SFI – ICT and the Environment and the crucial underpinning role of

IPv6

Prof. Fionn MurtaghInformation, Communications & Emergent Technologies Directorate

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Rebuilding the Irish Smart Economy

• The Knowledge Society powers every conceivable aspect of our society

• The web – it results from physicists sharing preprints• Undergrad student Marc Andreessen wrote the

Mosaic browser in Q1 1993, and unleashed the web to business worldwide

• And: the Dot-Com boom, starting in 1993, was exactly contemporary with the Celtic Tiger period

• The Internet – originally built as a robust, Cold War proof, network

• A European contribution: crucial role played by Linus Torvald

• Europe: if the game was (more or less) lost in computer hardware, it was won in telecoms

IPv6 – a basis element of Irish economic recovery

Theme area of SFI’s work: Telecoms – building the Future

Internet• Integration of photonics, wireless – and copper• Integration of layers, top and bottom• Clear business case derives from leading role

of cultural and creative industries, e-government, virtual work environments, and so on

• Important areas of support: IPTV, IPv6, universal high-speed broadband as a basic right of every citizen

• SFI has active investment of €116 million in telecoms (including sensor web, comms in e-health, photonics, …)

Theme area of SFI’s work:ICT and Energy/Climate – Sides of the one

coin• Some of the issues and exemplifications follow• ICT accounts for 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions, more than world

aviation• But processing of data and processing of energy follow identical paths• Enormous burgeoning costs imply need to integrate infrastructure –

power grid, broadband, waste• Data and energy share many properties• Power grids carry data; ICT is needed for autonomic (self-managing)

networks• Energy conservation requires ICT• Smart grids are based on ICT• Will the smart grid of the future support plug-and-play?• Data centres and cloud computing require inexpensive power • All future devices will be energy scavenging • SFI is currently supporting energy research to the level of €45 million

Evolving Technologies – through advancing Science and

Engineering• There is a sea-change in business models and IPR in

business and industrial sectors like publishing, the cultural and creative industries, online communities and e-government, distributed and virtual work environments

• National initiatives are coming to the fore, including the Exemplar Network, the National Ocean Research Facility, electric vehicles, and in connected health, in smarter cities and in the Smart Society

• Opportunities for Ireland are enormous• In the green and smart evolution of technology and

business, Ipv6 has an essential underpinning role to play