Network and device-level impacts: performance and reliability of active I/O storage systems

Distributed active storage architectures are designed to offload user-level processing to the peripheral from the host servers. In this paper, we report preliminary investigation on performance and fault recovery designs, as impacted by emerging storage interconnect protocols and state-of-the-art storage devices. Empirical results obtained using validated device-level and interconnect data demonstrate the significance of the said parameters on the overall system performance and reliability.     

Study on a Distributed Wavelength Routing Algorithm in WDM Optical Transport Networks

A new design scheme for a distributed algorithm for routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) is developed in this paper, and the communication rules between the nodes to exchange signaling packets are discussed. The Adaptive-Alternate-Routing-Least-Load (AARLL) algorithm is implemented in the distributed scheme for the first time. Under dynamic traffic circumstances, the influence of the race condition, which does not exist in centralized scheme, on the network performance is analyzed and the analyzed results show that the race condition has a major impact on network performance only under light traffic load, while under medium and heavy traffic load the impact is very small. To analyze the performance loss caused by adopting the distributed algorithm for RWA, the capacity loss factor (CLF) is introduced and the calculated results show that CLF does not exceed 6% under medium traffic load.     

Self-stabilizing depth-first token circulation on networks

Summary This paper proposes a self-stabilizing protocol which circulates a token on a connected network in nondeterministic depth-first-search order, rooted at a special node. Starting with any initial state in which the network may have no token at all or more than one token, the protocol eventually makes the system stabilize in states having exactly one circulating token. With a slight modification to the protocol —by removing nondeterminism in the search — a depth-first-search tree on the network can be constructed. The proposed protocol runs on systems that allow parallel operations. Shing-Tsaan Huang was born in Taiwan on September 4, 1949. He got his Ph.D. degree in 1985 from Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park. Before he pursued his Ph.D. degree, he had worked several years in the computer industry in Taiwan. Professor Huang is currently the chairman of the Department of Computer Science, Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, Republic of China. His research interests include interconnection networks, operating systems and distributed computing. He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery. Nian-Shing Chen was born in Taiwan on October 21, 1961. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from National Tsing Hua University in 1990. Dr. Chen is currently an associate professor with the Department of Information Management at Sun Yat-Sen University of Taiwan. His research interests include distributed systems, computer networks, computer viruses and expert systems. He is a member of IEEE and Phi Tau Phi honorary society.This research is supported by National Science Council of the Republic of China under the contract NSC81-0408-E-007-05 and NSC82-0408-E-007-027     

Electric and dielectric properties of solution-gas interface-grown PbS films

Dielectric properties andI–V characteristics of solution-gas interface-formed PbS thin-film capacitors (Al/PbS/Al) of various thicknesses have been studied in the frequency range 10-10⁶ Hz at various temperatures (300–443 K). Current-voltage (I–V) characteristics show space-charge-limited conduction. Dielectric constant (ε) increases with increasing film thickness and temperature and decreases with increase of frequency. The loss factor (tanδ) peaks observed in tanδ vs frequency and tanδ vs temperature reveal relaxation effect from dipolar orientation. These maxima shift to higher-temperature region with increasing frequency. The large increase in capacitance (C) and dielectric constant (ε) towards low-frequency (f) region indicates the possibility of an interfacial polarization mechanism in this region.     

Linear self-stabilizing algorithms for the independent and dominating set problems using an unfair distributed scheduler

This paper presents distributed self-stabilizing algorithms for the maximal independent and the minimal dominating set problems. Using an unfair distributed scheduler the algorithms stabilizes in at most max{3n−5,2n} resp. 9n moves. All previously known algorithms required O(n²) moves.     

Electrochemical properties of ultra-long,aligned, carbon nanotube array electrode in organic electrolyte

The electrochemical properties of an electrochemical double-layer capacitor electrode based on an ultra-long (500 μm), aligned, carbon nanotube array (ACNTA) in Et₄NPF₆/propylene carbonate electrolyte are examined. The specific capacitance of the ACNTA electrode in an organic electrolyte is 24.5 F g⁻¹, which is larger than that obtained in an aqueous electrolyte. The results of ac impedance measurements show that the ACNTA electrode gives a high power density and an excellent rate capability in an organic electrolyte. It is shown that the ACNTA electrode has a lower equivalent series resistance and a better rate capability than activated carbon electrode. This is due to the fact that ACNTA possesses a larger pore size and a more a regular pore structure. Both these features are conformed by scanning electron microscopic and nitrogen gas adsorption studies.     

Parallelism in ILU-preconditioned GMRES

A parallel implementation of the preconditioned GMRES method is described. The method is used to solve the discretized incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. A parallel implementation of the inner product is given, which appears to be scalable on a massively parallel computer. The most difficult part to parallelize is the ILU-preconditioner. We parallelize the preconditioner using ideas proposed by Bastian and Horton (P. Bastian, G. Horton, SIAM. J. Stat. Comput. 12 (1991) 1457–1470). Contrary to some other parallel methods, the required number of iterations is independent of the number of processors used. A model is presented to predict the efficiency of the method. Experiments are done on the Cray T3D, computing the solution of a two-dimensional incompressible flow. Predictions of computing time show good correspondence with measurements.     

PROVOX系统在间歇反应聚丙烯装置上的应用

本文简要介绍了费希尔－罗斯蒙特公司的ＰＯＶＯＸ系统特点，以及在间歇反应聚丙烯装置中的应用。     

The column protocol: A high availability and low message cost solution for managing replicated data

This paper presents a quorum-based replica control protocol which is resilient to network partitioning. In the best case, the protocol generates quorums of a constant size. When some replicas are inaccessible, the quorum size increases gradually and may be as large as O(n), where n is the number of replicas. However, the expected quorum size is shown to remain constant as n grows. This is a desirable property since the message cost for accessing replicated data is directly proportional to the quorum size. Moreover, the availability of the protocol is shown to be comparably high. With the two properties—constant expected quorum size and comparably high availability—the protocol is thus practical for managing replicated data.     

通信网交换系统的发展趋向

本文对宽带综合通信网交换系统几个主要方面技术的发展趋向作了概括介绍，内容包括：电子交换的分布结构、ＡＴＭ交换的开始应用，个人通信的无线进网，宽带交换引用光子技术和多媒体交换结构分析。