GCC-Plugin for Automated Accelerator Generation and Integration on Hybrid FPGA-SoCs

In recent years, architectures combining a reconfigurable fabric and a general purpose processor on a single chip became increasingly popular. Such hybrid architectures allow extending embedded software with application specific hardware accelerators to improve performance and/or energy efficiency. Aiding system designers and programmers at handling the complexity of the required process of hardware/software (HW/SW) partitioning is an important issue. Current methods are often restricted, either to bare-metal systems, to subsets of mainstream programming languages, or require special coding guidelines, e.g., via annotations. These restrictions still represent a high entry barrier for the wider community of programmers that new hybrid architectures are intended for. In this paper we revisit HW/SW partitioning and present a seamless programming flow for unrestricted, legacy C code. It consists of a retargetable GCC plugin that automatically identifies code sections for hardware acceleration and generates code accordingly. The proposed workflow was evaluated on the Xilinx Zynq platform using unmodified code from an embedded benchmark suite.Comment: Presented at Second International Workshop on FPGAs for Software Programmers (FSP 2015) (arXiv:1508.06320

Transparency in Complex Computational Systems

Scientists depend on complex computational systems that are often ineliminably opaque, to the detriment of our ability to give scientific explanations and detect artifacts. Some philosophers have s..

Cob Property Analysis

The goal of this project was to research the material properties of the green building material COB in order to better understand how to apply COB in real world applications. The research portion included soil analysis, compression, modulus of rupture and elasticity tests, hydrometer analysis, and atterberg limits tests. Additionally, through a partnership with the professionals of the COB Research Institute team and another COB-centric senior design group, this team was able to produce the first full-scale wall tests for COB. Four 7-foot walls were constructed and in-plane lateral cyclic loading was applied to create the effects of a COB structure under lateral loading. The results of the full-scale tests are in the process of being incorporated in the entry for COB into the California Residential Code, with a recommendation given for the reinforcing design that performed the best, through allowable load and deflection calculations. Finally, the team used a sample footprint for a simple house to develop structural house components for a COB structure that could benefit COB application in the real world. The simulated application of COB is helping the COB Research Institute formulate their submittal and ultimately provide a jumping off point for further research of this nature. The ultimate goal was to spread awareness of sustainable building practices and make them more accessible to the general public

Self-growing neural network architecture using crisp and fuzzy entropy

The paper briefly describes the self-growing neural network algorithm, CID2, which makes decision trees equivalent to hidden layers of a neural network. The algorithm generates a feedforward architecture using crisp and fuzzy entropy measures. The results of a real-life recognition problem of distinguishing defects in a glass ribbon and of a benchmark problem of differentiating two spirals are shown and discussed

FIESTA: An operational decision aid for space network fault isolation

The Fault Tolerance Expert System for Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) Applications (FIESTA) is a fault detection and fault diagnosis expert system being developed as a decision aid to support operations in the Network Control Center (NCC) for NASA's Space Network. The operational objectives which influenced FIESTA development are presented and an overview of the architecture used to achieve these goals are provided. The approach to the knowledge engineering effort and the methodology employed are also presented and illustrated with examples drawn from the FIESTA domain