TRIAD: creating synergies between memory, disk and log in log structured key-value stores

We present TRIAD, a new persistent key-value (KV) store based on Log-Structured Merge (LSM) trees. TRIAD improves LSM KV throughput by reducing the write amplification arising in the maintenance of the LSM tree structure. Although occurring in the background, write amplification consumes significant CPU and I/O resources. By reducing write amplification, TRIAD allows these resources to be used instead to improve user-facing throughput. TRIAD uses a holistic combination of three techniques. At the LSM memory component level, TRIAD leverages skew in data popularity to avoid frequent I/O operations on the most popular keys. At the storage level, TRIAD amortizes management costs by deferring and batching multiple I/O operations. At the commit log level, TRIAD avoids duplicate writes to storage. We implement TRIAD as an extension of Facebook's RocksDB and evaluate it with production and synthetic workloads. With these workloads, TRIAD yields up to 193% improvement in throughput. It reduces write amplification by a factor of up to 4x, and decreases the amount of I/O by an order of magnitude

Amplification of Primordial Magnetic Fields by Anisotropic Gravitational Collapse

If a magnetic field is frozen into a plasma that undergoes spherical compression then the magnetic field B varies with the plasma density \rho according to B \propto \rho^{2/3}. In the gravitational collapse of cosmological density perturbations, however, quasi-spherical evolution is very unlikely. In anisotropic collapses the magnetic field can be a much steeper function of gas density than in the isotropic case. We investigate the distribution of amplifications in realistic gravitational collapses from Gaussian initial fluctuations using the Zel'dovich approximation. Representing our results using a relation of the form B\propto \rho^{\alpha}, we show that the median value of \alpha can be much larger than the \alpha=2/3 resulting from spherical collapse, even if there is no initial correlation between magnetic field and principal collapse directions. These analytic arguments go some way towards understanding the results of numerical simulations.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to MNRA

Dynamic analysis of flexible rotor-bearing systems using a modal approach

The generalized dynamic equations of motion were obtained by the direct stiffness method for multimass flexible rotor-bearing systems. The direct solution of the equations of motion is illustrated on a simple 3-mass system. For complex rotor-bearing systems, the direct solution of the equations becomes very difficult. The transformation of the equations of motion into modal coordinates can greatly simplify the computation for the solution. The use of undamped and damped system mode shapes in the transformation are discussed. A set of undamped critical speed modes is used to transform the equations of motion into a set of coupled modal equations of motion. A rapid procedure for computing stability, steady state unbalance response, and transient response of the rotor-bearing system is presented. Examples of the application of this modal approach are presented. The dynamics of the system is further investigated with frequency spectrum analysis of the transient response

Revisiting the optical PTPT-symmetric dimer

Optics has proved a fertile ground for the experimental simulation of quantum mechanics. Most recently, optical realizations of $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics have been shown, both theoretically and experimentally, opening the door to international efforts aiming at the design of practical optical devices exploiting this symmetry. Here, we focus on the optical $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric dimer, a two-waveguide coupler were the materials show symmetric effective gain and loss, and provide a review of the linear and nonlinear optical realizations from a symmetry based point of view. We go beyond a simple review of the literature and show that the dimer is just the smallest of a class of planar $N$-waveguide couplers that are the optical realization of Lorentz group in 2+1 dimensions. Furthermore, we provide a formulation to describe light propagation through waveguide couplers described by non-Hermitian mode coupling matrices based on a non-Hermitian generalization of Ehrenfest theorem.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figure

Low-emittance storage rings

The effects of synchrotron radiation on particle motion in storage rings are discussed. In the absence of radiation, particle motion is symplectic, and the beam emittances are conserved. The inclusion of radiation effects in a classical approximation leads to emittance damping: expressions for the damping times are derived. Then, it is shown that quantum radiation effects lead to excitation of the beam emittances. General expressions for the equilibrium longitudinal and horizontal (natural) emittances are derived. The impact of lattice design on the natural emittance is discussed, with particular attention to the special cases of FODO, achromat, and TME style lattices. Finally, the effects of betatron coupling and vertical dispersion (generated by magnet alignment and lattice tuning errors) on the vertical emittance are considered.Comment: Presented at the CERN Accelerator School CAS 2013: Advanced Accelerator Physics Course, Trondheim, Norway, 18-29 August 201

DKVF: A Framework for Rapid Prototyping and Evaluating Distributed Key-value Stores

We present our framework DKVF that enables one to quickly prototype and evaluate new protocols for key-value stores and compare them with existing protocols based on selected benchmarks. Due to limitations of CAP theorem, new protocols must be developed that achieve the desired trade-off between consistency and availability for the given application at hand. Hence, both academic and industrial communities focus on developing new protocols that identify a different (and hopefully better in one or more aspect) point on this trade-off curve. While these protocols are often based on a simple intuition, evaluating them to ensure that they indeed provide increased availability, consistency, or performance is a tedious task. Our framework, DKVF, enables one to quickly prototype a new protocol as well as identify how it performs compared to existing protocols for pre-specified benchmarks. Our framework relies on YCSB (Yahoo! Cloud Servicing Benchmark) for benchmarking. We demonstrate DKVF by implementing four existing protocols --eventual consistency, COPS, GentleRain and CausalSpartan-- with it. We compare the performance of these protocols against different loading conditions. We find that the performance is similar to our implementation of these protocols from scratch. And, the comparison of these protocols is consistent with what has been reported in the literature. Moreover, implementation of these protocols was much more natural as we only needed to translate the pseudocode into Java (and add the necessary error handling). Hence, it was possible to achieve this in just 1-2 days per protocol. Finally, our framework is extensible. It is possible to replace individual components in the framework (e.g., the storage component)

The geometry of quantum learning

Concept learning provides a natural framework in which to place the problems solved by the quantum algorithms of Bernstein-Vazirani and Grover. By combining the tools used in these algorithms--quantum fast transforms and amplitude amplification--with a novel (in this context) tool--a solution method for geometrical optimization problems--we derive a general technique for quantum concept learning. We name this technique "Amplified Impatient Learning" and apply it to construct quantum algorithms solving two new problems: BATTLESHIP and MAJORITY, more efficiently than is possible classically.Comment: 20 pages, plain TeX with amssym.tex, related work at http://www.math.uga.edu/~hunziker/ and http://math.ucsd.edu/~dmeyer