Towards hardware acceleration of neuroevolution for multimedia processing applications on mobile devices

This paper addresses the problem of accelerating large artificial neural networks (ANN), whose topology and weights can evolve via the use of a genetic algorithm. The proposed digital hardware architecture is capable of processing any evolved network topology, whilst at the same time providing a good trade off between throughput, area and power consumption. The latter is vital for a longer battery life on mobile devices. The architecture uses multiple parallel arithmetic units in each processing element (PE). Memory partitioning and data caching are used to minimise the effects of PE pipeline stalling. A first order minimax polynomial approximation scheme, tuned via a genetic algorithm, is used for the activation function generator. Efficient arithmetic circuitry, which leverages modified Booth recoding, column compressors and carry save adders, is adopted throughout the design

Identity Management

Identity Management (IdM) has been a serious problem since the establishment of the Internet as a global network used for business and pleasure. Originally identified in a Peter Steiners’ 1993 New Yorker cartoon “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog”, the problem is over 15 years old. Yet, little progress has been made towards an optimal solution. In its early stages, IdM was designed to address the problem of controlling access to resources and managing the matching of capabilities with people in well defined situations (e.g., Access Control Lists). In today’s computing environment, IdM involves a variety of user centric, distinct, personal forms of digital identities. Starting with the basics of traditional access control often assimilated to “directory entries” (i.e., ID, password and capability) IdM is generalized to the global networked society we now live in. With the advent Inter-organizational systems (IOS), social networks, e-commerce, m-commerce, service oriented computing and automated agents (such as botnets), the characteristics of IdM evolved to include people, devices, and services. In addition, as the complexity of IdM increases so did related social issues such as legitimacy, authoritativeness, privacy rights, personal information protection as well as broader problems of cyber predators and threats. The tutorial addresses the following IdM topics: history and background (access control), what is IdM, technical challenges, social issues, life cycle, standards, research projects, industry initiatives, paradigms, vendor solutions, implementation challenges, emerging trends, and research concepts

ETS (Efficient, Transparent, and Secured) Self-healing Service for Pervasive Computing Applications

To ensure smooth functioning of numerous handheld devices anywhere anytime, the importance of self-healing mechanism cannot be overlooked. Incorporation of efficient fault detection and recovery in device itself is the quest for long but there is no existing self-healing scheme for devices running in pervasive computing environments that can be claimed as the ultimate solution. Moreover, the highest degree of transparency, security and privacy attainability should also be maintained. ETS Self-healing service, an integral part of our developing middleware named MARKS (Middleware Adaptability for Resource discovery, Knowledge usability, and Self-healing), holds promise for offering all of those functionalities

Algorithms for advance bandwidth reservation in media production networks

Media production generally requires many geographically distributed actors (e.g., production houses, broadcasters, advertisers) to exchange huge amounts of raw video and audio data. Traditional distribution techniques, such as dedicated point-to-point optical links, are highly inefficient in terms of installation time and cost. To improve efficiency, shared media production networks that connect all involved actors over a large geographical area, are currently being deployed. The traffic in such networks is often predictable, as the timing and bandwidth requirements of data transfers are generally known hours or even days in advance. As such, the use of advance bandwidth reservation (AR) can greatly increase resource utilization and cost efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation of the bandwidth scheduling problem, which takes into account the specific characteristics of media production networks, is presented. Two novel optimization algorithms based on this model are thoroughly evaluated and compared by means of in-depth simulation results