Population based Ant Colony Optmization on FPGA

We propose to modify a type of ant algorithm called Population based Ant Colony Optimization (P-ACO) to allow implementation on an FPGA architecture. Ant algorithms are adapted from the natural behavior of ants and used to find good solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. General layout on the FPGA and algorithmic description are covered. The most notable achievements featured in this paper are a runtime reduction and including the approximation of the heuristic function by a small set of favored decisions which changes over time

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Run-Time Compaction of FPGA Designs

Controllers for partially reconfigurable FPGAs that are capable of supporting multiple independent tasks simultaneously need to be able to place designs at run--time when the sequence of tasks is not known in advance, or the designs are not fixed. As tasks arrive and depart the cells available for placement become fragmented, thereby affecting the controller's ability to place new tasks. The response times of tasks and the utilization of FPGA cells consequently suffers. In this paper, we describe and assess a task migration heuristic to alleviate the problems of external fragmentation. Our task compaction strategy moves the designs placed in a given region of the chip closer together by suspending the tasks and reloading their configuration bit--streams with new offsets. We show by simulation that significant performance improvements are possible, and that for reasonable assumptions about the relative lengths of the configuration delay and the service period of tasks, the penalty for r..

Triangulating point sets in space

Aset P of n points in R d is called simplicial if it has dimension d and contains exactly d + 1extreme points. We show that when P contains n ′ interior points, there is always one point, called a splitter, that partitions P into d + 1simplices, none of which contain more than dn′/(d + 1) points. Asplitter can be found in O(d 4 + nd 2)time. Using this result, we give a O(nd 4 log 1+1/d n)algorithm for triangulating simplicial point sets that are in general position. In R 3 we give an O(n log n + k) algorithm for triangulating arbitrary point sets, where k is the number of simplices produced. We exhibit sets of 2n + 1points in R 3 for which the number of simplices produced may vary between (n − 1) 2 + 1and 2n − 2. We also exhibit point sets for which every triangulation contains a quadratic number of simplices. 1

Ordered partial task compaction on mesh connected computers

Task compaction has been examined as a means of reducing fragmentation in partitionable machines based on multi{stage, hypercube, mesh and linear array interconnection networks. Ordered partial task compaction involves moving a subset of executing tasks without permuting their relative order to accommodate a request for a large submesh that would otherwise be blocked from entering the system. In this paper we develop the algorithms needed to nd good allocation sites and to perform one{dimensional ordered partial compactions simply on mesh of processor and recon gurable mesh architectures. We nd that signi cant performance gains can be obtained in heavily loaded systems even when link delays are large