Redsharc: A Programming Model and On-Chip Network for Multi-Core Systems on a Programmable Chip

The reconfigurable data-stream hardware software architecture (Redsharc) is a programming model and network-on-a-chip solution designed to scale to meet the performance needs of multi-core Systems on a programmable chip (MCSoPC). Redsharc uses an abstract API that allows programmers to develop systems of simultaneously executing kernels, in software and/or hardware, that communicate over a seamless interface. Redsharc incorporates two on-chip networks that directly implement the API to support high-performance systems with numerous hardware kernels. This paper documents the API, describes the common infrastructure, and quantifies the performance of a complete implementation. Furthermore, the overhead, in terms of resource utilization, is reported along with the ability to integrate hard and soft processor cores with purely hardware kernels being demonstrated

Leptaxis and the constructed body: an exploration of poetic queer cyborg prosthesis.

This written portion of the M.F.A. thesis describes the both aesthetic experience of the artwork leptaxis and the critical intent, political perspective, and conceptual motivations behind the construction of the work. The artwork leptaxis consists of a series of objects worn by participating viewers in conjunction with a reactive audio installation space. Framed as a space of play outside of traditional art spaces, viewers are invited to participate in the installation space by wearing the prosthetic objects and interacting with each other and elements of the installation. These worn objects are framed as queer cyborg prosthesis in the way that they intend to disrupt heteronormative perspectives on how gender and the human body is defined. The prosthesis interface with each other and the installation space via physical computing technology and digital audio signals. The audio component of installation is modulated and effected through the viewers' social interactions with the prosthesis. A key element within the artwork is the use of the concept of as pleasure functioning as a communicative vehicle for the radical queer cyborg political perspective

Obstacles to wearable computing

In the year 2021, wearable technology could look beautiful and feel magical, but instead is exemplified by a plain wristband that looks suspiciously like a prison monitor. How can we make wearable technology that respects our privacy, enhances our daily lives, integrates with our other connected devices without leashing us to a smartphone, and visually expresses who we are? This study uses a novel method of participatory design fiction (PDFi) to understand potential users of everyday wearable technology through storytelling. I recruited participants from the general public and gave them a five-point prompt to create a design fiction (DF), which inspired the user-centred design of an everyday connected wearable device. The participants each received a technology probe to wear in the wild for a year. They then updated their DFs as a way to reflect on the implications of the technology. For the purposes of privacy, augmenting device functionality through interoperability, and integration into an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, I used the Hub-of-All-Things personal data store to provide the software infrastructure. By listening to their stories, we can elicit design concepts directly from the users, to help us create wearable IoT devices that put the wearer at the centre of the design process, and are satisfying both functionally and emotionally.The Alan Turing Institute Doctoral Scheme, University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology, The Kenneth Hayter Memorial Fun

Fungi Media: A Post-Internet Performance of Bodily Mutations as an Enactment of Alternative Sexualities

This theory-practice PhD project investigates post-Internet performance art, i.e. art which is visually inspired by mutations of human bodies on the Internet, to stage a form of bodily decomposition in real-life spaces. As a framing device for my thesis, I propose the concept of ‘fungi media’. This concept builds on the vital role of fungi in the decomposition of individual organisms’ bodies to highlight the role of media, including the Internet, in breaking down and reassembling human and nonhuman bodies into complex ecologies. Body performance that engages with fungi on a visual and material level is used in this project to explore the possibility of enacting alternative sexualities and non-normative lifestyles within the present-day context of the decomposing world. Those alternative sexualities are described in the thesis as ‘fungosexual’. This formulation repositions queer sexualities in the context of the original meaning of the term ‘queer’, which is ‘rot’, and which stands for a fungiinduced process of decomposition. With this, I explore the foundational importance of rot for both breaking down and sustaining bodies, relationships and life as such. Using the mutability of fungal life as a model, I also look at life’s mutation beyond sexual reproduction and beyond binary gender roles. In line with its theory-practice aspect, the PhD has a dual methodology. On the one hand, it uses a humanities framework (drawn from philosophies of posthumanism and new materialism, media theory, and theories of sexuality and the body) to engage, critically and creatively, with bioscience research into microbes and fungi. On the other, it mobilises the concept of ‘fungi media’ for my own performance art and curatorial work. The performance space used for my research, which is a London squat inhabited by both artists and fungi, serves as an important actor in these performances. My overall aim with this thesis is to position bodily mutation unfolding on and off the Internet as a performative form of dark vitalism. This philosophical-artistic approach offers strategies for urban dwelling, which transcend normative family and sexual life to embrace a hybrid fungosexuality

StreamIt: A Language and Compiler for Communication-Exposed Architectures

With the increasing miniaturization of transistors, wire delays are becoming a dominant factor in microprocessor performance. To address this issue, a number of emerging architectures contain replicated processing units with software-exposed communication between one unit and another (e.g., Raw, SmartMemories, TRIPS). However, for their use to be widespread, it will be necesary to develop a common machine language to allow programmers to express an algorithm in a way that can be efficiently mapped across these architectures. We propose a new common machine language for grid-based software-exposed architectures: StreamIt. StreamIt is a high-level programming language with explicit support for streaming computation. Unlike sequential programs with obscured dependence information and complex communication patterns, a stream program is naturally written as a set of concurrent filters with regular steady-state communication. The language imposes a hierarchical structure on the stream graph that enables novel representations and optimizations within the StreamIt compiler. We have implemented a fully functional compiler that parallelizes StreamIt applications for Raw, including several load-balancing transformations. Though StreamIt exposes the parallelism and communication patterns of stream programs, analysis is needed to adapt a stream program to a software-exposed processor. We describe a partitioning algorithm that employs fission and fusion transformations to adjust the granularity of a stream graph, a layout algorithm that maps a stream graph to a given network topology, and a scheduling strategy that generates a fine-grained static communication pattern for each computational element. Using the cycle-accurate Raw simulator, we demonstrate that the StreamIt compiler can automatically map a high-level stream abstraction to Raw. We consider this work to be a first step towards a portable programming model for communication-exposed architectures.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Lost in translation

Translation in cognitive neuroscience remains beyond the horizon, brought no closer by supposed major advances in our understanding of the brain. Unless our explanatory models descend to the individual level-a cardinal requirement for any intervention-their real-world applications will always be limited. Drawing on an analysis of the informational properties of the brain, here we argue that adequate individualisation needs models of far greater dimensionality than has been usual in the field. This necessity arises from the widely distributed causality of neural systems, a consequence of the fundamentally adaptive nature of their developmental and physiological mechanisms. We discuss how recent advances in high-performance computing, combined with collections of large-scale data, enable the high-dimensional modelling we argue is critical to successful translation, and urge its adoption if the ultimate goal of impact on the lives of patients is to be achieved

Automatically accelerating non-numerical programs by architecture-compiler co-design

Because of the high cost of communication between processors, compilers that parallelize loops automatically have been forced to skip a large class of loops that are both critical to performance and rich in latent parallelism. HELIX-RC is a compiler/microprocessor co-design that opens those loops to parallelization by decoupling communication from thread execution in conventional multicore architecures. Simulations of HELIX-RC, applied to a processor with 16 Intel Atom-like cores, show an average of 6.85× performance speedup for six SPEC CINT2000 benchmarks.</jats:p