BlobCR: Virtual disk based checkpoint-restart for HPC applications on IaaS clouds

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing is gaining significant interest in industry and academia as an alternative platform for running HPC applications. Given the need to provide fault tolerance, support for suspend–resume and offline migration, an efficient Checkpoint-Restart mechanism becomes paramount in this context. We propose BlobCR, a dedicated checkpoint repository that is able to take live incremental snapshots of the whole disk attached to the virtual machine (VM) instances. BlobCR aims to minimize the performance overhead of checkpointing by persisting VM disk snapshots asynchronously in the background using a low overhead technique we call selective copy-on-write. It includes support for both application-level and process-level checkpointing, as well as support to roll back filesystem changes. Experiments at large scale demonstrate the benefits of our proposal both in synthetic settings and for a real-life HPC application.     

Effect of Hybridization on Stiffness Properties of Woven Textile Composites

The present study focuses on stiffness properties of woven textile reinforced polymeric composites with respect to hybridization, and geometry of reinforcement. The analyzed composites represent combinations of different fibre materials (E-glass, Kevlar 49, carbon HM) in a predetermined fabric geometry (a plane weave embedded in thermosetting polymeric resin) serving controlled properties and required performance. The effects of hybridization on the stiffness properties of woven textile composites have been studied with respect to the fibres materials, the unbalancing degree of fabrics, and the variation of compactness and undulation of yarns. Some undesirable effects in fabric geometry can be overcome by the combined effects of hybridization and compactness.     

Inhibition effect of some aromatic amines on copper electrodeposition from acidic baths

To improve the quality requirements for copper deposits, the influence of some inhibition agents added to the acidic copper bath has been studied. Several aromatic nitrogen compounds have been tested as inhibition agents, such as aniline, N-methylaniline, N-ethylaniline, N,N-dimethylaniline (DMA), and N,N-diethylaniline (DEA). The electrochemical behavior of these organic additives and the most relevant aspects of the electrochemical behavior of copper in acid solutions have been analyzed by cyclic voltammetry. At the same time, a correlation between voltammetric data and molecular properties of protonated amines obtained by molecular modeling has been performed. The morphology of the copper deposits obtained in the absence and presence of organic compounds has been studied by scanning electron microscopy. An improvement of the roughness degree and crystallite size upon addition of aromatic amine has been found. Best results were obtained for DMA and DEA working at room temperature (25 ± 0.1 °C) and 200 A m⁻² current density, in 1 mol L⁻¹ sulfuric acid solution with 50 g L⁻¹ Cu²⁺.     

Component-based analysis of embedded control applications

The widespread use of embedded systems requires the creation of industrial software technology that will make it possible to engineer systems being correct by construction. That can be achieved through the use of validated (trusted) components, verification of design models, and automatic configuration of applications from validated design models and trusted components. This design philosophy has been instrumental for developing COMDES—a component-based framework for distributed embedded control systems. A COMDES application is conceived as a network of embedded actors that are configured from instances of reusable, executable components—function blocks (FBs). System actors operate in accordance with a timed multitasking model of computation, whereby I/O signals are exchanged with the controlled plant at precisely specified time instants, resulting in the elimination of I/O jitter. The paper presents an analysis technique that can be used to validate COMDES design models in SIMULINK. It is based on a transformation of the COMDES design model into a SIMULINK analysis model, which preserves the functional and timing behaviour of the application. This technique has been employed to develop a feasible (light-weight) analysis method based on runtime observers. The latter are conceived as special-purpose actors running in parallel with the application actors, while checking system properties specified in Linear Temporal Logic. Observers are configured from reusable FBs that can be exported to SIMULINK in the same way as application components, making it possible to analyze system properties via simulation. The discussion is illustrated with an industrial case study—a Medical Ventilator Control System, which has been used to validate the developed design and analysis methods.     

The profiling of end mill and planing tools to generate helical surfaces known by sampled points

Generation of helical surfaces with cylinder-frontal tools (end mill tool or grinding wheels) as so as with cylindrical tools (planing tools) are proceedings used in the small lot productions manufacturing or for reparations. In many situations, the surfaces to be generated are known by measuring on three-dimensional measuring machines. In this way, is possible to define a generatrix expressed by sampled points, which impose specifically algorithms for the end mill tool’s profiling. In this paper, specifically proposed are algorithms for end mill tool and planing tool profiling, designated to generate helical surfaces known in discrete form. More is assumed that the helical surface’s generatrix may be expressed only by few points, three or four, so the helical surfaces generatrix may be expressed by inferior degree Bezier polynomials using topological geometry. One of the goals of this paper is to compare the numerical results obtained by the proposed algorithm with the results obtained from profiling theoretically methods, for the same surfaces types, in order to proof the new method quality.     

Improved Nyquist filter characteristics using spline interpolation

This paper presents and investigates a novel approach for constructing a family of intersymbol interference (ISI)-free pulses that shows comparable or better ISI performance in the presence of sampling errors, compared with some recently proposed pulses. We propose and discuss a new parametric method for the design of Nyquist filter characteristics using constraints in frequency characteristics construction. The method for constructing the filter characteristics uses a piecewise polynomial approximation of an ideal optimized staircase characteristic by spline functions. The spline polynomials are used to approximate a function that must pass through specified points. The performances of new ISI-free pulses are studied with respect to the ISI error probability. This family provides flexibility in designing an appropriate pulse even after the roll-off factor has been chosen. The results for error probability outperform the fourth-degree polynomial pulse [4].     

Aromatic amines as proton carriers for catalytic enhancement of hydrogen evolution reaction on copper in acid solutions

The catalytic effect of some aromatic amines towards hydrogen evolution reaction on copper in diluted sulfuric acid solution has been studied. Since amines facilitate the transport of protons from the solution bulk to the interface in the cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction, they are known as proton carriers. The catalytic effect of aniline, N-methylaniline, N-ethylaniline, N,N-dimethylaniline, N,N-diethylaniline, o-toluidine, m-toluidine and p-toluidine has been highlighted by linear sweep voltammetry. The kinetic parameters for the hydrogen evolution reaction (cathodic transfer coefficient 1-α and exchange current density i_o) in the presence of the studied aromatic amines were derived from the Tafel plots. It has been found that the catalytic effect of amines is active even at low concentration. Thus, in 0.5 mol L⁻¹ H₂SO₄ solution the exchange current density increases by two orders of magnitude, from 2.01⋅10⁻⁵ A m⁻² in the absence of aniline to 2.85⋅10⁻³ A m⁻² in the presence of 10⁻⁴ mol L⁻¹ aniline. The influence of amines concentration on the catalytic effect is described in detail for the case of m-toluidine. The results obtained by voltammetry have been compared with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy data. Furthermore, the kinetic parameters for the hydrogen evolution reaction have been determined as a function of temperature and amines concentration.     

Photochromic properties of polyimide and polysiloxane azopolymers

BACKROUND: One of the most important properties of the azobenzene chromophores is the photochemical trans–cis isomerization induced by UV or visible light. In azopolymers, the photoisomerization induces conformational changes in the polymer chains, which in turn lead to macroscopic variations in the chemical and physical properties of the surroundings and media. RESULTS: This work reports the photochromic behaviour and surface structuring capacity of azopolymers having rigid polyimide and flexible polysiloxane structures, respectively. These polymers have good thermostabilities, with the degradation process starting above 315 °C. The glass transition temperature of the azopolyimide is 228 °C, while that of the azopolysiloxane modified with thymine is 34 °C. CONCLUSION: The experiments show that the azobenzene groups can isomerize even in the case of the rigid polyimide, but the maximum degree of conversion to the cis isomer is less than in the case of the flexible polysiloxane. This behaviour is reversed in solution, probably due to both the thymine and azo group interactions and for conformational reasons. The azopolymers show a good surface structuring capacity. The polysiloxane is more sensitive in the case of low irradiation energy and irradiation time. By increasing the irradiation time for both polymers, the modulation depth increases and has comparable values. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

Micro-hotplate based temperature stabilization system for CMOS SAW resonators

Due to the sensitivity of the piezoelectric layer in surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators to temperature, a method of achieving device stability as a function of temperature is required. This work presents two methods of temperature control for CMOS SAW resonators using embedded polysilicon heaters. The first approach employs the oven control temperature stabilization scheme. Using this approach, the device’s temperature is elevated using on-chip heaters to T_max = 42°C to maintain constant device temperature. Both DC and RF measurements of the heater together with the resonator were conducted. Experimental results have indicated that the TCF of the CMOS SAW resonator of −97.2 ppm/°C has been reduced to −23.19 ppm/°C when heated to 42°C. The second scheme uses a feedback control circuit to switch the on-chip heaters on and off depending on the ambient temperature. This method provided reduction of the TCF from −165.38 ppm/°C, to −93.33 ppm/°C. Comparison of both methods was also provided.     

JuNoLo - Jülich nonlocal code for parallel post-processing evaluation of vdW-DF correlation energy

Nowadays the state of the art Density Functional Theory (DFT) codes are based on local (LDA) or semilocal (GGA) energy functionals. Recently the theory of a truly nonlocal energy functional has been developed. It has been used mostly as a post-DFT calculation approach, i.e. by applying the functional to the charge density calculated using any standard DFT code, thus obtaining a new improved value for the total energy of the system. Nonlocal calculation is computationally quite expensive and scales as N² where N is the number of points in which the density is defined, and a massively parallel calculation is welcome for a wider applicability of the new approach. In this article we present a code which accomplishes this goal.

Program summary

Program title: JuNoLoCatalogue identifier: AEFM_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEFM_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 176 980No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 2 126 072Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: Fortran 90Computer: any architecture with a Fortran 90 compilerOperating system: Linux, AIXHas the code been vectorised or parallelized?: Yes, from 1 to 65536 processors may be used.RAM: depends strongly on the problem's size.Classification: 7.3External routines:• FFTW (http://www.tw.org/)• MPI (http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/ or http://www.lam-mpi.org/)Nature of problem: Obtaining the value of the nonlocal vdW-DF energy based on the charge density distribution obtained from some Density Functional Theory code.Solution method: Numerical calculation of the double sum is implemented in a parallel F90 code. Calculation of this sum yields the required nonlocal vdW-DF energy.Unusual features: Binds to virtually any DFT program.Additional comments: Excellent parallelization features.Running time: Depends strongly on the size of the problem and the number of CPUs used.