Preliminary results of post-irradiation examinations on LiSoR-2 test section

Liquid-solid reaction under irradiation (LiSoR) experiments are aimed at understanding the effects of liquid lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) corrosion and embrittlement under irradiation on structural materials, which is one of the key items of the materials R&D for the future accelerator-driven system (ADS). The LiSoR setup is basically a LBE loop with a test section irradiated with 72 MeV protons. The second irradiation was conducted for about 34 h and terminated after a leakage of LBE was detected. Post-irradiation examinations (PIE) are being performed on both the tube and tensile specimen in the test section. Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and microhardness tests have been completed. The results show that a crack formed in the irradiation zone of the tube. In the material in the irradiation zones of both the tube and the tensile specimen dislocation cell structure is well developed, which indicates heavy deformation due to thermal fatigue. The crack should start at the inner surface and propagate to the outer surface. The fracture surfaces of the crack are dominated by a brittle cleavage fracture mode. However, on the surfaces of the tensile specimen, no microcracks are observed.     

Who talks to whom about what? How interdisciplinary communication and knowledge of expertise distribution improve in integrated R&D labs

Although several studies have examined the impact of open workspaces, there is still an on-going debate about its advantages and disadvantages. Our paper contributes to this debate by shedding light on three issues: the effect of open workspaces on (1) the flow of communication along and across hierarchical lines; (2) the content of communication; and (3) the specificities of open integrated laboratories. Our findings derive from a longitudinal case in a large pharmaceutical company that has relocated some R&D teams from enclosed to multi-space offices and labs. The relocation has resulted in (a) increased interdisciplinary communication, particularly at lower hierarchical levels, (b) a shift of the location of discussions and the content of conversations and (c) an improved knowledge about expertise distribution.

Practitioner Summary: Communication is essential in knowledge-driven organisations. This article examines the impact of a relocation of R&D employees from enclosed to multi-space offices and labs on communication patterns. We explain how the new environment fosters interdisciplinary communication, shifts the location of discussions and increases the knowledge of expertise distribution.     

A Longitudinal Study of Workspace Design for Knowledge Exploration and Exploitation in the Research and Development Process

In order to leverage organizational learning, scholars have already defined but are still discussing the interpretation of two different learning types, exploration and exploitation. Exploring new frontiers across knowledge domains and maintaining the balance with exploiting the existing knowledge is critical for the prosperity of an organization. The spatial dimension of organizational learning considers that proximity of employees has an influence on their learning activities, but from a rather macro perspective without taking workspace design into account. We account for these issues by examining the impact of workspace design on knowledge exploration and exploitation on the micro level at distinct stages along the value chain (i.e., the research, development and project market team unit) of Novartis, a pharmaceutical company. In a longitudinal study, employees of the three cases have been interviewed and observed over the course of three years, before and after workspace redesign. With the change from a cellular to an open workspace, employees become closer and highly visible to each other, which influences knowledge work. As the cases occurred sequentially in time, design principles were derived. The findings suggest that exploitation is supported by workspace design that leads to high proximity inducing faster feedback cycles and first‐hand information. Exploration, however, is supported by workspace design that leads to high visibility triggering more cross‐functional interactions and thereby the variability of knowledge. The later the stage in the research and development process, the higher the need for balanced learning activities. This balance is well reflected in a ‘multi‐space’ workspace consisting of shared meeting areas, quiet zones, central staircases and integrated laboratories and desk areas.     

Digital Predistortion for 5G Small Cell: GPU Implementation and RF Measurements

In this paper, we present a high data rate implementation of a digital predistortion (DPD) algorithm on a modern mobile multicore CPU containing an on-chip GPU. The proposed implementation is capable of running in real-time, thanks to the execution of the predistortion stage inside the GPU, and the execution of the learning stage on a separate CPU core. This configuration, combined with the low complexity DPD design, allows for more than 400 Msamples/s sample rates. This is sufficient for satisfying 5G new radio (NR) base station radio transmission specifications in the sub-6 GHz bands, where signal bandwidths up to 100 MHz are specified. The linearization performance is validated with RF measurements on two base station power amplifiers at 3.7 GHz, showing that the 5G NR downlink emission requirements are satisfied.

     

A Low-overhead Scheduling Methodology for Fine-grained Acceleration of Signal Processing Systems

Fine-grained accelerators have the potential to deliver significant benefits in various platforms for embedded signal processing. Due to the moderate complexity of their targeted operations, these accelerators must be managed with minimal run-time overhead. In this paper, we present a methodology for applying flow-shop scheduling techniques to make effective, low-overhead use of fine-grained DSP accelerators. We formulate the underlying scheduling approach in terms of general flow-shop scheduling concepts, and demonstrate our methodology concretely by applying it to MPEG-4 video decoding. We present quantitative experiments on a soft processor that runs on a field-programmable gate array, and provide insight on trends and trade-offs among different flow-shop scheduling approaches when applied to run-time management of fine-grained acceleration.     

Quasi-Static Scheduling of CAL Actor Networks for Reconfigurable Video Coding

The upcoming Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC) standard from MPEG (ISO / IEC SC29WG11) defines a library of coding tools to specify existing or new compressed video formats and decoders. The coding tool library has been written in a dataflow/actor-oriented language named CAL. Each coding tool (actor) can be represented with an extended finite state machine and the data communication between the tools are described as dataflow graphs. This paper proposes an approach to model the CAL actor network with Parameterized Synchronous Data Flow and to derive a quasi-static multiprocessor execution schedule for the system. In addition to proposing a scheduling approach for RVC, an extension to the well-known permutation flow shop scheduling problem that enables rapid run-time scheduling of RVC tasks, is introduced.     

The impact of perceived privacy risks on organizations’ willingness to share item-level event data across the supply chain

When information is available about the path, on which individual items move through the real world, many beneficial applications can be designed. The necessary data can be generated through attaching identifiers to items and deploying suitable readers all over the supply chain that capture the information on the identifiers. Organizations only have access to data about item movements within their organizational boundaries. Therefore sharing of data between organizations is required to gain full visibility. However, the willingness of organizations to share data is considered to be low. In this paper we present the results of a study that aimed at investigating the actual willingness of companies to share item-level data and at exploring the perceived privacy risks that may restrain companies from sharing item-level data. From the findings, requirements for the design of inter-organizational data sharing infrastructures are derived.     

Toward Efficient Execution of RVC-CAL Dataflow Programs on Multicore Platforms

The increasing number of cores in System on Chips (SoC) has introduced challenges in software parallelization. As an answer to this, the dataflow programming model offers a concurrent and reusability promoting approach for describing applications. In this work, a runtime for executing Dataflow Process Networks (DPN) on multicore platforms is proposed. The main difference between this work and existing methods is letting the operating system perform Central processing unit (CPU) load-balancing freely, instead of limiting thread migration between processing cores through CPU affinity. The proposed runtime is benchmarked on desktop and server multicore platforms using five different applications from video coding and telecommunication domains. The results show that the proposed method offers significant improvements over the state-of-art, in terms of performance and reliability.