40,723 research outputs found
Generic Pipelined Processor Modeling and High Performance Cycle-Accurate Simulator Generation
Detailed modeling of processors and high performance cycle-accurate
simulators are essential for today's hardware and software design. These
problems are challenging enough by themselves and have seen many previous
research efforts. Addressing both simultaneously is even more challenging, with
many existing approaches focusing on one over another. In this paper, we
propose the Reduced Colored Petri Net (RCPN) model that has two advantages:
first, it offers a very simple and intuitive way of modeling pipelined
processors; second, it can generate high performance cycle-accurate simulators.
RCPN benefits from all the useful features of Colored Petri Nets without
suffering from their exponential growth in complexity. RCPN processor models
are very intuitive since they are a mirror image of the processor pipeline
block diagram. Furthermore, in our experiments on the generated cycle-accurate
simulators for XScale and StrongArm processor models, we achieved an order of
magnitude (~15 times) speedup over the popular SimpleScalar ARM simulator.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDAA (http://www.edaa.com/
Integrated circuit interface for artificial skins
Artificial sensitive skins are intended to emulate the human skin to improve the skills of robots and machinery in complex unstructured environments. They are basically smart arrays of pressure sensors. As in the case of artificial retinas, one problem to solve is the management of the huge amount of information that such arrays provide, especially if this information should be used by a central processing unit to implement some control algorithms. An approach to manage such information is to increment the signal processing performed close to the sensor in order to extract the useful information and reduce the errors caused by long wires. This paper proposes the use of voltage to frequency converters to implement a quite straightforward analog to digital conversion as front end interface to digital circuitry in a smart tactile sensor. The circuitry commonly implemented to read out the information from a piezoresistive tactile sensor can be modified to turn it into an array of voltage to frequency converters. This is carried out in this paper, where the feasibility of the idea is shown through simulations and its performance is discussed.Gobierno de España TEC2006-12376-C02-01, TEC2006-1572
Desynchronization: Synthesis of asynchronous circuits from synchronous specifications
Asynchronous implementation techniques, which measure logic delays at run time and activate registers accordingly, are inherently more robust than their synchronous counterparts, which estimate worst-case delays at design time, and constrain the clock cycle accordingly. De-synchronization is a new paradigm to automate the design of asynchronous circuits from synchronous specifications, thus permitting widespread adoption of asynchronicity, without requiring special design skills or tools. In this paper, we first of all study different protocols for de-synchronization and formally prove their correctness, using techniques originally developed for distributed deployment of synchronous language specifications. We also provide a taxonomy of existing protocols for asynchronous latch controllers, covering in particular the four-phase handshake protocols devised in the literature for micro-pipelines. We then propose a new controller which exhibits provably maximal concurrency, and analyze the performance of desynchronized circuits with respect to the original synchronous optimized implementation. We finally prove the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach, by showing its application to a set of real designs, including a complete implementation of the DLX microprocessor architectur
COBOL to Java and Newspapers Still Get Delivered
This paper is an experience report on migrating an American newspaper
company's business-critical IBM mainframe application to Linux servers by
automatically translating the application's source code from COBOL to Java and
converting the mainframe data store from VSAM KSDS files to an Oracle
relational database. The mainframe application had supported daily home
delivery of the newspaper since 1979. It was in need of modernization in order
to increase interoperability and enable future convergence with newer
enterprise systems as well as to reduce operating costs. Testing the modernized
application proved to be the most vexing area of work. This paper explains the
process that was employed to test functional equivalence between the legacy and
modernized applications, the main testing challenges, and lessons learned after
having operated and maintained the modernized application in production over
the last eight months. The goal of delivering a functionally equivalent system
was achieved, but problems remained to be solved related to new feature
development, business domain knowledge transfer, and recruiting new software
engineers to work on the modernized application.Comment: 4 pages, Accepted to be Published in: Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE
International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME),
September 23-29, 2018, Madrid, Spai
pandapower - an Open Source Python Tool for Convenient Modeling, Analysis and Optimization of Electric Power Systems
pandapower is a Python based, BSD-licensed power system analysis tool aimed
at automation of static and quasi-static analysis and optimization of balanced
power systems. It provides power flow, optimal power flow, state estimation,
topological graph searches and short circuit calculations according to IEC
60909. pandapower includes a Newton-Raphson power flow solver formerly based on
PYPOWER, which has been accelerated with just-in-time compilation. Additional
enhancements to the solver include the capability to model constant current
loads, grids with multiple reference nodes and a connectivity check. The
pandapower network model is based on electric elements, such as lines, two and
three-winding transformers or ideal switches. All elements can be defined with
nameplate parameters and are internally processed with equivalent circuit
models, which have been validated against industry standard software tools. The
tabular data structure used to define networks is based on the Python library
pandas, which allows comfortable handling of input and output parameters. The
implementation in Python makes pandapower easy to use and allows comfortable
extension with third-party libraries. pandapower has been successfully applied
in several grid studies as well as for educational purposes. A comprehensive,
publicly available case-study demonstrates a possible application of pandapower
in an automated time series calculation
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