Institute of System Programming, ISP RAS

Areas of activity

The activities of the Institute are carried out in the following three areas:

• basic research,
• applied research for the benefit of the industry and
• education.

These directions have a strong mutual influence. Students and graduate students of the Institute participate in basic and applied research projects. The results of basic research are used in applications. Applied research defines the directions of basic research. Research is conducted on a wide range of issues of system programming.

Commercial activities

About 60-65% of the budget of the Institute of System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISP RAS) consists of contracts with foreign companies, CNews was told in March 2011 by the director of the institute, academician Viktor Ivannikov^[1]. The institute receives the remaining funds from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education and Science, from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) and from contracts with various departments and commercial firms within Russia.

"As a director, of course, I would like this balance to be at least 50x50," Ivannikov argues. And such a process is now underway: Russian organizations appear - both commercial and various departments - which need technologies. Ten years ago, there were none at all. We paid taxes on more than the state gave us, actually teaching students at our own expense - at the expense of those contracts that we received. "

The cost of work of one specialist on contract projects at the institute is estimated at $65-75 thousand per year. At the same time, it happens that Western companies lure the specialists of the institute to themselves.

"There have been instances of companies brazenly taking our people. True, this happens infrequently, because most corporations still adhere to ethics, "said the director of the ISP RAS. In total, according to Ivannikov, there are about 200 programmers at the institute.

Despite significant experience in developing programs from scratch, the possibility of putting trade in them on the stream of the ISP RAS has not yet been considered. "If you look at any company, even a software company, then in it you will see only 10% of developers, and 90% - administration, support, sellers, marketing, etc. We have about 200 programmers. Accordingly, in order for us to successfully sell, we must have thousands of two people, including both marketing specialists and sellers. These are people with a different mentality, with a different morality. It is very difficult to do all this, and we are not doing this. We develop technologies and implement them in other organizations, "Ivannikov notes.

Collaboration with Samsung

The largest contracts with the ISP RAS are concluded with Samsung. In particular, a foreign partner pays the institute about $500 thousand a year to develop the Svace system, a tool for detecting vulnerabilities and critical bugs in software products that the company uses, for example, in its smartphones and mobile computers.

As CNews explained in 2016, the institute began developing this software more than 10 years ago with Nortel. Subsequently, the project received grants from the Ministry of Education and Science and from the RFBR. With Samsung, the ISP RAS has been cooperating on this project for about two years, says the director of the institute.

By order of the same company, the institute is engaged in optimizing compilers for ARM processors. According to Ivannikov, at the moment, the ISP RAS has concluded several contracts with Samsung with a total volume of about $1.5-2 million.

The problems of intellectual property in work on contracts are very acute, Viktor Ivannikov notes: these issues are negotiated every time before the conclusion of the contract.

"If we start developing software from scratch for a company that supplies proprietary software products, then all intellectual property rights belong to this company. At best, the contract may say that we can also use this software for educational or scientific purposes, "says the academician. "If the development of any software began before the conclusion of a contract with the company, the exclusive rights belong to the institute, and in most cases the customer is transferred a non-exclusive right to use the product." According to the latter scheme, for example, the rights to Svace are distributed between the ISP RAS and Samsung

.

One of the projects that ISP RAS worked on by order of Samsung earlier is energy saving technologies for batteries. In particular, the institute developed a compiler that allows you to create software that can, if necessary, call processor commands that change its clock frequency, and thus control power consumption. According to Ivannikov, it is possible that work in this area will resume.

IoT Samsung Academy at MIPT

Samsung Electronics, with the support of the Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, launched the IoT Academy Samsung project on the basis of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in October 2017, within the framework of which university students will be able to gain practical knowledge about the Internet of Things and develop their own projects using "smart" devices. A tripartite agreement on the implementation of the project was signed on October 10.

Cooperation with Nokia

In March 2011, the institute signed a contract with Nokia for the development of linkers of large programs for mobile phones. But the amount of this contract is slightly less than with Samsung to develop Svace.

In addition to Samsung and Nokia, the ISP RAS also periodically performs contract work for Microsoft Research, HP, Intel.

Open Source Software Development

In addition to contracts with commercial companies, ISP RAS takes an active part in open projects, although these projects are not always successful.

One of the software solutions developed by ISP RAS from scratch is the free database for storing and managing XML data Sedna, distributed under the Apache License 2.0. The product, according to experts, turned out to be very high-quality, but, according to Ivannikov, this DBMS is used, mainly only by academic and small commercial organizations.

In addition, the institute cooperates with the Linux Foundation (a consortium of more than 70 IT providers). A few years ago, the ISP RAS, together with the Linux Foundation, released a program for testing various software for compliance with Linux Standard Base, the main modern standard that determines the requirements for compatibility with Linux systems. It was assumed that the developers of Linux distributions and proprietary software will be tested, and the resulting certificate should ensure that this or that proprietary program is compatible with a free OS that is also certified. But it has not yet been possible to heat up the great interest in certification, at least from proprietary developers.

History

Employees of the Institute participated in a number of major projects of the USSR such as:

• software for the famous BESM-6 machine, including the D-68 (1968) operating system and the ND-70 (1971) real-time system;

• the architecture and software of the distributed heterogeneous AS-6 system (1979), which was operated for more than 10 years at Mission Control Centers;

• architecture, software and computer design automation system of the Electronics SS Bis supercomputer (1987).

2023: Agreement with Solar in the field of software secure development

GC "" and Solar the programming V.P. Ivannikov Institute for Systems The Russian of the Academy of Sciences (ICP) RAS entered into a cooperation agreement. The parties intend to join forces to create software solutions for the secure development, development of economic ties and activities scientificallyeducational in this area. Solar announced this on December 8, 2023.

The signing of the agreement provides for the expansion of cooperation and complements it with new directions and formats. In particular, the organizations plan to jointly promote their safe software development technologies, educational and scientific activities in order to increase their presence in the national and international markets. The Solar Group and the ISP RAS agreed to create groups of information security researchers in the field of development to study ways to search for vulnerabilities. Partners will also work to improve regulations, prepare educational and methodological materials on products, and provide mutual technical support.

Organizations pay special attention to educational activities. The programs of additional professional, formations implemented on the basis of the ISP RAS, use, among other things, methodological materials and solutions of "Solar." The parties give mutual references on Svace products appScreener and in teaching static analysis of low-level languages ​ ​ and widely used codes, as well as binary ones. files

As of December 2023, Solar and the ISP RAS are also working on the development of a system of national standards in the field of safe software development within the framework of the technical committee 362 "Information Protection," as well as on a project to create a unified environment for domestic companies - a set of software solutions for developing safe software.

In the current conditions, when global vendors left the support of Russian business, and cybercrime increased its power and sophistication of attacks, our country, as never before, needs an operational and professional increase in expertise and mature solutions in the direction of its own secure development. This is the only possible way that can guarantee security at all stages of the software development and delivery cycle in compliance with information security requirements. This task acquires particular relevance in the context of a low level of trust in open source sources, - commented Igor Lyapunov, General Director of Solar Group of Companies. - Our partnership with ISP RAS is reaching a new level. The two backbone structures join forces to develop the DevSecOps methodology. In working together, we will apply our knowledge and experience in the regulatory direction, support the development of technologies, including those created by young companies, and form best practices for business.

ISP RAS is a pioneer in the field of creating safe software development technologies in Russia. The institute has developed a technological stack of code analyzers and other necessary tools. On our initiative, the scientific specialty "Cybersecurity" was created, "said Harutyun Avetisyan, director of the ISP RAS, academician of the RAS. - We have been cooperating with Solar Group for a long time and have made sure that partnership with such a significant company in the cybersecurity market gives a serious synergistic effect, our knowledge and tools complement each other. The total volume of projects with the joint participation of the ISP RAS and the Solar Group is already a billion rubles. The new agreement will allow us to move to a qualitatively different level: accelerate the development and implementation of technologies, as well as expand personnel training in order to increase the culture of developing safe software in the country.

2021: Plans to create a competence center for managing the safety of technical and sociotechnical systems

JSC "Control Systems" (part of the holding "Roselectronics" of the State Corporation Rostec) and the Institute of System Programming named after V.P. Ivannikova of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISP RAS) agreed to create a competence center for managing the safety of technical and socio-technical systems on the basis of a technological landfill. Roselectronics announced this on February 12, 2021. Read more here.

2020: Research Grant for Manufacturing Technologies and Software Certification with Increased Reliability and Safety Requirements

On March 4, 2020, Astra Linux announced that it had again become the main industrial partner of the V.P. Ivannikov Institute of System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISP RAS). The Company will provide co-financing of research of production technologies and certification of software with increased requirements for reliability and safety based on formal modeling and verification methods. The participation of Astra Linux GC in financing these studies determines the conditions for the grant, which the Institute received within the framework of the federal target program "Research and development in priority areas of development of the scientific and technological complex of Russia for 2014-2020."

One of the key areas of work is the development of technologies and tools for presentation and verification in a formalized machine-readable language of a mathematical access control model. Astra Linux GC is interested in the results of such studies, since it is on this model that the protection of the Astra Linux Special Edition operating system (OSSN) is based.

The use of these tools, on the one hand, makes it possible to improve the quality of development and ensure the safety of the PSA, and on the other hand, it is aimed at fulfilling the Information Security Requirements approved by Order of the Federal Service for Technical Protection of Information and Information Technology Security Tools approved by 30.07.2018 No. 131. These requirements are valid from June 1, 2019 at the initiative of the FSTEC of Russia, in whose OSSN certification system Astra Linux Special Edition has the first class of protection and, therefore, the maximum level of trust.

"ISP RAS and Astra Linux GC been developing partnerships since 2013. We appreciate the participation of developers of information protection tools in our research, as well as their co-financing. This allows us to concentrate our efforts in the areas in which the leaders of the domestic information security market are interested, focused on the implementation of regulatory decisions, and it also makes it possible to create and implement our knowledge-intensive technologies and tools in the solutions of Russian developers, to see the results of their work. " noted' Harutyun Avetisyan, Director of the Institute Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences

In addition to studying the technologies used in the tools for verifying the access control model, which the ISP RAS conducts as part of the grant work, when developing information security tools those claiming high levels of trust, a wide range of tools for static and dynamic analysis of program code, collecting traces of its execution, penetration testing, analysis of marked data , etc. To effectively use these tools, process and analyze the results of their work, the developer needs a constantly functioning technical infrastructure fulfillment of trust requirements (test benches, databases program code defects, continuous development environment, etc.), as well as the ability to apply appropriate scientific approaches in his daily work.

"Cooperation in the person of the ISP RAS with Russian academic science has become an integral part of the scientific support for the development of our secure operating system and ensuring trust in it. We initially owned some of the technologies used for this, for example, the development of a mathematical model of access control. Several other technologies, for example, deductive verification of this model, we were able to master quite recently. At the same time, interaction with the ISP RAS allows us not only to meet the trust requirements presented by the current regulatory framework, and with the implementation of which we may have difficulties. First of all, it gives us the opportunity to look into the future, explore and test on our operating system the most advanced technologies for ensuring trust in information protection tools, make them the property of the domestic information security market. This is what the mission is aimed at Astra Linux GC as an industrial partner of the ISP RAS, " noted' Peter Devyanin, Chief Research Fellow Astra Linux GC Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Cryptography '

2019: Opening of a joint R&D laboratory with Huawei to develop software development tools

The V.P. Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISP RAS) and the Russian Research Institute Huawei (Huawei Russian Research Institute) have created a joint laboratory within the framework of a strategic partnership, the work of which will be aimed at research and development in the field of compiler technologies and components of operating systems. This was reported to TAdviser on December 5, 2019 by Huawei.

Development tools and compilers in particular (a set of programs and technical tools for translating the high-level programming language into simplified computer code) are the fundamental basis for creating software for various modern devices: from smartwatches, televisions, mobile phones to server platforms.

It is expected that this format of cooperation will allow combining the experience and efforts of researchers from the ISP RAS and leading experts from Huawei to develop breakthrough approaches to creating advanced mass-use devices.

The priority areas of collaboration will be:

• development of tools for optimizing components of mobile operating systems, including compilers and virtual machines;
• creation of tools for increasing the productivity of the programmer (at the stages of the entire development life cycle ON);
• development of profiling, debugging and emulation tools (to be created for specific company devices).

The development of such a science-intensive industry as compiler technologies is impossible without high-quality feedback from the industry. Therefore, cooperation with companies of Huawei scale is a competitive advantage in the global R&D market - research and development, and also qualitatively affects education, "said Harutyun Avetisyan, Director of the ISP RAS. - For our part, we are ready to provide Huawei with our experience in this area. For example, we have four officially recognized reviewers in the community - the GCC compiler developers.

Huawei is aimed at long-term cooperation with the ISP RAS. We plan to help the institute with the training of new specialists and researchers in the field of key systems programming technologies, as well as together find solutions to urgent problems for creating the world's best mass-use devices, "said Sergey Yakushkin, head of compilers at the Russian research center Huawei. - The development of such a knowledge-intensive field as compiler technologies is impossible without cooperation between the industry and researchers. The software analysis and error finding built into the toolkit, compilation speed, restart and debugging times determine the productivity of software development and the development of the entire application ecosystem, and the quality of optimizing compilers and virtual machines affects the operation of the operating system and user applications, which ultimately forms user experience, smoothness of interfaces and battery life.

2017: ISP RAS in Latin America

ISP RAS signed in April 2017 an agreement on scientific cooperation with the Republican University of Uruguay (Universidad de la República, UDELAR) ^[2] in ^[3] The purpose of the agreement is to promote the development and dissemination of cultural ties, scientific and technological research and higher education. When deciding to develop cooperation, the institute and the university were guided by the agreement signed at the same time between the Russian Academy of Sciences and UDELAR.

The ISP RAS and the university already have experience in scientific exchange and joint participation in events in the field of high technologies. Director of the ISP RAS, Corresponding Member of the RAS Harutyun Avetisyan commented: '

UDELAR, one of the significant Latin American universities with good competencies in areas such as big data and distributed systems, can help the Institute increase scientific ties with the region, significantly increase our presence in Latin American countries. We are talking not only about basic research, but also about the introduction of technologies of the ISP RAS in the industry. "

Notes