Truthful Computation Offloading Mechanisms for Edge Computing

Edge computing (EC) is a promising paradigm providing a distributed computing solution for users at the edge of the network. Preserving satisfactory quality of experience (QoE) for users when offloading their computation to EC is a non-trivial problem. Computation offloading in EC requires jointly optimizing access points (APs) allocation and edge service placement for users, which is computationally intractable due to its combinatorial nature. Moreover, users are self-interested, and they can misreport their preferences leading to inefficient resource allocation and network congestion. In this paper, we tackle this problem and design a novel mechanism based on algorithmic mechanism design to implement a system equilibrium. Our mechanism assigns a proper pair of AP and edge server along with a service price for each new joining user maximizing the instant social surplus while satisfying all users' preferences in the EC system. Declaring true preferences is a weakly dominant strategy for the users. The experimental results show that our mechanism outperforms user equilibrium and random selection strategies in terms of the experienced end-to-end latency

Generating Diophantine Sets by Virus Machines

Virus Machines are a computational paradigm inspired by the manner in which viruses replicate and transmit from one host cell to another. This paradigm provides non-deterministic sequential devices. Non-restricted virus machines are unbounded virus machines, in the sense that no restriction on the number of hosts, the number of instructions and the number of viruses contained in any host along any computation is placed on them. The computational completeness of these machines has been obtained by simulating register machines. In this paper, virus machines as set generating devices are considered. Then, the universality of non-restricted virus machines is proved by showing that they can compute all diophantine sets, which the MRDP theorem proves that coincide with the recursively enumerable sets.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012- 3743

Bounding Run-Times of Local Adiabatic Algorithms

A common trick for designing faster quantum adiabatic algorithms is to apply the adiabaticity condition locally at every instant. However it is often difficult to determine the instantaneous gap between the lowest two eigenvalues, which is an essential ingredient in the adiabaticity condition. In this paper we present a simple linear algebraic technique for obtaining a lower bound on the instantaneous gap even in such a situation. As an illustration, we investigate the adiabatic unordered search of van Dam et al. (How powerful is adiabatic quantum computation? Proc. IEEE FOCS, pp. 279-287, 2001) and Roland and Cerf (Physical Review A 65, 042308, 2002) when the non-zero entries of the diagonal final Hamiltonian are perturbed by a polynomial (in $\log N$, where $N$ is the length of the unordered list) amount. We use our technique to derive a bound on the running time of a local adiabatic schedule in terms of the minimum gap between the lowest two eigenvalues.Comment: 11 page

Computing Partial Recursive Functions by Virus Machines

Virus Machines are a computational paradigm inspired by the manner in which viruses replicate and transmit from one host cell to another. This paradigm provides non-deterministic sequential devices. Non-restricted Virus Machines are unbounded Virus Machines, in the sense that no restriction on the number of hosts, the number of instructions and the number of viruses contained in any host along any computation is placed on them. The computational completeness of these machines has been obtained by simulating register machines. In this paper, Virus Machines as function computing devices are considered. Then, the universality of non-restricted virus machines is proved by showing that they can compute all partial recursive functions.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012- 3743

Computing with viruses

In recent years, different computing models have emerged within the area of Unconven-tional Computation, and more specifically within Natural Computing, getting inspiration from mechanisms present in Nature. In this work, we incorporate concepts in virology and theoretical computer science to propose a novel computational model, called Virus Ma-chine. Inspired by the manner in which viruses transmit from one host to another, a virus machine is a computational paradigm represented as a heterogeneous network that con-sists of three subnetworks: virus transmission, instruction transfer, and instruction-channel control networks. Virus machines provide non-deterministic sequential devices. As num-ber computing devices, virus machines are proved to be computationally complete, that is, equivalent in power to Turing machines. Nevertheless, when some limitations are imposed with respect to the number of viruses present in the system, then a characterization for semi-linear sets is obtained

Robust visual servoing in 3d reaching tasks

This paper describes a novel approach to the problem of reaching an object in space under visual guidance. The approach is characterized by a great robustness to calibration errors, such that virtually no calibration is required. Servoing is based on binocular vision: a continuous measure of the end-effector motion field, derived from real-time computation of the binocular optical flow over the stereo images, is compared with the actual position of the target and the relative error in the end-effector trajectory is continuously corrected. The paper outlines the general framework of the approach, shows how visual measures are obtained and discusses the synthesis of the controller along with its stability analysis. Real-time experiments are presented to show the applicability of the approach in real 3-D applications

Entropy generation in a model of reversible computation

We present a model in which, due to the quantum nature of the signals controlling the implementation time of successive unitary computational steps, \emph{physical} irreversibility appears in the execution of a \emph{logically} reversible computation.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Wait-Free Global Virtual Time Computation in Shared Memory Time-Warp Systems

Global Virtual Time (GVT) is a powerful abstraction used to discriminate what events belong (and what do not belong) to the past history of a parallel/distributed computation. For high performance simulation systems based on the Time Warp synchronization protocol, where concurrent simulation objects are allowed to process their events speculatively and causal consistency is achieved via rollback/recovery techniques, GVT is used to determine which portion of the simulation can be considered as committed. Hence it is the base for actuating memory recovery (e.g. of obsolete logs that were taken in order to support state recoverability) and nonrevocable operations (e.g. I/O). For shared memory implementations of simulation platforms based on the Time Warp protocol, the reference GVT algorithm is the one presented by Fujimoto and Hybinette [1]. However, this algorithm relies on critical sections that make it non-wait-free, and which can hamper scalability. In this article we present a waitfree shared memory GVT algorithm that requires no critical section. Rather, correct coordination across the processes while computing the GVT value is achieved via memory atomic operations, namely compare-and-swap. The price paid by our proposal is an increase in the number of GVT computation phases, as opposed to the single phase required by the proposal in [1]. However, as we show via the results of an experimental study, the wait-free nature of the phases carried out in our GVT algorithm pays-off in reducing the actual cost incurred by the proposal in [1]