A parallel algorithm for switch-level timing simulation on a hypercube multiprocessor

The parallel approach to speeding up simulation is studied, specifically the simulation of digital LSI MOS circuitry on the Intel iPSC/2 hypercube. The simulation algorithm is based on RSIM, an event driven switch-level simulator that incorporates a linear transistor model for simulating digital MOS circuits. Parallel processing techniques based on the concepts of Virtual Time and rollback are utilized so that portions of the circuit may be simulated on separate processors, in parallel for as large an increase in speed as possible. A partitioning algorithm is also developed in order to subdivide the circuit for parallel processing

Flexibly Instructable Agents

This paper presents an approach to learning from situated, interactive tutorial instruction within an ongoing agent. Tutorial instruction is a flexible (and thus powerful) paradigm for teaching tasks because it allows an instructor to communicate whatever types of knowledge an agent might need in whatever situations might arise. To support this flexibility, however, the agent must be able to learn multiple kinds of knowledge from a broad range of instructional interactions. Our approach, called situated explanation, achieves such learning through a combination of analytic and inductive techniques. It combines a form of explanation-based learning that is situated for each instruction with a full suite of contextually guided responses to incomplete explanations. The approach is implemented in an agent called Instructo-Soar that learns hierarchies of new tasks and other domain knowledge from interactive natural language instructions. Instructo-Soar meets three key requirements of flexible instructability that distinguish it from previous systems: (1) it can take known or unknown commands at any instruction point; (2) it can handle instructions that apply to either its current situation or to a hypothetical situation specified in language (as in, for instance, conditional instructions); and (3) it can learn, from instructions, each class of knowledge it uses to perform tasks.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

Using a functional language and graph reduction to program multiprocessor machines or functional control of imperative programs

Journal ArticleThis paper describes an effective means for programming shared memory multiprocessors whereby a set of sequential activities are linked together for execution in parallel. The glue for this linkage is provided by a functional language implemented via graph reduction and demand evaluation. The full power of functional programming is used to obtain succinct, high level specifications of parallel computations. The imperative procedures that constitute the sequential activities facilitate efficient utilization of individual processing elements, while the mechanisms inherent in graph reduction synchronize and schedule these activities. The main contributions of this paper are: 1) an evaluation of the performance implications of parallel graph reduction; 2) a demonstration that the mechanisms of graph reduction can obtain multiprocessor performance uniformly surpassing the best uni-processor implementation of sequential algorithms running on a single node of the same machine, and 3) an illustration of our method used to program a real world fluid flow simulation problem

A State of Crisis: Macrobiotic Theory and the Production of Fukushima

In the face of the disaster and devastation wrought by both the tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown of March 11, 2011, everything from organizing to theorizing appears unable to go on as usual, encapsulated by the recurrence of the descriptor ‘shinsai-go.’ But for those living according to the macrobiotic health lifestyle philosophy, the crisis is fomented by this concept. Drawing upon my ethnographic fieldwork with macrobiotic practitioners, I present that a macrobiotic narration of March 11, 2011, contrasts with a dominant one. Macrobiotic adherents cast the normality with which Fukushima would break as conditioning Fukushima-as-crisis – and the unwellness that results as endemic. The normality that is presumed by an idea of Fukushima as sudden crisis thus obfuscates, from a macrobiotic viewpoint, a larger, longer crisis. In this thesis, I demonstrate that wellness determines the timing and spacing of crisis in both dominant and macrobiotic narrations – but that the timing and spacing of a crisis changes with different definitions of wellness. Specifically, those living macrobiotically practice a pointed critique of dominant society’s wellness as about the capacity to be productive. I argue herein that the timing and spacing for a macrobiotically imagined crisis is the nation-state, precisely because the means by which the nation-state is continually produced through bodies are figured as causal of unwellness. I contend that a macrobiotic narration of the state as produced through ideas and practices of productivity – ones which are making people unwell from a macrobiotic perspective – informs a set of practices that seek (macrobiotically imagined) wellness as a refusal to be productive under a dominant rubric

The Effect of Information and Market Access on Adopters' Income Level

This paper is aimed at relating income fluctuation with adoptable innovations, adopter category and their access to some variables than those explained in the neoclassical economics principle of labor market demand and supply equilibrium. Using a quantitative and qualitative case study of some farmers in two States, we considered whether respondents are earning enough income and what constraints they face. The von Hipple’s lead user concept and decision model of risk aversion under uncertainty were used to explain causes of variability. Notably, farmers with enough steady income have access to market, various information and are less risk averse.Variability, Information, Income, Adoption, Market,

Machine-checked proofs for cryptographic standards indifferentiability of SPONGE and secure high-assurance implementations of SHA-3

We present a high-assurance and high-speed implementation of the SHA-3 hash function. Our implementation is written in the Jasmin programming language, and is formally verified for functional correctness, provable security and timing attack resistance in the EasyCrypt proof assistant. Our implementation is the first to achieve simultaneously the four desirable properties (efficiency, correctness, provable security, and side-channel protection) for a non-trivial cryptographic primitive.Concretely, our mechanized proofs show that: 1) the SHA-3 hash function is indifferentiable from a random oracle, and thus is resistant against collision, first and second preimage attacks; 2) the SHA-3 hash function is correctly implemented by a vectorized x86 implementation. Furthermore, the implementation is provably protected against timing attacks in an idealized model of timing leaks. The proofs include new EasyCrypt libraries of independent interest for programmable random oracles and modular indifferentiability proofs.This work received support from the National Institute of Standards and Technologies under agreement number 60NANB15D248.This work was partially supported by Office of Naval Research under projects N00014-12-1-0914, N00014-15-1-2750 and N00014-19-1-2292.This work was partially funded by national funds via the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the context of project PTDC/CCI-INF/31698/2017. Manuel Barbosa was supported by grant SFRH/BSAB/143018/2018 awarded by the FCT.This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant number 1801564.This work was supported in part by the FutureTPM project of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union, under GA number 779391.This work was supported by the ANR Scrypt project, grant number ANR-18-CE25-0014.This work was supported by the ANR TECAP project, grant number ANR-17-CE39-0004-01