ASTECC

Adaptive Software for the heTerogeneous Edge-Cloud-Continuum /
Adaptiv programvara för heterogena Edge-Cloud-system

ASTECC is a 5-year cooperative research project in software systems, starting in December 2022, and located at the Department of Computer and Information Science at Linköping University, Sweden.

It is funded in the Future Software Systems research programme by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).

The project investigates methods for the design, automated orchestration and dynamic adaptation of software to enable its autonomous, efficient and secure execution in dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed device-edge-cloud environments, i.e., in multi-provider, multi-service, and multi-criteria scenarios, without relying on a global resource manager.

Key techniques to investigate towards a holistic solution include: (1) novel software design techniques for advanced run-time adaptivity, based on extended micro-service interfaces and workflows, including flexible specification of security and fault-tolerance requirements; (2) new techniques for runtime monitoring, analysis and automated modeling of key properties to support distributed dynamic orchestration and adaptivity; (3) new dynamic prediction techniques and a distributed dynamic orchestration and resource manager for the edge-cloud continuum that also manages autonomous migration; and (4) new techniques for cross-layer optimization and automated analysis of trade-offs regarding quality of service, performance, energy usage, cost, security, and fault tolerance.

Four research groups with complementary expertise work together to develop and prototype generic and domain-specific techniques, and demonstrate their value in four different use cases in strategic domains for Swedish industry with software-intensive products: Computer networks and applications they enable; smart energy grids; aviation; and automotive.

• Prof. Christoph Kessler (PELAB), project leader
• Prof. Mikael Asplund (RTSLAB), co-PI
• Prof. Niklas Carlsson (ADIT, Security and Networks group), co-PI
• Prof. Zebo Peng (ESLAB), co-PI
• Prof. Soheil Samii (ESLAB), co-PI

• The research projects ASTECC (LiU) and PARTI (KTH/Saab) organize a joint mini-workshop on Friday 24 October 2025, 10:30-12:00, on zoom.
• Accepted research article: August Ernstsson, Elin Frankell, Christoph Kessler: "Interactive Performance Visualization and Analysis of Execution Traces for Pattern-based Parallel Programming". Accepted (Oct. 2025) for publication in International Journal of Parallel Programming, Springer.
• ASTECC and several ASTECC researchers and industry partner companies are listed in the new presentation of the Cybersecurity research platform at LiU, 25 Sep. 2025.
• Accepted research paper: Sebastian Litzinger, Christoph Kessler, Jörg Keller: "Implications of the amd-pstate Driver for Frequency Scaling in Energy-Efficient Task Scheduling." PARS workshop, Hagen, Germany, Sep. 2025.
• Accepted research article: Mina Niknafs, Petru Eles, Zebo Peng: "Temperature and deadline aware runtime resource management with workload prediction for heterogeneous multi-core platforms." Journal of Systems Architecture, June 2025.
• Accepted research presentation: August Svensson, Fabio Crugnola, August Ernstsson, Sajad Khosravi, Sebastian Litzinger and Christoph Kessler: "SkePU-Streaming: Distributed Pipelining of Portable Data-Parallel Skeleton Computations for the Heterogeneous Edge-Cloud Continuum." HLPP-2025, Innsbruck, Austria, July 2025.
• Accepted research paper: Xiaopeng Teng, Soheil Samii, Johan Wibeck, "Mobility-Aware Real-Time Task Allocation in the 5G-Enabled Embedded-Edge Compute Continuum," IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA), Singapore, August 2025.
• Accepted research paper: Sajad Khosravi, Sebastian Litzinger, Christoph Kessler, Jörg Keller: "Quality-Aware Energy-Efficient Scheduling of Moldable-Parallel Streaming Computations on Heterogeneous Multicore CPUs with DVFS", Proc. JSSPP at IPDPS'25, June 2025.
• Accepted research paper: Somiya Kapoor, Ethan Witwer, David Hasselquist, Mikael Asplund, and Niklas Carlsson: "Predicting Video QoE from Encrypted Traffic: Leveraging Video Fingerprinting and Providing System-Level Insights", Proc. IFIP Networking, Limassol, Cyprus, May 2025.
• ASTECC PhD student Mina Niknafs has successfully defended her PhD thesis "Prediction-Based Resource Management for Heterogeneous Multi-Core Embedded Systems" in March 2025.
• Article about the project in Framtidens Forskning (June 2023)
• Article about the project in LiU-News (13/04/2022)
• Projects funded by SSF in the Future Software Systems call 2021

• M. Niknafs, P. Eles, Z. Peng: “Runtime Resource Management with Multiple-Step-Ahead Workload Prediction,” ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, Vol. 22, Issue 4, Article No. 71, 2023, pp. 1-34.
• S. Khosravi, C. Kessler, S. Litzinger, J. Keller: "Energy-Efficient Scheduling of Moldable Streaming Computations for the Edge-Cloud Continuum". Proc. 9th Int. Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC 2024), Sep. 2024, pp. 268-276, IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/FMEC62297.2024.10710310
• A. Carlson, D. Hasselquist, E. Witwer, N. Johansson, N. Carlsson: "Understanding and Improving Video Fingerprinting Attack Accuracy under Challenging Conditions", Proc. ACM CCS Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (ACM WPES @CCS), Salt Lake City, UT, Oct. 2024.
• D. Hasselquist, E. Witwer, A. Carlson, N. Johansson, N. Carlsson: "Raising the Bar: Improved Fingerprinting Attacks and Defenses for Video Streaming Traffic", Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs), volume 4, 2024. (Will also appear at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), July 2024.)
• F. Öhrström, J. Oscarsson, Z. Afzal, J. Dani, M. Asplund: "From balance to breach: cyber threats to battery energy storage systems". Energy Informatics 8, 39 (2025).
• C. Skandylas, M. Asplund: "Automated Penetration Testing: Formalization and Realization". Computers & Security, 2025.
• Z. Peng, "Control/Communication Codesign of Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems". Invited Talk, Proc. 3rd International Symposium of Electronics Design Automation (ISEDA), Hong Kong, May 9-12, 2025. IEEE, August 2025.
• S. Kapoor, E. Witwer, D. Hasselquist, M. Asplund, N. Carlsson: "Predicting Video QoE from Encrypted Traffic: Leveraging Video Fingerprinting and Providing System-Level Insights", Proc. IFIP Networking, Limassol, Cyprus, May 2025. To appear.
• S. Khosravi, S. Litzinger, C. Kessler, J. Keller: "Quality-Aware Energy-Efficient Scheduling of Moldable-Parallel Streaming Computations on Heterogeneous Multicore CPUs with DVFS". Proc. of 28th Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing (JSSPP-2025) in conjunction with IPDPS'25, Milano, Italy, June 2025. Springer LNCS 16210, to appear.
• M. Niknafs, P. Eles, Z. Peng: "Temperature and deadline aware runtime resource management with workload prediction for heterogeneous multi-core platforms." Journal of Systems Architecture vol. 167, October 2025.
• X. Teng, S. Samii, J. Wibeck: "Mobility-Aware Real-Time Task Allocation in the 5G-Enabled Embedded-Edge Compute Continuum", IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA), Singapore, August 2025. IEEE, to appear.

• M. Niknafs: Prediction-Based Resource Management for Heterogeneous Multi-Core Embedded Systems. PhD thesis no. 2429, Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden, March 2025.

• Z. Peng: “Temperature-Aware Design of Cyber-Physical Systems,” Invited Talk, IEEE International Symposium of EDA (ISEDA’23), Nanjing, China, May 8-11, 2023.
• A. Ernstsson, E. Frankell, and C. Kessler: "Interactive Performance Visualization and Analysis of Execution Traces for Pattern-based Parallel Programming", Int. Symposium on High-Level Parallel Programming and Applications (HLPP-2024), Pisa, Italy, July 2024.
• R. Falanji, M. Asplund, and N. Carlsson: "Provable Entity Accountability for Protocols with Modifiable Signed Messages", 2024 Workshop on Foundations of Computer Security (FCS 2024), affiliated with CSF 2024, July 8, 2024, Enschede, The Netherlands.
• A. Svensson, F. Crugnola, A. Ernstsson, S. Khosravi, S. Litzinger and C. Kessler: "SkePU-Streaming: Distributed Pipelining of Portable Data-Parallel Skeleton Computations for the Heterogeneous Edge-Cloud Continuum." HLPP-2025, Innsbruck, Austria, July 2025.

• qoe-live dataset and scripts from the paper "Predicting Video QoE from Encrypted Traffic: Leveraging Video Fingerprinting and Providing System-Level Insights", github, June 2025.

• Z. Peng, “Temperature-Aware Design and Optimization of Reliable Cyber-Physical Systems,” Proc. International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Energy Technologies (ICECET’23), Cape Town, South Africa, Nov. 15-16, 2023.
• Y. Pan, R. Mahfouzi, S. Samii, P. Eles, Z. Peng, ”Resource Optimization with 5G Configured Grant Scheduling for Real-Time Applications,” Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE), 2023.
• F. Boeira, M. Asplund, M. Barcellos, “Provable Non-Frameability for 5G Lawful Interception”, 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, 2023.
• D. Hasselquist, N. Johansson, and N. Carlsson, ”Now is the Time: Scalable and Cloud-supported Audio Conferencing using End-to-End Homomorphic Encryption”, Proc. ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop at CCS (CCSW @ CCS), Copenhagen, Denmark, Nov. 2023.
• N. Carlsson and D. Eager, ”Optimized Dynamic Cache Instantiation and Accurate LRU Approximations under Time-varying Request Volume”, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (IEEE TCC), Volume 11, Issue 1, Jan/Mar. 2023, pp. 779-797.
• A. Ernstsson, D. Griebler, and C. Kessler: ”Assessing Application Efficiency and Performance Portability in Single-Source Programming for Heterogeneous Parallel Systems.” International Journal of Parallel Programming 51(1), Springer, Jan. 2023.
• M. Boulasikis, C. Kessler, F. Gruian, J. Keller, and S. Litzinger: ”Packet-Type Aware Scheduling of Moldable Streaming Tasks on Multicore Systems with DVFS.” Proc. of ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC’24), Avila, Spain, April 2024.
• J. Jiang, S. Jin, Z. Sun, J. Duan, L. Liu, L. Pan, Z. Peng, ”An Efficient Approach for Improving Message Acceptance Rate and Link Utilization in Time-Sensitive Networking,” ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, Vol. 24, Issue 1, Jan. 2025, pp. 1-25.
• P. Czarnul, M. Antal, H. Baniata, D. Griebler, A. Kertesz, C. Kessler, A. Koulompris, S. Kovac, A. Markus, M. K. Michael, P. Nikolau, I. ¨Oz, R. Prodan, G. Rakic: Optimization of resource-aware parallel and distributed computing: a review. The Journal of Supercomputing 81:848, May 2025. Springer.
• S. Qummar, A. Ernstsson, C. Kessler, O. Sysoev: “SkePU-DNN: Algorithmic skeleton programming for deep learning on heterogeneous systems”. Proc. IPDPS-2025 Workshops, June 2025, IEEE.

• Prediction of Task Runtimes and Power Consumption for SkePU Skeleton-Based Parallel Streaming Applications

• Dynamic task migration for stream processing pipelines in heterogeneous distributed systems

• Skeleton computing as a service in the edge-cloud continuum

• [ASSIGNED] Skeleton programming with SkePU and MLIR

• Performance visualization for distributed stream processing pipelines with data-parallel tasks

• A. Svensson: SkePU Streaming: Distributed Stream Processing Pipelines for the Heterogeneous Edge-Cloud Continuum, 2024.

• F. Crugnola: Evaluating and simulating end‐to‐end latency in 5G environments, 2025.

• M. Galin, A. Hedblom: Linux kernel scheduler evaluation for performance-critical telecom workloads, 2025.

• A. Bramstedt, E. Siklosi: Cloud provider agnostic solution to establish certificate chain of trust, 2025.

• E. Schölin, F. Strömberg Hooshidar: Protecting integrity of security and audit trail events using Trusted Execution Environments, 2025.

• M. Döberl, Y. Freiherr von Wangenheim: Towards Ensuring Secure Client-Server Communication in the Medical Legacy Network Protocol DICOM, 2025.

• H. Fredriksson, R. Lindkvist: A Framework for Exploit Integration in Cyber Defence Exercises, 2024.

• A. Carlson: Understanding and Improving Video Fingerprinting Attacks under Challenging Conditions, 2024.

• A. Ekblad, A. Höglund: Approaches and Techniques to Assess the Accuracy of Network Emulators, 2023.

• J. Engberg: Implementation and Performance Evaluation of a Chameleon Signature Protocol, 2025

• Mini-Workshop 24 Oct. 2025

This research project is financially supported by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).
Detta forskningsprojekt finansieras av Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning (SSF)

Page responsible: Christoph Kessler, PI.