A member of our team has been awarded a prestigious research project!

The project SP4 – REACT4GRAINS, led by Málaga-based researchers Javier Hormigo and Francisco M. Castro, professors in the UMA’s Computer Architecture Department, has been provisionally granted in the 2025 Artificial Intelligence Research Projects call. It is one of only seven granted in Andalusia and the sole project awarded in Málaga.

REACT4GRAINS is a key component of the coordinated GRAINS project – Green Responsible AI for Next-gen Sustainable Bio-Imaging. GRAINS tackles the critical challenge of reducing the carbon footprint of AI applied to bio-imaging through a comprehensive approach spanning models, algorithms, data, and hardware.

The SP4 – REACT4GRAINS subproject is the hardware layer of the consortium. It focuses on developing reconfigurable arithmetic units and FPGA architectures capable of executing advanced, ultra-low-precision numerical formats (like FP8, HUB, posits, dual-value) that are not currently supported by standard GPUs.

This subproject introduces unprecedented innovations, such as dual formats that maintain learning accuracy with very few bits and dynamic pruning mechanisms during training. These innovations continuously reduce energy consumption throughout the entire model lifecycle.

Thanks to this work, REACT4GRAINS provides the essential hardware infrastructure for advances in lightweight networks (SP1), model reuse (SP2), and robust, low-precision training (SP3) to be executed truly sustainably. This achievement further solidifies the University of Málaga as a national leader in Green AI, specialized hardware design, and computational bio-imaging.