19,238 research outputs found
Indexing the Earth Mover's Distance Using Normal Distributions
Querying uncertain data sets (represented as probability distributions)
presents many challenges due to the large amount of data involved and the
difficulties comparing uncertainty between distributions. The Earth Mover's
Distance (EMD) has increasingly been employed to compare uncertain data due to
its ability to effectively capture the differences between two distributions.
Computing the EMD entails finding a solution to the transportation problem,
which is computationally intensive. In this paper, we propose a new lower bound
to the EMD and an index structure to significantly improve the performance of
EMD based K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) queries on uncertain databases. We propose
a new lower bound to the EMD that approximates the EMD on a projection vector.
Each distribution is projected onto a vector and approximated by a normal
distribution, as well as an accompanying error term. We then represent each
normal as a point in a Hough transformed space. We then use the concept of
stochastic dominance to implement an efficient index structure in the
transformed space. We show that our method significantly decreases K-NN query
time on uncertain databases. The index structure also scales well with database
cardinality. It is well suited for heterogeneous data sets, helping to keep EMD
based queries tractable as uncertain data sets become larger and more complex.Comment: VLDB201
Scalable Emulation of Sign-ProblemFree Hamiltonians with Room Temperature p-bits
The growing field of quantum computing is based on the concept of a q-bit
which is a delicate superposition of 0 and 1, requiring cryogenic temperatures
for its physical realization along with challenging coherent coupling
techniques for entangling them. By contrast, a probabilistic bit or a p-bit is
a robust classical entity that fluctuates between 0 and 1, and can be
implemented at room temperature using present-day technology. Here, we show
that a probabilistic coprocessor built out of room temperature p-bits can be
used to accelerate simulations of a special class of quantum many-body systems
that are sign-problemfree or stoquastic, leveraging the well-known
Suzuki-Trotter decomposition that maps a -dimensional quantum many body
Hamiltonian to a +1-dimensional classical Hamiltonian. This mapping allows
an efficient emulation of a quantum system by classical computers and is
commonly used in software to perform Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) algorithms. By
contrast, we show that a compact, embedded MTJ-based coprocessor can serve as a
highly efficient hardware-accelerator for such QMC algorithms providing several
orders of magnitude improvement in speed compared to optimized CPU
implementations. Using realistic device-level SPICE simulations we demonstrate
that the correct quantum correlations can be obtained using a classical
p-circuit built with existing technology and operating at room temperature. The
proposed coprocessor can serve as a tool to study stoquastic quantum many-body
systems, overcoming challenges associated with physical quantum annealers.Comment: Fixed minor typos and expanded Appendi
Efficient transfer entropy analysis of non-stationary neural time series
Information theory allows us to investigate information processing in neural
systems in terms of information transfer, storage and modification. Especially
the measure of information transfer, transfer entropy, has seen a dramatic
surge of interest in neuroscience. Estimating transfer entropy from two
processes requires the observation of multiple realizations of these processes
to estimate associated probability density functions. To obtain these
observations, available estimators assume stationarity of processes to allow
pooling of observations over time. This assumption however, is a major obstacle
to the application of these estimators in neuroscience as observed processes
are often non-stationary. As a solution, Gomez-Herrero and colleagues
theoretically showed that the stationarity assumption may be avoided by
estimating transfer entropy from an ensemble of realizations. Such an ensemble
is often readily available in neuroscience experiments in the form of
experimental trials. Thus, in this work we combine the ensemble method with a
recently proposed transfer entropy estimator to make transfer entropy
estimation applicable to non-stationary time series. We present an efficient
implementation of the approach that deals with the increased computational
demand of the ensemble method's practical application. In particular, we use a
massively parallel implementation for a graphics processing unit to handle the
computationally most heavy aspects of the ensemble method. We test the
performance and robustness of our implementation on data from simulated
stochastic processes and demonstrate the method's applicability to
magnetoencephalographic data. While we mainly evaluate the proposed method for
neuroscientific data, we expect it to be applicable in a variety of fields that
are concerned with the analysis of information transfer in complex biological,
social, and artificial systems.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PLOS ON
A Decentralized Mobile Computing Network for Multi-Robot Systems Operations
Collective animal behaviors are paradigmatic examples of fully decentralized
operations involving complex collective computations such as collective turns
in flocks of birds or collective harvesting by ants. These systems offer a
unique source of inspiration for the development of fault-tolerant and
self-healing multi-robot systems capable of operating in dynamic environments.
Specifically, swarm robotics emerged and is significantly growing on these
premises. However, to date, most swarm robotics systems reported in the
literature involve basic computational tasks---averages and other algebraic
operations. In this paper, we introduce a novel Collective computing framework
based on the swarming paradigm, which exhibits the key innate features of
swarms: robustness, scalability and flexibility. Unlike Edge computing, the
proposed Collective computing framework is truly decentralized and does not
require user intervention or additional servers to sustain its operations. This
Collective computing framework is applied to the complex task of collective
mapping, in which multiple robots aim at cooperatively map a large area. Our
results confirm the effectiveness of the cooperative strategy, its robustness
to the loss of multiple units, as well as its scalability. Furthermore, the
topology of the interconnecting network is found to greatly influence the
performance of the collective action.Comment: Accepted for Publication in Proc. 9th IEEE Annual Ubiquitous
Computing, Electronics & Mobile Communication Conferenc
Stable and fast semi-implicit integration of the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz equation
We propose new semi-implicit numerical methods for the integration of the
stochastic Landau-Lifshitz equation with built-in angular momentum
conservation. The performance of the proposed integrators is tested on the 1D
Heisenberg chain. For this system, our schemes show better stability properties
and allow us to use considerably larger time steps than standard explicit
methods. At the same time, these semi-implicit schemes are also of comparable
accuracy to and computationally much cheaper than the standard midpoint
implicit method. The results are of key importance for atomistic spin dynamics
simulations and the study of spin dynamics beyond the macro spin approximation.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure
- …