Block-Aware Instruction Set Architecture

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Simultaneously Improving Code Size, Performance, and Energy in Embedded Processors

Code size and energy consumption are critical design concerns for embedded processors as they determine the cost of the overall system. Techniques such as reduced length instruction sets lead to significant code size savings but also introduce performance and energy consumption impediments such as additional dynamic instructions or decompression latency. In this paper, we show that a blockaware instruction set (BLISS) which stores basic block descriptors in addition to and separately from the actual instructions in the program allows embedded processors to achieve significant improvements in all three metrics: reduced code size and improved performance and lower energy consumption.

Exploring a Context-based Network Access Control for Mobile Devices

AbstractSignificant advancement in mobile devices coupled with high speed networks have shifted personal computing towards pervasive environments. Mobile devices currently offer many value-added applications and services such as emailing, messaging, navigation, social networking, finance, and entertainment. Typically, such value-added applications have access to users’ personal information and are capable of gathering and transmitting trust sensitive information, hence posing security risks and/or privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose a context-based analytic hierarchy process (AHP) framework for eliciting context information and adapting this information with network access control measures for mobile devices. The framework enforces the execution of mobile applications inside security incubators to control the communication between mobile applications and mobile device resources. Mobile applications’ access requests are analyzed based on user's context information collected from the mobile device sensors and the application network access control configuration. We use the Facebook mobile application, as a test case, to evaluate our proposed framework. Evaluation results have demonstrated the efficacy of the framework in providing network access control measures based on real-time assessment of user's context