11,635 research outputs found
An Architectural Approach to Ensuring Consistency in Hierarchical Execution
Hierarchical task decomposition is a method used in many agent systems to
organize agent knowledge. This work shows how the combination of a hierarchy
and persistent assertions of knowledge can lead to difficulty in maintaining
logical consistency in asserted knowledge. We explore the problematic
consequences of persistent assumptions in the reasoning process and introduce
novel potential solutions. Having implemented one of the possible solutions,
Dynamic Hierarchical Justification, its effectiveness is demonstrated with an
empirical analysis
Instruction-Level Abstraction (ILA): A Uniform Specification for System-on-Chip (SoC) Verification
Modern Systems-on-Chip (SoC) designs are increasingly heterogeneous and
contain specialized semi-programmable accelerators in addition to programmable
processors. In contrast to the pre-accelerator era, when the ISA played an
important role in verification by enabling a clean separation of concerns
between software and hardware, verification of these "accelerator-rich" SoCs
presents new challenges. From the perspective of hardware designers, there is a
lack of a common framework for the formal functional specification of
accelerator behavior. From the perspective of software developers, there exists
no unified framework for reasoning about software/hardware interactions of
programs that interact with accelerators. This paper addresses these challenges
by providing a formal specification and high-level abstraction for accelerator
functional behavior. It formalizes the concept of an Instruction Level
Abstraction (ILA), developed informally in our previous work, and shows its
application in modeling and verification of accelerators. This formal ILA
extends the familiar notion of instructions to accelerators and provides a
uniform, modular, and hierarchical abstraction for modeling software-visible
behavior of both accelerators and programmable processors. We demonstrate the
applicability of the ILA through several case studies of accelerators (for
image processing, machine learning, and cryptography), and a general-purpose
processor (RISC-V). We show how the ILA model facilitates equivalence checking
between two ILAs, and between an ILA and its hardware finite-state machine
(FSM) implementation. Further, this equivalence checking supports accelerator
upgrades using the notion of ILA compatibility, similar to processor upgrades
using ISA compatibility.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures, 3 table
MORPH: A Reference Architecture for Configuration and Behaviour Self-Adaptation
An architectural approach to self-adaptive systems involves runtime change of
system configuration (i.e., the system's components, their bindings and
operational parameters) and behaviour update (i.e., component orchestration).
Thus, dynamic reconfiguration and discrete event control theory are at the
heart of architectural adaptation. Although controlling configuration and
behaviour at runtime has been discussed and applied to architectural
adaptation, architectures for self-adaptive systems often compound these two
aspects reducing the potential for adaptability. In this paper we propose a
reference architecture that allows for coordinated yet transparent and
independent adaptation of system configuration and behaviour
C4Synth: Cross-Caption Cycle-Consistent Text-to-Image Synthesis
Generating an image from its description is a challenging task worth solving
because of its numerous practical applications ranging from image editing to
virtual reality. All existing methods use one single caption to generate a
plausible image. A single caption by itself, can be limited, and may not be
able to capture the variety of concepts and behavior that may be present in the
image. We propose two deep generative models that generate an image by making
use of multiple captions describing it. This is achieved by ensuring
'Cross-Caption Cycle Consistency' between the multiple captions and the
generated image(s). We report quantitative and qualitative results on the
standard Caltech-UCSD Birds (CUB) and Oxford-102 Flowers datasets to validate
the efficacy of the proposed approach.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of IEEE Winter Conference on
Applications of Computer Vision, WACV-201
Unattended network operations technology assessment study. Technical support for defining advanced satellite systems concepts
The results are summarized of an unattended network operations technology assessment study for the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). The scope of the work included: (1) identified possible enhancements due to the proposed Mars communications network; (2) identified network operations on Mars; (3) performed a technology assessment of possible supporting technologies based on current and future approaches to network operations; and (4) developed a plan for the testing and development of these technologies. The most important results obtained are as follows: (1) addition of a third Mars Relay Satellite (MRS) and MRS cross link capabilities will enhance the network's fault tolerance capabilities through improved connectivity; (2) network functions can be divided into the six basic ISO network functional groups; (3) distributed artificial intelligence technologies will augment more traditional network management technologies to form the technological infrastructure of a virtually unattended network; and (4) a great effort is required to bring the current network technology levels for manned space communications up to the level needed for an automated fault tolerance Mars communications network
Multilevel Contracts for Trusted Components
This article contributes to the design and the verification of trusted
components and services. The contracts are declined at several levels to cover
then different facets, such as component consistency, compatibility or
correctness. The article introduces multilevel contracts and a
design+verification process for handling and analysing these contracts in
component models. The approach is implemented with the COSTO platform that
supports the Kmelia component model. A case study illustrates the overall
approach.Comment: In Proceedings WCSI 2010, arXiv:1010.233
Models simulation and interoperability using MDA and HLA
In the manufacturing context, there have been numerous efforts to use
modeling and simulation tools and techniques to improve manufacturing
efficiency over the last four decades. While an increasing number of
manufacturing system decisions are being made based on the use of models, their
use is still sporadic in many manufacturing environments. Our paper advocates
for an approach combining MDA (model driven architecture) and HLA (High Level
Architecture), the IEEE standard for modeling and simulation, in order to
overcome the deficiencies of current simulation methods at the level of
interoperability and reuse.Comment: 8 page
Towards Realizability Checking of Contracts using Theories
Virtual integration techniques focus on building architectural models of
systems that can be analyzed early in the design cycle to try to lower cost,
reduce risk, and improve quality of complex embedded systems. Given appropriate
architectural descriptions and compositional reasoning rules, these techniques
can be used to prove important safety properties about the architecture prior
to system construction. Such proofs build from "leaf-level" assume/guarantee
component contracts through architectural layers towards top-level safety
properties. The proofs are built upon the premise that each leaf-level
component contract is realizable; i.e., it is possible to construct a component
such that for any input allowed by the contract assumptions, there is some
output value that the component can produce that satisfies the contract
guarantees. Without engineering support it is all too easy to write leaf-level
components that can't be realized. Realizability checking for propositional
contracts has been well-studied for many years, both for component synthesis
and checking correctness of temporal logic requirements. However, checking
realizability for contracts involving infinite theories is still an open
problem. In this paper, we describe a new approach for checking realizability
of contracts involving theories and demonstrate its usefulness on several
examples.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in NASA Formal Methods (NFM) 201
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