4,520 research outputs found
GPUs as Storage System Accelerators
Massively multicore processors, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs),
provide, at a comparable price, a one order of magnitude higher peak
performance than traditional CPUs. This drop in the cost of computation, as any
order-of-magnitude drop in the cost per unit of performance for a class of
system components, triggers the opportunity to redesign systems and to explore
new ways to engineer them to recalibrate the cost-to-performance relation. This
project explores the feasibility of harnessing GPUs' computational power to
improve the performance, reliability, or security of distributed storage
systems. In this context, we present the design of a storage system prototype
that uses GPU offloading to accelerate a number of computationally intensive
primitives based on hashing, and introduce techniques to efficiently leverage
the processing power of GPUs. We evaluate the performance of this prototype
under two configurations: as a content addressable storage system that
facilitates online similarity detection between successive versions of the same
file and as a traditional system that uses hashing to preserve data integrity.
Further, we evaluate the impact of offloading to the GPU on competing
applications' performance. Our results show that this technique can bring
tangible performance gains without negatively impacting the performance of
concurrently running applications.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 201
A Peer-to-Peer Middleware Framework for Resilient Persistent Programming
The persistent programming systems of the 1980s offered a programming model
that integrated computation and long-term storage. In these systems, reliable
applications could be engineered without requiring the programmer to write
translation code to manage the transfer of data to and from non-volatile
storage. More importantly, it simplified the programmer's conceptual model of
an application, and avoided the many coherency problems that result from
multiple cached copies of the same information. Although technically
innovative, persistent languages were not widely adopted, perhaps due in part
to their closed-world model. Each persistent store was located on a single
host, and there were no flexible mechanisms for communication or transfer of
data between separate stores. Here we re-open the work on persistence and
combine it with modern peer-to-peer techniques in order to provide support for
orthogonal persistence in resilient and potentially long-running distributed
applications. Our vision is of an infrastructure within which an application
can be developed and distributed with minimal modification, whereupon the
application becomes resilient to certain failure modes. If a node, or the
connection to it, fails during execution of the application, the objects are
re-instantiated from distributed replicas, without their reference holders
being aware of the failure. Furthermore, we believe that this can be achieved
within a spectrum of application programmer intervention, ranging from minimal
to totally prescriptive, as desired. The same mechanisms encompass an
orthogonally persistent programming model. We outline our approach to
implementing this vision, and describe current progress.Comment: Submitted to EuroSys 200
Persistent Memory File Systems:A Survey
Persistent Memory (PM) is non-volatile byte-addressable memory that offers read and write latencies in the order of magnitude smaller than flash storage, such as SSDs. This survey discusses how file systems address the most prominent challenges in the implementation of file systems for Persistent Memory. First, we discuss how the properties of Persistent Memory change file system design. Second, we discuss work that aims to optimize small file I/O and the associated meta-data resolution. Third, we address how existing Persistent Memory file systems achieve (meta) data persistence and consistency
Control and Characterization of Line-Addressable Micromirror Arrays
This research involved the design and implementation of a complete line-addressable control system for a 32x32 electrostatic piston-actuated micromirror array device. Line addressing reduces the number of control lines from N2 to 2N making it possible to design larger arrays and arrays with smaller element sizes. The system utilizes the electromechanical bi-stability of individual elements to bold arbitrary bi-stable phase patterns. The control system applies pulse width modulated (PWM) signals to the rows and columns of the micromirror array. Three modes of operation were conceived and built into the system. The first was the traditional signal scheme which requires the array to be reset before a new pattern can be applied. The second is an original scheme that allows dynamic switching between bi-stable patterns. The third and final mode applies an effective voltage ramp across the device by operating above mechanical cutoff. Device characterization and control system testing were conducted on predesigned and prefabricated samples from two different foundry processes. Testing results showed that the control system was successfully integrated. However, bi-stable control of individual mirror elements was not successfully demonstrated on samples due to flaws in the device design. A more robust device design which corrects these flaws and increases operational yield is proposed
A configuration system for the ATLAS trigger
The ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider will be exposed to
proton-proton collisions from beams crossing at 40 MHz that have to be reduced
to the few 100 Hz allowed by the storage systems. A three-level trigger system
has been designed to achieve this goal. We describe the configuration system
under construction for the ATLAS trigger chain. It provides the trigger system
with all the parameters required for decision taking and to record its history.
The same system configures the event reconstruction, Monte Carlo simulation and
data analysis, and provides tools for accessing and manipulating the
configuration data in all contexts.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, contribution to the Conference on Computing in
High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP06), 13.-17. Feb 2006, Mumbai, Indi
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