Secure Virtualization and Multicore Platforms State-of-the-Art report

SVaM

Achieving High Performance and High Productivity in Next Generational Parallel Programming Languages

Processor design has turned toward parallelism and heterogeneity cores to achieve performance and energy efficiency. Developers find high-level languages attractive because they use abstraction to offer productivity and portability over hardware complexities. To achieve performance, some modern implementations of high-level languages use work-stealing scheduling for load balancing of dynamically created tasks. Work-stealing is a promising approach for effectively exploiting software parallelism on parallel hardware. A programmer who uses work-stealing explicitly identifies potential parallelism and the runtime then schedules work, keeping otherwise idle hardware busy while relieving overloaded hardware of its burden. However, work-stealing comes with substantial overheads. These overheads arise as a necessary side effect of the implementation and hamper parallel performance. In addition to runtime-imposed overheads, there is a substantial cognitive load associated with ensuring that parallel code is data-race free. This dissertation explores the overheads associated with achieving high performance parallelism in modern high-level languages. My thesis is that, by exploiting existing underlying mechanisms of managed runtimes; and by extending existing language design, high-level languages will be able to deliver productivity and parallel performance at the levels necessary for widespread uptake. The key contributions of my thesis are: 1) a detailed analysis of the key sources of overhead associated with a work-stealing runtime, namely sequential and dynamic overheads; 2) novel techniques to reduce these overheads that use rich features of managed runtimes such as the yieldpoint mechanism, on-stack replacement, dynamic code-patching, exception handling support, and return barriers; 3) comprehensive analysis of the resulting benefits, which demonstrate that work-stealing overheads can be significantly reduced, leading to substantial performance improvements; and 4) a small set of language extensions that achieve both high performance and high productivity with minimal programmer effort. A managed runtime forms the backbone of any modern implementation of a high-level language. Managed runtimes enjoy the benefits of a long history of research and their implementations are highly optimized. My thesis demonstrates that converging these highly optimized features together with the expressiveness of high-level languages, gives further hope for achieving high performance and high productivity on modern parallel hardwar

Applying patterns in embedded systems design for managing quality attributes and their trade-offs

Embedded systems comprise one of the most important types of software-intensive systems, as they are pervasive and used in daily life more than any other type, e.g., in cars or in electrical appliances. When these systems operate under hard constraints, the violation of which can lead to catastrophic events, the system is classified as a critical embedded system (CES). The quality attributes related to these hard constraints are named critical quality attributes (CQAs). For example, the performance of the software for cruise-control or self-driving in a car are critical as they can potentially relate to harming human lives. Despite the growing body of knowledge on engineering CESs, there is still a lack of approaches that can support its design, while managing CQAs and their trade-offs with noncritical ones (e.g., maintainability and reusability). To address this gap, the state-of-research and practice on designing CES and managing quality trade-offs were explored, approaches to improve its design identified, and the merit of these approaches empirically investigated. When designing software, one common approach is to organize its components according to well-known structures, named design patterns. However, these patterns may be avoided in some classes of systems such as CES, as they are sometimes associated with the detriment of CQAs. In short, the findings reported in the thesis suggest that, when applicable, design patterns can promote CQAs while supporting the management of trade-offs. The thesis also reports on a phenomena, namely pattern grime, and factors that can influence the extent of the observed benefits

A Prototype to Analyze Role- and Attribute-Based Access Control Models

Käesoleva lõputöö eesmärgiks on luua juurdepääsu kontrolli võrdlemise platvorm või tööriist, mille abil kasutajad saavad eksperimenteerida ning luua turvaanalüüse ja -mudeleid. Lõputöö jaguneb kahte ossa: teoreetiline ja praktiline. Teoreetilises osas uuritakse, kuidas turvalisusmudelid, nagu näiteks kasutajapõhine juurdepääs ja atribuudipõhine juurdepääs töötavad, defineeritakse metamudeleid ja selgitatakse turvalisuse voogu. Seejärel võrreldakse kahte mudelit, fikseerides võrdluskriteeriumid, mida hiljem kasutatakse platvormil. Praktilises osas kasutatakse teoreetilise osa põhipunkte ning defineeritakse vajadused ja kasutuslahendid, et anda kasutajatele maksimaalne arusaam rakenduse sees toimuvast kasutajaliidesega suheldes.The goal of this thesis is to create an access control comparison prototype, where people will do experiments with security models and analyse reports based on their actions. The thesis is split into two parts: theoretical and practical. In the theoretical part, we studied how security models like, Role-Based Access and Attribute-Based Access work, defined the meta models and explained the security flows. After that, we did the theoretical comparison between these models and defined the comparison criteria, which later was used in the prototype. Meanwhile, in practical part, we put main points of the theoretical part and defined requirements and use cases in order to give maximum experience to the users about what is going underneath the application during the interaction through graphical user interface

Software defined networks in industrial automation

Trends such as the Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 have increased the need to use new and innovative network technologies in industrial automation. The growth of industrial automation communications is an outcome of the shift to harness the productivity and efficiency of manufacturing and process automation with a minimum of human intervention. Due to the ongoing evolution of industrial networks from Fieldbus technologies to Ethernet, a new opportunity has emerged to harness the benefits of Software Defined Networking (SDN). In this paper, we provide a brief overview of SDN in the industrial automation domain and propose a network architecture called the Software Defined Industrial Automation Network (SDIAN), with the objective of improving network scalability and efficiency. To match the specific considerations and requirements of having a deterministic system in an industrial network, we propose two solutions for flow creation: the Pro-active Flow Installation Scheme and the Hybrid Flow Installation Scheme. We analytically quantify the proposed solutions that alleviate the overhead incurred from the flow setup. The analytical model is verified using Monte Carlo simulations. We also evaluate the SDIAN architecture and analyze the network performance of the modified topology using the Mininet emulator. We further list and motivate SDIAN features and report on an experimental food processing plant demonstration featuring Raspberry Pi as a software-defined controller instead of traditional proprietary Programmable Logic Controllers. Our demonstration exemplifies the characteristics of SDIAN