Choose-Your-Own Adventure: A Lightweight, High-Performance Approach To Defect And Variation Mitigation In Reconfigurable Logic

For field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), fine-grained pre-computed alternative configurations, combined with simple test-based selection, produce limited per-chip specialization to counter yield loss, increased delay, and increased energy costs that come from fabrication defects and variation. This lightweight approach achieves much of the benefit of knowledge-based full specialization while reducing to practical, palatable levels the computational, testing, and load-time costs that obstruct the application of the knowledge-based approach. In practice this may more than double the power-limited computational capabilities of dies fabricated with 22nm technologies. Contributions of this work: • Choose-Your-own-Adventure (CYA), a novel, lightweight, scalable methodology to achieve defect and variation mitigation • Implementation of CYA, including preparatory components (generation of diverse alternative paths) and FPGA load-time components • Detailed performance characterization of CYA – Comparison to conventional loading and dynamic frequency and voltage scaling (DFVS) – Limit studies to characterize the quality of the CYA implementation and identify potential areas for further optimizatio

Fully automated urban traffic system

The replacement of the driver with an automatic system which could perform the functions of guiding and routing a vehicle with a human's capability of responding to changing traffic demands was discussed. The problem was divided into four technological areas; guidance, routing, computing, and communications. It was determined that the latter three areas being developed independent of any need for fully automated urban traffic. A guidance system that would meet system requirements was not being developed but was technically feasible

Silicon compilation

Silicon compilation is a term used for many different purposes. In this paper we define silicon compilation as a mapping from some higher level description into layout. We define the basic issues in structural and behavioral silicon compilation and some possible solutions to those issues. Finally, we define the concept of an intelligent silicon compiler in which the compiler evaluates the quality of the generated design and attempts to improve it if it is not satisfactory

Limits on Fundamental Limits to Computation

An indispensable part of our lives, computing has also become essential to industries and governments. Steady improvements in computer hardware have been supported by periodic doubling of transistor densities in integrated circuits over the last fifty years. Such Moore scaling now requires increasingly heroic efforts, stimulating research in alternative hardware and stirring controversy. To help evaluate emerging technologies and enrich our understanding of integrated-circuit scaling, we review fundamental limits to computation: in manufacturing, energy, physical space, design and verification effort, and algorithms. To outline what is achievable in principle and in practice, we recall how some limits were circumvented, compare loose and tight limits. We also point out that engineering difficulties encountered by emerging technologies may indicate yet-unknown limits.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Minimum-cost multicast over coded packet networks

We consider the problem of establishing minimum-cost multicast connections over coded packet networks, i.e., packet networks where the contents of outgoing packets are arbitrary, causal functions of the contents of received packets. We consider both wireline and wireless packet networks as well as both static multicast (where membership of the multicast group remains constant for the duration of the connection) and dynamic multicast (where membership of the multicast group changes in time, with nodes joining and leaving the group). For static multicast, we reduce the problem to a polynomial-time solvable optimization problem, and we present decentralized algorithms for solving it. These algorithms, when coupled with existing decentralized schemes for constructing network codes, yield a fully decentralized approach for achieving minimum-cost multicast. By contrast, establishing minimum-cost static multicast connections over routed packet networks is a very difficult problem even using centralized computation, except in the special cases of unicast and broadcast connections. For dynamic multicast, we reduce the problem to a dynamic programming problem and apply the theory of dynamic programming to suggest how it may be solved

Distributed Services with Foreseen and Unforeseen Tasks: The Mobile Re-allocation Problem

In this paper we deal with a common problem found in the operations of security and preventive/corrective maintenance services: that of routing a number of mobile resources to serve foreseen and unforeseen tasks during a shift. We define the (Mobile Re-Allocation Problem) MRAP as the problem of devising a routing strategy to maximize the expected weighted number of tasks served on time. For obtaining a solution to the MRAP, we propose to solve successively a multi-objective optimization problem called the stochastic Team Orienteering Problem with Multiple Time Windows (s-TOP-MTW) so as to consider information about known tasks and the arrival process of new unforeseen tasks. Solving successively the s-TOP-MTW we find that considering information about the arrival process of new unforeseen tasks may aid in maximizing the expected proportion of tasks accomplished on time.location;reliability;routing;distributed services