A Certified Universal Gathering Algorithm for Oblivious Mobile Robots

We present a new algorithm for the problem of universal gathering mobile oblivious robots (that is, starting from any initial configuration that is not bivalent, using any number of robots, the robots reach in a finite number of steps the same position, not known beforehand) without relying on a common chirality. We give very strong guaranties on the correctness of our algorithm by proving formally that it is correct, using the COQ proof assistant. To our knowledge, this is the first certified positive (and constructive) result in the context of oblivious mobile robots. It demonstrates both the effectiveness of the approach to obtain new algorithms that are truly generic, and its managability since the amount of developped code remains human readable

Certified Universal Gathering in R2R^2 for Oblivious Mobile Robots

We present a unified formal framework for expressing mobile robots models, protocols, and proofs, and devise a protocol design/proof methodology dedicated to mobile robots that takes advantage of this formal framework. As a case study, we present the first formally certified protocol for oblivious mobile robots evolving in a two-dimensional Euclidean space. In more details, we provide a new algorithm for the problem of universal gathering mobile oblivious robots (that is, starting from any initial configuration that is not bivalent, using any number of robots, the robots reach in a finite number of steps the same position, not known beforehand) without relying on a common orientation nor chirality. We give very strong guaranties on the correctness of our algorithm by proving formally that it is correct, using the COQ proof assistant. This result demonstrates both the effectiveness of the approach to obtain new algorithms that use as few assumptions as necessary, and its manageability since the amount of developed code remains human readable.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1506.0160

NUMASK: High Performance Scalable Skip List for NUMA

This paper presents NUMASK, a skip list data structure specifically designed to exploit the characteristics of Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architectures to improve performance. NUMASK deploys an architecture around a concurrent skip list so that all metadata accesses (e.g., traversals of the skip list index levels) read and write memory blocks allocated in the NUMA zone where the thread is executing. To the best of our knowledge, NUMASK is the first NUMA-aware skip list design that goes beyond merely limiting the performance penalties introduced by NUMA, and leverages the NUMA architecture to outperform state-of-the-art concurrent high-performance implementations. We tested NUMASK on a four-socket server. Its performance scales for both read-intensive and write-intensive workloads (tested up to 160 threads). In write-intensive workload, NUMASK shows speedups over competitors in the range of 2x to 16x

Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for June to December 2015

The 33rd edition of the conference list covers selected events that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2015 are complete as dates, locations, or Internet addresses (URLs) were not available for a number of events held from January 2016 onward. In order to protect the privacy of individuals, only URLs are used in the listing as this enables readers of the list to obtain event information without submitting their e-mail addresses to anyone. A significant challenge during the assembly of this list is incomplete or conflicting information on websites and the lack of a link between conference websites from one year to the next

Corporate influence and the academic computer science discipline. [4: CMU]

Prosopographical work on the four major centers for computer research in the United States has now been conducted, resulting in big questions about the independence of, so called, computer science