Design and implementation of the Quarc network on-chip

Networks-on-Chip (NoC) have emerged as alternative to buses to provide a packet-switched communication medium for modular development of large Systems-on-Chip. However, to successfully replace its predecessor, the NoC has to be able to efficiently exchange all types of traffic including collective communications. The latter is especially important for e.g. cache updates in multicore systems. The Quarc NoC architecture has been introduced as a Networks-on-Chip which is highly efficient in exchanging all types of traffic including broadcast and multicast. In this paper we present the hardware implementation of the switch architecture and the network adapter (transceiver) of the Quarc NoC. Moreover, the paper presents an analysis and comparison of the cost and performance between the Quarc and the Spidergon NoCs implemented in Verilog targeting the Xilinx Virtex FPGA family. We demonstrate a dramatic improvement in performance over the Spidergon especially for broadcast traffic, at no additional hardware cost

Productivity and Efficiency of US Gas Transmission Companies: A European Regulatory Perspective

Keywords JEL Classification On both sides of the Atlantic the regulation of gas transmission networks has undergone major changes since the early 1990’s. Whereas in the US the long-standing regime of cost-plus regulation was complemented by increasing pipe-to-pipe competition, most European countries moved towards incentive regulation complemented by market integration. We study the impact of US regulatory reform using a Malmquist-based productivity analysis for a panel of US interstate companies. Results are presented for changes in productivity, as well as for several convergence tests. The results indicate that taking productivity and convergence as performance indicators, regulation has been rather successful, in particular during a period where overall demand was flat. Lessons for European regulators are twofold. First, the US analysis shows that benchmarking of European transmission operators would be possible if data were available. Second, our results suggest that, in the long-run, market integration and competition are alternatives to the current European model. Natural gas transmission; utility regulation; data envelopment analysis; total factor productivity; convergenc

Small-world interconnection networks for large parallel computer systems

The use of small-world graphs as interconnection networks of multicomputers is proposed and analysed in this work. Small-world interconnection networks are constructed by adding (or modifying) edges to an underlying local graph. Graphs with a rich local structure but with a large diameter are shown to be the most suitable candidates for the underlying graph. Generation models based on random and deterministic wiring processes are proposed and analysed. For the random case basic properties such as degree, diameter, average length and bisection width are analysed, and the results show that a fast transition from a large diameter to a small diameter is experienced when the number of new edges introduced is increased. Random traffic analysis on these networks is undertaken, and it is shown that although the average latency experiences a similar reduction, networks with a small number of shortcuts have a tendency to saturate as most of the traffic flows through a small number of links. An analysis of the congestion of the networks corroborates this result and provides away of estimating the minimum number of shortcuts required to avoid saturation. To overcome these problems deterministic wiring is proposed and analysed. A Linear Feedback Shift Register is used to introduce shortcuts in the LFSR graphs. A simple routing algorithm has been constructed for the LFSR and extended with a greedy local optimisation technique. It has been shown that a small search depth gives good results and is less costly to implement than a full shortest path algorithm. The Hilbert graph on the other hand provides some additional characteristics, such as support for incremental expansion, efficient layout in two dimensional space (using two layers), and a small fixed degree of four. Small-world hypergraphs have also been studied. In particular incomplete hypermeshes have been introduced and analysed and it has been shown that they outperform the complete traditional implementations under a constant pinout argument. Since it has been shown that complete hypermeshes outperform the mesh, the torus, low dimensional m-ary d-cubes (with and without bypass channels), and multi-stage interconnection networks (when realistic decision times are accounted for and with a constant pinout), it follows that incomplete hypermeshes outperform them as well

Reliability and fault tolerance modelling of multiprocessor systems

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Reliability evaluation by analytic modelling constitute an important issue of designing a reliable multiprocessor system. In this thesis, a model for reliability and fault tolerance analysis of the interconnection network is presented, based on graph theory. Reliability and fault tolerance are considered as deterministic and probabilistic measures of connectivity. Exact techniques for reliability evaluation fail for large multiprocessor systems because of the enormous computational resources required. Therefore, approximation techniques have to be used. Three approaches are proposed, the first by simplifying the symbolic expression of reliability; the other two by applying a hierarchical decomposition to the system. All these methods give results close to those obtained by exact techniques.Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia" (National Council for Science and Technology of Mexico) and "Instituto de Investigaciones Electricas" (Institute for Electrical Research

Best Effort versus Spectrum Markets: Wideband and Wi-Fi versus 3G MVNOs?

This paper asks is whether (i) 3rd generation wireless services, as embodied in the planned and soon to be offered services emerging first in Asia and Europe, or (ii) the unlicensed wireless services such as 802.11 or wi-fi but also including more advanced wideband and ultrawideband (UWB) services which are being experimented with primarily in North America, offer more compelling visions for advanced wireless services. we conclude that secondary spectrum markets are important for the viability of the 3G industry, and not only for reasons of efficiency. One large difference between 2G and 3G networks, observed in our models, was that voice services alone would not generate sufficient revenues for a 3G system. License holders which up to now have concentrated on selling a single product, will need to develop a much larger range of advanced applications, which will have to be marketed and packaged in different ways for different market segments

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014

On Energy Efficient Computing Platforms

In accordance with the Moore's law, the increasing number of on-chip integrated transistors has enabled modern computing platforms with not only higher processing power but also more affordable prices. As a result, these platforms, including portable devices, work stations and data centres, are becoming an inevitable part of the human society. However, with the demand for portability and raising cost of power, energy efficiency has emerged to be a major concern for modern computing platforms. As the complexity of on-chip systems increases, Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proved as an efficient communication architecture which can further improve system performances and scalability while reducing the design cost. Therefore, in this thesis, we study and propose energy optimization approaches based on NoC architecture, with special focuses on the following aspects. As the architectural trend of future computing platforms, 3D systems have many bene ts including higher integration density, smaller footprint, heterogeneous integration, etc. Moreover, 3D technology can signi cantly improve the network communication and effectively avoid long wirings, and therefore, provide higher system performance and energy efficiency. With the dynamic nature of on-chip communication in large scale NoC based systems, run-time system optimization is of crucial importance in order to achieve higher system reliability and essentially energy efficiency. In this thesis, we propose an agent based system design approach where agents are on-chip components which monitor and control system parameters such as supply voltage, operating frequency, etc. With this approach, we have analysed the implementation alternatives for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling and power gating techniques at different granularity, which reduce both dynamic and leakage energy consumption. Topologies, being one of the key factors for NoCs, are also explored for energy saving purpose. A Honeycomb NoC architecture is proposed in this thesis with turn-model based deadlock-free routing algorithms. Our analysis and simulation based evaluation show that Honeycomb NoCs outperform their Mesh based counterparts in terms of network cost, system performance as well as energy efficiency.Siirretty Doriast

China and East Asian Energy : Prospects and Issues

In October 2005, the Crawford School (then the Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government) within the Australian National University (ANU) initiated a major research project on China and East Asian Energy. The project is being undertaken under the schools East Asia Forum in conjunction with the China Economy and Business Program. The first conference in the series being organised under the auspices of the China and East Asian Energy Strategies Research Program was hosted in Beijing by the Energy Research Institute and the ANU on 1011 October 2005. It was the first of five annual conferences in the program. This book brings together the key papers presented at that conference.