CEDAR: Modeling impact of component error derating and read frequency on system-level vulnerability in high-performance processors

Reliability of the current microprocessor technology is seriously challenged by radiation-induced soft errors. Accurate Vulnerability Factor (VF) modeling of system components is crucial in designing cost-effective protection schemes in high-performance processors. Although Statistical Fault Injection (SFI) techniques can be used to provide relatively accurate VF estimations, they are often very time-consuming. Unlike SFI techniques, recently proposed analytical models can be used to compute VF in a timely fashion. However, VFs computed by such models are inaccurate as the system-level impact of soft errors is overlooked.     

A method for the optimum selection of datacenters in geographically distributed clouds

The optimal selection of a datacenter is one of the most important challenges in the structure of a network for the wide distribution of resources in the environment of a geographically distributed cloud. This is due to the variety of datacenters with different quality-of-service (QoS) attributes. The user’s requests and the conditions of the service-level agreements (SLAs) should be considered in the selection of datacenters. In terms of the frequency of datacenters and the range of QoS attributes, the selection of the optimal datacenter is an NP-hard problem. A method is therefore required that can suggest the best datacenter, based on the user’s request and SLAs. Various attributes are considered in the SLA; in the current research, the focus is on the four important attributes of cost, response time, availability, and reliability. In a geo-distributed cloud environment, the nearest datacenter should be suggested after receiving the user’s request, and according to its conditions, SLA violations can be minimized. In the approach proposed here, datacenters are clustered according to these four important attributes, so that the user can access these quickly based on specific need. In addition, in this method, cost and response time are taken as negative criteria, while accessibility and reliability are taken as positive, and the multi-objective NSGA-II algorithm is used for the selection of the optimal datacenter according to these positive and negative attributes. In this paper, the proposed method, known as NSGAII_Cluster, is implemented with the Random, Greedy and MOPSO algorithms; the extent of SLA violation of each of the above-mentioned attributes are compared using four methods. The simulation results indicate that compared to the Random, Greedy and MOPSO methods, the proposed approach has fewer SLA violations in terms of the cost, response time, availability, and reliability of the selected datacenters.     

Opposition-based learning in the shuffled differential evolution algorithm

This paper proposes using the opposition-based learning (OBL) strategy in the shuffled differential evolution (SDE). In the SDE, population is divided into several memeplexes and each memeplex is improved by the differential evolution (DE) algorithm. The OBL by comparing the fitness of an individual to its opposite and retaining the fitter one in the population accelerates search process. The objective of this paper is to introduce new versions of the DE which, on one hand, use the partitioning and shuffling concepts of SDE to compensate for the limited amount of search moves of the original DE and, on the other hand, employ the OBL to accelerate the DE without making premature convergence. Four versions of DE algorithm are proposed based on the OBL and SDE strategies. All algorithms similarly use the opposition-based population initialization to achieve fitter initial individuals and their difference is in applying opposition-based generation jumping. Experiments on 25 benchmark functions designed for the special session on real-parameter optimization of CEC2005 and non-parametric analysis of obtained results demonstrate that the performances of the proposed algorithms are better than the SDE. The fourth version of proposed algorithm has a significant difference compared to the SDE in terms of all considered aspects. The emphasis of comparison results is to obtain some successful performances on unsolved functions for the first time, which so far have not been reported any successful runs on them. In a later part of the comparative experiments, performance comparisons of the proposed algorithm with some modern DE algorithms reported in the literature confirm a significantly better performance of our proposed algorithm, especially on high-dimensional functions.     

An intelligent decision support system for forecasting and optimization of complex personnel attributes in a large bank

Developing decision support system (DSS) can overcome the issues with personnel attributes and specifications. Personnel specifications have greatest impact on total efficiency. They can enhance total efficiency of critical personnel attributes. This study presents an intelligent integrated decision support system (DSS) for forecasting and optimization of complex personnel efficiency. DSS assesses the impact of personnel efficiency by data envelopment analysis (DEA), artificial neural network (ANN), rough set theory (RST), and K-Means clustering algorithm. DEA has two roles in this study. It provides data to ANN and finally it selects the best reduct through ANN results. Reduct is described as a minimum subset of features, completely discriminating all objects in a data set. The reduct selection is achieved by RST. ANN has two roles in the integrated algorithm. ANN results are basis for selecting the best reduct and it is used for forecasting total efficiency. Finally, K-Means algorithm is used to develop the DSS. A procedure is proposed to develop the DSS with stated tools and completed rule base. The DSS could help managers to forecast and optimize efficiencies by selected attributes and grouping inferred efficiency. Also, it is an ideal tool for careful forecasting and planning. The proposed DSS is applied to an actual banking system and its superiorities and advantages are discussed.     

A critical review of the most popular types of neuro control

In this review article, the most popular types of neural network control systems are briefly introduced and their main features are reviewed. Neuro control systems are defined as control systems in which at least one artificial neural network (ANN) is directly involved in generating the control command. Initially, neural networks were mostly used to model system dynamics inversely to produce a control command which pushes the system towards a desired or reference value of the output (1989). At the next stage, neural networks were trained to track a reference model, and ANN model reference control appeared (1990). In that method, ANNs were used to extend the application of adaptive reference model control, which was a well‐known control technique. This attitude towards the extension of the application of well‐known control methods using ANNs was followed by the development of ANN model‐predictive (1991), ANN sliding mode (1994) and ANN feedback linearization (1995) techniques. As the first category of neuro controllers, inverse dynamics ANN controllers were frequently used to form a control system together with other controllers, but this attitude faded as other types of ANN control systems were developed. However, recently, this approach has been revived. In the last decade, control system designers started to use ANNs to compensate/cancel undesired or uncertain parts of systems' dynamics to facilitate the use of well‐known conventional control systems. The resultant control system usually includes two or three controllers. In this paper, applications of different ANN control systems are also addressed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Enhanced exact solution methods for the Team Orienteering Problem

The Team Orienteering Problem (TOP) is one of the most investigated problems in the family of vehicle routing problems with profits. In this paper, we propose a Branch-and-Price approach to find proven optimal solutions to TOP. The pricing sub-problem is solved by a bounded bidirectional dynamic programming algorithm with decremental state space relaxation featuring a two-phase dominance rule relaxation. The new method is able to close 17 previously unsolved benchmark instances. In addition, we propose a Branch-and-Cut-and-Price approach using subset-row inequalities and show the effectiveness of these cuts in solving TOP.     

Predicting potential deadlocks in multithreaded programs

In a multithreaded program, competition of threads for shared resources raises the deadlock possibility, which narrows the system liveness. Because such errors appear in specific schedules of concurrent executions of threads, runtime verification of threads behavior is a significant concern. In this study, we extended our previous approach for prediction of runtime behavior of threads may lead to an impasse. Such a prediction is of importance because of the nondeterministic manner of competing threads. The prediction process tries to forecast future behavior of threads based on their observed behavior. To this end, we map observed behavior of threads into time‐series data sets and use statistical and artificial intelligence methods for forecasting subsequent members of the sets as future behavior of the threads. The deadlock prediction is carried out based on probing the allocation graph obtained from actual and predicted allocation of resources to threads. In our approach, we use an artificial neural network (ANN) because ANNs enjoy the applicable performance and flexibility in predicting complex behavior. Using three case studies, we contrasted results of the current and our previous approaches to demonstrate results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perfect forward secrecy in VoIP networks through design a lightweight and secure authenticated communication scheme

With the growth of the internet, development of IP based services has increased. Voice over IP (VoIP) technology is one of the services which works based on the internet and packet switching networks and uses this structure to transfer the multimedia data e.g. voices and images. Recently, Chaudhry et al., Zhang et al. and Nikooghadam et al. have presented three authentication and key agreement protocols, separately. However, in this paper, it is proved that the presented protocols by Chaudhry et al. and also Nikooghadam et al. do not provide the perfect forward secrecy, and the presented protocol by Zhang et al. not only is vulnerable to replay attack, and known session-specific temporary information attack, but also does not provide user anonymity, re-registration and revocation, and violation of fast error detection. Therefore, a secure and efficient two-factor authentication and key agreement protocol is presented. The security analysis proves that our proposed protocol is secure against various attacks. Furthermore, security of proposed scheme is formally analyzed using BAN logic and simulated by means of the AVISPA tool. The simulation results demonstrate security of presented protocol against active and passive attacks. The communication and computation cost of the proposed scheme is compared with previously proposed authentication schemes and results confirm superiority of the proposed scheme.