Science Foundation Ireland

1. SFI – ICT and the Environment
and the crucial underpinning role of
IPv6
Prof. Fionn Murtagh
Information, Communications & Emergent Technologies Directorate
1

2. 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

3. IPv6 – a basis element of Irish economic
recovery

5. 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, …)

6. 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

7. 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