QUEST III: an estimated DSGE model of the euro area with fiscal and monetary policy

This paper develops a DSGE model for an open economy and estimates it on euro area data using Bayesian estimation techniques. The model features nominal and real frictions, as well as financial frictions in the form of liquidity constrained households. The model incorporates active monetary and fiscal policy rules (for government consumption, investment, transfers and wage taxes) and can be used to analyse the effectiveness of stabilisation policies. To capture the unit root character of macroeconomic time-series we allow for stochastic trend in TFP, but instead of filtering data prior to estimation, we estimate the model in growth rates and stationary nominal ratios.QUEST, QUEST model, DGSE, DSGE modelling, fiscal policy, stabilisation policies, euro area, Ratto , Roeger , Jan in 't Veld

Dependability Assessment of NAND Flash-memory for Mission-critical Applications

It is a matter of fact that NAND flash memory devices are well established in consumer market. However, it is not true that the same architectures adopted in the consumer market are suitable for mission critical applications like space. In fact, USB flash drives, digital cameras, MP3 players are usually adopted to store "less significant" data which are not changing frequently (e.g., MP3s, pictures, etc.). Therefore, in spite of NAND flash's drawbacks, a modest complexity is usually needed in the logic of commercial flash drives. On the other hand, mission critical applications have different reliability requirements from commercial scenarios. Moreover, they are usually playing in a hostile environment (e.g., the space) which contributes to worsen all the issues. We aim at providing practical valuable guidelines, comparisons and tradeoffs among the huge number of dimensions of fault tolerant methodologies for NAND flash applied to critical environments. We hope that such guidelines will be useful for our ongoing research and for all the interested reader

Dependability Assessment of NAND Flash-memory for Mission-critical Applications

It is a matter of fact that NAND flash memory devices are well established in consumer market. However, it is not true that the same architectures adopted in the consumer market are suitable for mission critical applications like space. In fact, USB flash drives, digital cameras, MP3 players are usually adopted to store "less significant" data which are not changing frequently (e.g., MP3s, pictures, etc.). Therefore, in spite of NAND flash’s drawbacks, a modest complexity is usually needed in the logic of commercial flash drives. On the other hand, mission critical applications have different reliability requirements from commercial scenarios. Moreover, they are usually playing in a hostile environment (e.g., the space) which contributes to worsen all the issues. We aim at providing practical valuable guidelines, comparisons and tradeoffs among the huge number of dimensions of fault tolerant methodologies for NAND flash applied to critical environments. We hope that such guidelines will be useful for our ongoing research and for all the interested readers

Dynamic Virtual Page-based Flash Translation Layer with Novel Hot Data Identification and Adaptive Parallelism Management

Solid-state disks (SSDs) tend to replace traditional motor-driven hard disks in high-end storage devices in past few decades. However, various inherent features, such as out-of-place update [resorting to garbage collection (GC)] and limited endurance (resorting to wear leveling), need to be reduced to a large extent before that day comes. Both the GC and wear leveling fundamentally depend on hot data identification (HDI). In this paper, we propose a hot data-aware flash translation layer architecture based on a dynamic virtual page (DVPFTL) so as to improve the performance and lifetime of NAND flash devices. First, we develop a generalized dual layer HDI (DL-HDI) framework, which is composed of a cold data pre-classifier and a hot data post-identifier. Those can efficiently follow the frequency and recency of information access. Then, we design an adaptive parallelism manager (APM) to assign the clustered data chunks to distinct resident blocks in the SSD so as to prolong its endurance. Finally, the experimental results from our realized SSD prototype indicate that the DVPFTL scheme has reliably improved the parallelizability and endurance of NAND flash devices with improved GC-costs, compared with related works.Peer reviewe