The Design of a System Architecture for Mobile Multimedia Computers

This chapter discusses the system architecture of a portable computer, called Mobile Digital Companion, which provides support for handling multimedia applications energy efficiently. Because battery life is limited and battery weight is an important factor for the size and the weight of the Mobile Digital Companion, energy management plays a crucial role in the architecture. As the Companion must remain usable in a variety of environments, it has to be flexible and adaptable to various operating conditions. The Mobile Digital Companion has an unconventional architecture that saves energy by using system decomposition at different levels of the architecture and exploits locality of reference with dedicated, optimised modules. The approach is based on dedicated functionality and the extensive use of energy reduction techniques at all levels of system design. The system has an architecture with a general-purpose processor accompanied by a set of heterogeneous autonomous programmable modules, each providing an energy efficient implementation of dedicated tasks. A reconfigurable internal communication network switch exploits locality of reference and eliminates wasteful data copies

ROACH accelerated BLAST

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-118).Reconfigurable computing, in recent years, has been taking great strides in becoming part of mainstream computing largely due to the rapid growth in the size of FPGAs and their ability to adapt to certain complex applications efficiently. This dissertation investigates the reuse of application specific hardware developed for radio astronomy in accelerating a popular bioinformatics algorithm

The role of the host in a cooperating mainframe and workstation environment, volumes 1 and 2

In recent years, advancements made in computer systems have prompted a move from centralized computing based on timesharing a large mainframe computer to distributed computing based on a connected set of engineering workstations. A major factor in this advancement is the increased performance and lower cost of engineering workstations. The shift to distributed computing from centralized computing has led to challenges associated with the residency of application programs within the system. In a combined system of multiple engineering workstations attached to a mainframe host, the question arises as to how does a system designer assign applications between the larger mainframe host and the smaller, yet powerful, workstation. The concepts related to real time data processing are analyzed and systems are displayed which use a host mainframe and a number of engineering workstations interconnected by a local area network. In most cases, distributed systems can be classified as having a single function or multiple functions and as executing programs in real time or nonreal time. In a system of multiple computers, the degree of autonomy of the computers is important; a system with one master control computer generally differs in reliability, performance, and complexity from a system in which all computers share the control. This research is concerned with generating general criteria principles for software residency decisions (host or workstation) for a diverse yet coupled group of users (the clustered workstations) which may need the use of a shared resource (the mainframe) to perform their functions

Advanced manned space flight simulation and training: An investigation of simulation host computer system concepts

The findings of a preliminary investigation by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in simulation host computer concepts is presented. It is designed to aid NASA in evaluating simulation technologies for use in spaceflight training. The focus of the investigation is on the next generation of space simulation systems that will be utilized in training personnel for Space Station Freedom operations. SwRI concludes that NASA should pursue a distributed simulation host computer system architecture for the Space Station Training Facility (SSTF) rather than a centralized mainframe based arrangement. A distributed system offers many advantages and is seen by SwRI as the only architecture that will allow NASA to achieve established functional goals and operational objectives over the life of the Space Station Freedom program. Several distributed, parallel computing systems are available today that offer real-time capabilities for time critical, man-in-the-loop simulation. These systems are flexible in terms of connectivity and configurability, and are easily scaled to meet increasing demands for more computing power

An Architecture for distributed multimedia database systems

In the past few years considerable demand for user oriented multimedia information systems has developed. These systems must provide a rich set of functionality so that new, complex, and interesting applications can be addressed. This places considerable importance on the management of diverse data types including text, images, audio and video. These requirements generate the need for a new generation of distributed heterogeneous multimedia database systems. In this paper we identify a set of functional requirements for a multimedia server considering database management, object synchronization and integration, and multimedia query processing. A generalization of the requirements to a distributed system is presented, and some of our current research and developing activities are discussed

The self distributing virtual machine (SDVM): making computer clusters adaptive

The Self Distributing Virtual Machine (SDVM) is a middleware concept to form a parallel computing machine consisting of a any set of processing units, such as functional units in a processor or FPGA, processing units in a multiprocessor chip, or computers in a computer cluster. Its structure and functionality is biologically inspired aiming towards forming a combined workforce of independent units (”sites”), each acting on the same set of simple rules. The SDVM supports growing and shrinking the cluster at runtime as well as heterogeneous clusters. It uses the work-stealing principle to dynamically distribute the workload among all sites. The SDVM’s energy management targets the health of all sites by adjusting their power states according to workload and temperature. Dynamic reassignment of the current workload facilitates a new energy policy which focuses on increasing the reliability of each site. This paper presents the structure and the functionality of the SDVM.1st IFIP International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cooperative Computing - Mechatronics and Computer ClustersRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI