Improving early design stage timing modeling in multicore based real-time systems

This paper presents a modelling approach for the timing behavior of real-time embedded systems (RTES) in early design phases. The model focuses on multicore processors - accepted as the next computing platform for RTES - and in particular it predicts the contention tasks suffer in the access to multicore on-chip shared resources. The model presents the key properties of not requiring the application's source code or binary and having high-accuracy and low overhead. The former is of paramount importance in those common scenarios in which several software suppliers work in parallel implementing different applications for a system integrator, subject to different intellectual property (IP) constraints. Our model helps reducing the risk of exceeding the assigned budgets for each application in late design stages and its associated costs.This work has received funding from the European Space Agency under Project Reference AO=17722=13=NL=LvH, and has also been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant TIN2015-65316-P. Jaume Abella has been partially supported by the MINECO under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship number RYC-2013-14717.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

pTNoC: Probabilistically time-analyzable tree-based NoC for mixed-criticality systems

The use of networks-on-chip (NoC) in real-time safety-critical multicore systems challenges deriving tight worst-case execution time (WCET) estimates. This is due to the complexities in tightly upper-bounding the contention in the access to the NoC among running tasks. Probabilistic Timing Analysis (PTA) is a powerful approach to derive WCET estimates on relatively complex processors. However, so far it has only been tested on small multicores comprising an on-chip bus as communication means, which intrinsically does not scale to high core counts. In this paper we propose pTNoC, a new tree-based NoC design compatible with PTA requirements and delivering scalability towards medium/large core counts. pTNoC provides tight WCET estimates by means of asymmetric bandwidth guarantees for mixed-criticality systems with negligible impact on average performance. Finally, our implementation results show the reduced area and power costs of the pTNoC.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under the PROXIMA Project (www.proxima-project.eu), grant agreement no 611085. This work has also been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant TIN2015-65316-P and the HiPEAC Network of Excellence. Mladen Slijepcevic is funded by the Obra Social Fundación la Caixa under grant Doctorado “la Caixa” - Severo Ochoa. Carles Hern´andez is jointly funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and FEDER funds through grant TIN2014-60404-JIN. Jaume Abella has been partially supported by the MINECO under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship number RYC-2013-14717.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Contention-aware performance monitoring counter support for real-time MPSoCs

Tasks running in MPSoCs experience contention delays when accessing MPSoC’s shared resources, complicating task timing analysis and deriving execution time bounds. Understanding the Actual Contention Delay (ACD) each task suffers due to other corunning tasks, and the particular hardware shared resources in which contention occurs, is of prominent importance to increase confidence on derived execution time bounds of tasks. And, whenever those bounds are violated, ACD provides information on the reasons for overruns. Unfortunately, existing MPSoC designs considered in real-time domains offer limited hardware support to measure tasks’ ACD losing all these potential benefits. In this paper we propose the Contention Cycle Stack (CCS), a mechanism that extends performance monitoring counters to track specific events that allow estimating the ACD that each task suffers from every contending task on every hardware shared resource. We build the CCS using a set of specialized low-overhead Performance Monitoring Counters for the Cobham Gaisler GR740 (NGMP) MPSoC – used in the space domain – for which we show CCS’s benefits.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Space Agency under contracts 4000109680, 4000110157 and NPI 4000102880, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Spain under contract TIN-2015-65316-P. Jaume Abella has been partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship number RYC-2013-14717.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Wnt signaling alterations in the human spinal cord of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cases: spotlight on Fz2 and Wnt5a

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder with no cure, and elucidation of the mechanisms mediating neuronal death in this neuropathology is crucial to develop effective treatments. It has recently been demonstrated in animal models that the Wnt family of proteins is involved in this neuropathology, although its potential involvement in case of humans is almost unknown. We analyzed the expression of Wnt signaling components in healthy and ALS human spinal cords by quantitative RT-PCR, and we found that most Wnt ligands, modulators, receptors, and co-receptors were expressed in healthy controls. Moreover, we observed clear alterations in the mRNA expression of different components of this family of proteins in human spinal cord tissue from ALS cases. Specifically, we detected a significant increase in the mRNA levels of Wnt3, Wnt4, Fz2, and Fz8, together with several non-significant increases in the mRNA expression of other genes such as Wnt2b, Wnt5a, Fz3, Lrp5, and sFRP3. Based on these observations and on previous reports of studies performed in animal models, we evaluated with immunohistochemistry the protein expression patterns of Fz2 and Fz5 receptors and their main ligand Wnt5a in control samples and ALS cases. No substantial changes were observed in Fz5 protein expression pattern in ALS samples. However, we detected an increase in the amount of Fz2+ astrocytes in the borderline between gray and white matter at the ventral horn in ALS samples. Finally, Wnt5a expression was observed in neurons and astrocytes in both control and ALS samples, although Wnt5a immunolabeling in astroglial cells was significantly increased in ALS spinal cords in the same region where changes in Fz2 were observed. Altogether, these observations strongly suggest that the Wnt family of proteins, and more specifically Fz2 and Wnt5a, might be involved in human ALS pathology

Preparation and characterization of 33-S samples for 33-S(n,alpha)30-Si cross-section measurements at the n_TOF facility at CERN

Thin 33S samples for the study of the 33S(n,a)30Si cross-section at the n_TOF facility at CERN were made by thermal evaporation of 33S powder onto a dedicated substrate made of kapton covered with thin layers of copper, chromium and titanium. This method has provided for the first time bare sulfur samples a few centimeters in diameter. The samples have shown an excellent adherence with no mass loss after few years and no sublimation in vacuum at room temperature. The determination of the mass thickness of 33S has been performed by means of Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. The samples have been successfully tested under neutron irradiation.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España-FPA2013-47327- C2-1-R, FPA2014-53290-C2-2-P, FPA2016-77689-C2-1-RJunta de Andalucía-P11-FQM-8229Ministerio de Economía y Empresa de España (Fondos FEDER)-FIS2015-69941-C2-1-PAECC (Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer)-PS16163811POR

Simultaneous quantification of light elements in thin films deposited on Si substrates using proton EBS (Elastic Backscattering Spectroscopy)

Quantification of light elements content in thin films is an important and difficult issue in many technological fields such as polymeric functional thin films, organic thin film devices, biomaterials, and doped semiconducting structures. Light elements are difficult to detect with techniques based on X-ray emission, such as energy dispersive analysis of X-rays (EDAX). Other techniques, like X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), can easily quantify the content of light elements within a surface but often these surface measurements are not representative of the lights elements global composition of the thin film. Standard Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS), using alpha particles as probe projectiles, is not a good option to measure light elements deposited on heavier substrates composed of heavier elements like Si or glass. Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA) offers a good quantification method, but most of the nuclear reactions used are selective for the quantification of only one element, so several reactions and analysis are necessary to measure different elements. In this study, Elastic Backscattering Spectroscopy (EBS) using proton beams of 2.0 MeV simultaneously quantified different light elements (helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and fluorine) contained in thin films supported on silicon substrates. The capabilities of the proposed quantification method are illustrated with examples of the analysis for a series of thin film samples: amorphous silicon with helium bubbles, fluorinated silica, fluorinated diamond-like carbon and organic thin films. It is shown that this simple and versatile procedure allows the simultaneous quantification of light elements in thin films with thicknesses in the 200-500 nm range and contents lower than 10 at.%.España Mineco CSD2007- 42 CSD2008-00023 MAT2010-21228 MAT2010-1844

A methodology for selective protection of matrix multiplications: A diagnostic coverage and performance trade-off for CNNs executed on GPUs

The ability of CNNs to efficiently and accurately perform complex functions, such as object detection, has fostered their adoption in safety-related autonomous systems. These algorithms require high computational performance platforms that exploit high levels of parallelism. The detection, control and mitigation of random errors in these underlying high computational platforms become a must according to functional safety standards. In this paper, we propose protecting, with a catalog of diagnostic techniques, the most computationally expensive operation of the CNNs, the matrix multiplication. However, this protection entails a performance penalty, and the complete CNN protection may be unaffordable for those systems operating with strict real-time constraints. This paper proposes a three-stage methodology to selectively protect CNN layers to achieve the required diagnostic coverage and performance trade-off: i) sensitivity analysis to misclassification per CNN layers using a statistical fault injection campaign, ii) layer-by- layer performance impact and diagnostic coverage analysis, and iii) selective layer protection. Furthermore, we propose a strategy to effectively compute the achievable diagnostic coverage of large matrices implemented on GPUs. Finally, we apply the proposed methodology and strategy in Tiny YOLO-v3, an object detector based on CNNs.Ikerlan authors have received funding from Elkartek grant project KK-2021/00123 of the Basque government. BSC authors have been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant PID2019-107255GBC21/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Companding and Predistortion Techniques for Improved Efficiency and Performance in SWIPT

In this work, we analyze how the use of companding techniques, together with digital predistortion (DPD), can be leveraged to improve system efficiency and performance in simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems based on power splitting. By taking advantage of the benefits of each of these well-known techniques to mitigate non-linear effects due to power amplifier (PA) and energy harvesting (EH) operation, we illustrate how DPD and companding can be effectively combined to improve the EH efficiency while keeping unalterable the information transfer performance. We establish design criteria that allow the PA to operate in a higher efficiency region so that the reduction in peak-to-average power ratio over the transmitted signal is translated into an increase in the average radiated power and EH efficiency. The performance of DPD and companding techniques is evaluated in a number of scenarios, showing that a combination of both techniques allows to significantly increase the power transfer efficiency in SWIPT systems.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Los contenidos relacionados con las aguas subterráneas en los textos de estudio, más allá del modelado kárstico

Actas de los XXIII Encuentros de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales. "Ciencias para el mundo contemporáneo y formación del profesorado en didáctica de las ciencias exprimentales". Almería 9-12 de septiembre de 2008.En este trabajo se muestra el análisis de los contenidos sobre aguas subterráneas presentes en 18 textos de estudio del primer ciclo de educación secundaria. Se aprecian mejoras frente a ediciones anteriores, pero se detectan ausencias y errores en conceptos básicos para el estudio de las aguas subterráneas.In this work, we show the analysis of the contents presented on groundwater in 18 texts of study of the first cycle of secondary education. Next to improvements in previous editions, some absences and errors in basic concepts for the study of ground waters are detected.Univ. Granada. Departamento de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales

Characterization and Validation of a‑Si Magnetron-Sputtered Thin Films as Solid He Targets with High Stability for Nuclear Reactions

In this work, we present our magnetron sputtering based methodology to produce amorphous silicon coatings with closed porosity, as a strategy to fabricate solid helium targets, in the form of supported or self-supported thin films, for nuclear reactions. We show how by changing the He working pressure it is possible to obtain highly porous homogeneous structures incorporating different He amounts. These porous coatings (a- Si:He) are very reproducible from run to run, and the high He amount incorporated makes them excellent candidates for solid He targets. The possibility of producing self-supported films is illustrated here, and its potential use in inverse kinematics experiments with radioactive beams is shown through the dispersion in forward geometry of a stable 6Li beam. Also the elastic scattering cross-sections for proton from helium were determined using an a-Si:He coating. The results agree well with the ones reported in the literature. These two examples validate our coatings as good candidates to be used as solid He targets in nuclear reactions. The stability of He inside the coatings, fundamental for its use as solid He targets, was investigated, both over time and after irradiation. The coatings proved to be very stable, and the amount of He inside the pores remains unaltered at least 2 years after deposition and after high irradiation fluence (5 × 1017 particles/cm2; with a dose rate of 5 × 1012 particles/(cm2 s)).Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FPA2013-47327-C2-1-R, MAT2015-69035- REDCConsejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas 201460E018European Union CT-REGPOT-2011-28589