are envisioned in the future.
Nuclear industry The outline agreement signed between CEA (Direction des Réacteurs Nucléaires) and INRIA is designed to contribute to the renewal of software tools adapted to the nuclear industry. Such tools have a computational side and a software engineering side. Cooperation on the computational side will concern three-dimensional object modeling, numerical methods and algorithms for parallel computers and automatic differentiation for the analysis of code sensitivity with respect to the physical parameters. INRIA's contribution in software engineering will touch on software architecture and the design of new programming environments around a Caml type high level language and information technology for cooperative work.
A new start-up
Trusted Logic is a new technology company stemming from INRIA founded in January. Its goal is to meet the demands of a new generation of smart cards that provide for the cooperation of several types of applications. Security and size problems in connection with application downloading will be crucial challenges. INRIA's research work on formal proof will be applied to software testing, and to cryptographic protocol verification. The introduction of a virtual machine in the chips will make it possible to divide their size by two or even four. Trusted Logic is the result of a collaboration initiated three years ago between Bull and INRIA within the Dyade GIE, to work on the protection of embedded data and Internet transactions.
