MAGDA: A Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture

Mobile agents mean both a technology and a programming paradigm. They allow for a flexible approach which can alleviate a number of issues present in distributed and Grid-based systems, by means of features such as migration, cloning, messaging and other provided mechanisms. In this paper we describe an architecture (MAGDA – Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture) we have designed and we are currently developing to support programming and execution of mobile agent based application upon Grid systems

TEACHING IN THE CLOUD MICROELECTRONICS UBIQUITOUS LAB (MULAB)

CAD laboratory students activity is mandatory for microelectronics teaching. This, applied in the deep-submicron era, creates new challenges to couple software management simplicity to user friendliness inside lab sessions, which requires the use of complex tools and concepts. In this paper, a new approach to microelectronics CAD deployment is presented, based on virtualization capabilities of new servers hardware and software technology. A test case, realized at Politecnico di Torino, degree of Electronic Engineering, is presented, with real world results on resource consumption and user satisfactio

High-Performance Cloud Computing: A View of Scientific Applications

Scientific computing often requires the availability of a massive number of computers for performing large scale experiments. Traditionally, these needs have been addressed by using high-performance computing solutions and installed facilities such as clusters and super computers, which are difficult to setup, maintain, and operate. Cloud computing provides scientists with a completely new model of utilizing the computing infrastructure. Compute resources, storage resources, as well as applications, can be dynamically provisioned (and integrated within the existing infrastructure) on a pay per use basis. These resources can be released when they are no more needed. Such services are often offered within the context of a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which ensure the desired Quality of Service (QoS). Aneka, an enterprise Cloud computing solution, harnesses the power of compute resources by relying on private and public Clouds and delivers to users the desired QoS. Its flexible and service based infrastructure supports multiple programming paradigms that make Aneka address a variety of different scenarios: from finance applications to computational science. As examples of scientific computing in the Cloud, we present a preliminary case study on using Aneka for the classification of gene expression data and the execution of fMRI brain imaging workflow.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, conference pape

Multi-Agents Systems and Territory: Concepts, Methods and Applications

This paper analyses the multi-agents systems that are now considered the best tool to simulate and study real world. We review the main characteristics of a multi-agents system, namely interactions and cooperations of agents, communications and behaviours between them and finally the schedule of actions and jobs assignment to agents. The multi-agents system approach is increasingly applied in social and economic sciences; so we study mainly the territorial applications. In these applications new characteristics arise from the consideration of territory (land and space where the agents live or territory as an agent in itself, that evolves in the time). We study possible new applications of multi-agents applied to the territory (for instance, to define town planning policies or to locate dangerous facilities). Furthermore we study new tools to make operational multi-agents systems (mainly Swarm, the toolkit of Santa Fe Institute). With Swarm we present two kind of territorial applications: with located agents (fixed in space) and with not located agents (moving in the space). Finally we show the results of these applications.

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

Organising new product development Knowledge hollowing-out and knowledge integration

The paper analyses the organization of the new product development process at FIAT from a resource-based perspective. The focus is on organizational resources for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of complex products. The analysis shows how the application of a resource-based perspective is able to uncover negative long-term effects of outsourcing on the knowledge base (hollowing out), despite beneficial short-term effects on cost.New product development, FIAT Auto, knowledge integration systems integration, modularity, knowledge hollowing-out, resource-based view