Organizational Factors Affecting Capacity Planning Practices

Because of the high cost of most major equipment acquisitions, even a small improvement in the computer capacity planning (CCP— process can result in significant cost savings. The survey results presented here assess the effects of computing organization characteristics on various aspects of CCP practices. The results also should help MIS managers and analysts broaden their understanding of how this function can be conducted and what factors significantly affect its practice.     

一种扩展的多操作系统远程启动协议ENCBP

提出一种在局域网环境下对网络计算设备进行远程多操作系统引导的协议--ENCBP(extended network_based client boot protocol)协议,对现有的NCBP(network-based client bootprotocol)协议进行改进,通过区分引导的操作系统内核结构的类型改进了协议交互的过程,提高了单内核操作系统远程启动的效率,提出更安全的传输方法,增强了协议的安全性,引入在BIOS芯片中的固件启动代理,节省了对附加芯片的需求.最后以基于龙芯Ⅱ号平台的透明计算系统作为应用实例进行测试,并对测试结果做了分析和评价,验证了该方法的有效性.     

Large-scale,high-resolution agricultural systems modeling using a hybrid approach combining grid computing and parallel processing

The solution of complex global challenges in the land system, such as food and energy security, requires information on the management of agricultural systems at a high spatial and temporal resolution over continental or global extents. However, computing capacity remains a barrier to large-scale, high-resolution agricultural modeling. To model wheat production, soil carbon, and nitrogen dynamics in Australia's cropping regions at a high resolution, we developed a hybrid computing approach combining parallel processing and grid computing. The hybrid approach distributes tasks across a heterogeneous grid computing pool and fully utilizes all the resources of computers within the pool. We simulated 325 management scenarios (nitrogen application rates and stubble management) at a daily time step over 122 years, for 12,707 climate–soil zones using the Windows-based Agricultural Production Systems SIMulator (APSIM). These simulations would have taken over 30 years on a single computer. Our hybrid high performance computing (HPC) approach completed the modeling within 10.5 days—a speed-up of over 1000 times—with most jobs finishing within the first few days. The approach utilizes existing idle organization-wide computing resources and eliminates the need to translate Windows-based models to other operating systems for implementation on computing clusters. There are however, numerous computing challenges that need to be addressed for the effective use of these techniques and there remain several potential areas for further performance improvement. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in making high-resolution modeling of agricultural systems possible over continental and global scales.     

基于事件的社交网络上的CCP事件规划

在基于事件的社交网络(EBSNs)上,事件规划一直是一个热点研究问题.事件规划问题的核心是基于事件和用户的约束条件,对于一组事件,为每个事件选择一组用户,以最大化预先定义的目标函数.在实际应用中,事件冲突、事件容量、用户容量、社交偏好、事件偏好,简称为CCP,即冲突conflict、容量capacity、偏好preference,是规划方案需要考虑的重要因素.然而,现有的所有工作均未在研究事件规划问题时考虑CCP.为了获得更加合理有效的规划方案,首次提出一种CCP事件规划问题.相比只考虑部分因素的规划, CCP事件规划面临着问题更复杂、约束条件更多的困难.为了有效求解该问题,提出事件导向的贪心用户选择算法、事件导向的动态规划算法及基于收益预测的快速版本和事件导向的近似最优用户选择算法.大量的实验结果验证所提算法的有效性和高效性.     

Symbol Grounding in Computational Systems: A Paradox of Intentions

The paper presents a paradoxical feature of computational systems that suggests that computationalism cannot explain symbol grounding. If the mind is a digital computer, as computationalism claims, then it can be computing either over meaningful symbols or over meaningless symbols. If it is computing over meaningful symbols its functioning presupposes the existence of meaningful symbols in the system, i.e. it implies semantic nativism. If the mind is computing over meaningless symbols, no intentional cognitive processes are available prior to symbol grounding. In this case, no symbol grounding could take place since any grounding presupposes intentional cognitive processes. So, whether computing in the mind is over meaningless or over meaningful symbols, computationalism implies semantic nativism.     

An hybrid detection system of control chart patterns using cascaded SVM and neural network�Cbased detector

Early detection of unnatural control chart patterns (CCP) is desirable for any industrial process. Most of recent CCP recognition works are on statistical feature extraction and artificial neural network (ANN)-based recognizers. In this paper, a two-stage hybrid detection system has been proposed using support vector machine (SVM) with self-organized maps. Direct Cosine transform of the CCP data is taken as input. Simulation results show significant improvement over conventional recognizers, with reduced detection window length. An analogous recognition system consisting of statistical feature vector input to the SVM classifier is further developed for comparison.     

MULTIMEDIA AND THE DATA PROCESSOR

Changes in computing over the past 20 years have consistently caused serious debate over systems design among IS professionals. It is exactly this reaction that may be hindering the proliferation of multimedia computing today.     

网络集群计算系统中的并行任务调度

基于多处理机并行任务调度模型，探讨网络集群计算系统中的并行任务调度问题，首先证明了一般网络集群计算系统中调度算法的可近似性难度，然后提出了三种不同的启发式算法：最大长度优先调度算法、最大宽度优先调度算法和最大面积优先调度算法；然后根据大量的模拟实验对这些算法以及文献中已提出的调度算法进行了比较分析，结果表明该文的启发式算法比文献中的算法在性能上效果更好。     

Resource management framework for collaborative computing systems over multiple virtual machines

A resource management framework for collaborative computing systems over multiple virtual machines (CCSMVM) is presented to increase the performance of computing systems by improving the resource utilization, which has constructed a scalable computing environment for resource on-demand utilization. We design a resource management framework based on the advantages of some components in grid computing platform, virtualized platform and cloud computing platform to reduce computing systems overheads and maintain workloads balancing with the supporting of virtual appliance, Xen API, applications virtualization and so on. The content of collaborate computing, the basis of virtualized resource management and some key technologies including resource planning, resource allocation, resource adjustment and resource release and collaborative computing scheduling are designed in detail. A prototype is designed, and some experiments have verified the correctness and feasibility of our prototype. System evaluations show that the time in resource allocation and resource release is proportional to the quantity of virtual machines, but not the time in the virtual machines migrations. CCSMVM has higher CPU utilization and better performance than other systems, such as Eucalyptus 2.0, Globus4.0, et al. It is concluded that CCSMVM can accelerate the execution of systems by improving average CPU utilization from the results of comparative analysis with other systems, so it is better than others. Our study on resource management framework has some significance to the optimization of the performance in virtual computing systems.     

Neural computation with cellular cultures

There exist two classical paradigms in computation: the symbolic representation and the connectionist approximation. In addition to these two conventional paradigms, there are other, newer, approaches that are not so well established, but belonging to the brainstorming frontier between science and engineering. These new approaches include Bioware computation that proposes using real biological systems as computing elements. In this paper biological computing paradigms are studied by the programming capabilities of cellular cultures, mostly neural cultures, grown over multielectrode arrays with bi-directional communications. The systems are able of reading the cellular network activity and act over the network by stimulating the cells in different locations and with different approaches for superimposing a desired behaviour over the cultures.     

Moset: An anonymous remote mobile cluster computing paradigm

The advance of technology in terms of cellular communications and the increasing computing power of the mobile systems have made it convenient for people to use more of mobile systems rather than static systems. This has seen more of mobile devices in personal and distributed computing, thus making the computing power ubiquitous. The combination of wireless communication and cluster computing in many applications has led to the integration of these two technologies to emerge as Mobile Cluster Computing (MCC) paradigm. This has made parallel computing feasible on mobile clusters, by making use of the idle processing power of the static and mobile nodes that form the cluster. To realize such a system for parallel computing, various issues such as connectivity, architecture and operating system heterogeneities, timeliness issues, load fluctuations on machines, machine availability variations and failures in workstations and network connectivities need to be handled. Moset, an Anonymous Remote Mobile Cluster Computing (ARMCC) paradigm is being proposed to handle these issues. Moset provides transparency to mobility of nodes, distribution of computing resources and heterogeneity of wired and wireless networks. The model has been verified and validated by implementing a distributed image-rendering algorithm over a simulated mobile cluster model.     

Cooperation Protocols in Multi-Agent Robotic Systems

Multi-agent robotic systems are useful in many practical applications. For some tasks, such as holding a conference, cooperation among agents are necessary. For other tasks, such as cleaning a room, multiple agents can work in parallel for better performance. This paper provides help-based (HCP) and coordination-based (CCP) protocols for controlling agents to accomplish multi-agent tasks. The HCP utilizes efficient negotiation to coordinate agents into groups. The CCP improves overall performance by exchanging local knowledge among agents and making decisions in parallel. A reactive and modularized agent architecture was employed to implement the protocols. Since each protocol is embedded into the architecture, it is efficient and effective. In addition, the protocols are deadlock-free. The protocols were utilized to solve the Object-Sorting Task, which abstracts two characteristics of tasks: parallelism and cooperation. The experimental results showed that 1) both HCP and CCP are stable under different workload; 2) the protocols can effectively utilize the agent-power to achieve super-linear improvement; 3) The CCP is better than the HCP in both performance and speedup.     

Migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms: a systematic mapping study

Mobile computing has fast emerged as a pervasive technology to replace the old computing paradigms with portable computation and context-aware communication. Existing software systems can be migrated (while preserving their data and logic) to mobile computing platforms that support portability, context-sensitivity, and enhanced usability. In recent years, some research and development efforts have focused on a systematic migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms.To investigate the research state-of-the-art on the migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms. We aim to analyze the progression and impacts of existing research, highlight challenges and solutions that reflect dimensions of emerging and futuristic research.We followed evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) method to conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS) of the existing research that has progressed over more than a decade (25 studies published from 1996–2017).We have derived a taxonomical classification and a holistic mapping of the existing research to investigate its progress, impacts, and potential areas of futuristic research and development.The SMS has identified three types of migration namely Static, Dynamic, and State-based Migration of existing software systems to mobile computing platforms.Migration to mobile computing platforms enables existing software systems to achieve portability, context-sensitivity, and high connectivity. However, mobile systems may face some challenges such as resource poverty, data security, and privacy. The emerging and futuristic research aims to support patterns and tool support to automate the migration process. The results of this SMS can benefit researchers and practitioners–by highlighting challenges, solutions, and tools, etc., –to conceptualize the state-ofthe- art and futuristic trends that support migration of existing software to mobile computing.     

Concurrent warp execution: improving performance of GPU-likely SIMD architecture by increasing resource utilization

Hardware parallelism should be exploited to improve the performance of computing systems. Single instruction multiple data (SIMD) architecture has been widely used to maximize the throughput of computing systems by exploiting hardware parallelism. Unfortunately, branch divergence due to branch instructions causes underutilization of computational resources, resulting in performance degradation of SIMD architecture. Graphics processing unit (GPU) is a representative parallel architecture based on SIMD architecture. In recent computing systems, GPUs can process general-purpose applications as well as graphics applications with the help of convenient APIs. However, contrary to graphics applications, general-purpose applications include many branch instructions, resulting in serious performance degradation of GPU due to branch divergence. In this paper, we propose concurrent warp execution (CWE) technique to reduce the performance degradation of GPU in executing general-purpose applications by increasing resource utilization. The proposed CWE enables selecting co-warps to activate more threads in the warp, leading to concurrent execution of combined warps. According to our simulation results, the proposed architecture provides a significant performance improvement (5.85 % over PDOM, 91 % over DWF) with little hardware overhead.     

Fusion of soft and hard computing: multi-dimensional categorization of computationally intelligent hybrid systems

The concept of fusion of soft computing and hard computing has rapidly gained importance over the last few years. Soft computing is known as a complementary set of techniques such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, or evolutionary computation which are able to deal with uncertainty, partial truth, and imprecision. Hard computing, i.e., the huge set of traditional techniques, is usually seen as the antipode of soft computing. Fusion of soft and hard computing techniques aims at exploiting the particular advantages of both realms. This article introduces a multi-dimensional categorization scheme for fusion techniques and applies it by analyzing several fusion techniques where the soft computing part is realized by a neural network. The categorization scheme facilitates the discussion of advantages or drawbacks of certain fusion approaches, thus supporting the development of novel fusion techniques and applications.     

Combinatorial Method for Solving Systems of Linear Constraints

This article considers a combinatorial method for computing the basis of the set of solutions to systems of linear constraints over the set of real numbers and an improved method for computing a minimal generating set of solutions over the set of natural numbers. A brief review of such methods in other discrete domains is presented.     

P2P系统的性能优化：研究综述

Peer-to-Peer(P2P)计算模型在利用和管理日益增长的分布式信息和资源方面是一种非常成功的计算模型。但是这种计算模式也有一些缺点,特别是decentralized unstructured P2P系统,它将随机选择邻居和blind floodingsearch机制联合起来使用,使系统的网络开销急速地增加,严重地影响了系统的性能。本文介绍了减少decentralizedunstructured P2P系统网络开销的各类方法,对它们的优缺点进行了详细的比较,并根据比较的结果对今后的发展趋势进行了展望。     

Organizational Factors Affecting Capacity Planning Practices

Because of the high cost of most major equipment acquisitions, even a small improvement in the computer capacity planning (CCP— process can result in significant cost savings. The survey results presented here assess the effects of computing organization characteristics on various aspects of CCP practices. The results also should help MIS managers and analysts broaden their understanding of how this function can be conducted and what factors significantly affect its practice.     

开放计算环境中的信任管理模型研究与实现

本文讨论了信任管理的定义,对开放计算环境下的安全访问机制进行了分析,并指出现有信任管理机制中存在的缺乏统一灵活的断言描述方式和对信任关系缺乏监视与管理等问题。本文提出了基于RDF的开放计算环境中的信任管理原型,实现了对开放环境中资源访问的认证和授权。设计了一种灵活实用的断言描述形式,并在实验环境中对原型的
性能和安全性作出了分析     

面向HPC和DC的可重构光互连网络体系结构综述

互连网络是高性能计算系统和数据中心的核心组件之一,也是决定其系统整体性能的全局性基础设施。随着高性能计算、云计算和大数据技术的迅速发展,传统的电互连网络在性能、能耗和成本等方面无法满足高性能计算应用和数据中心业务的大规模可扩展通信需求,面临着严峻的挑战。为此,近年来相关研究者提出了多种面向高性能计算和数据中心的可重构的光互连网络结构。首先阐明了光互连网络相对于电互连网络的优势;然后介绍了几种典型的可重构光互连网络体系结构,并对其特点进行了分析比较;最后探讨了可重构光互连网络的发展趋势。