FPGA based Embedded System to control an electric vehicle and the driver assistance systems

This Master Thesis involves the development of an embedded system based on FPGA for controlling an electric vehicle based on a Kart platform and its electronic driving aids. It consists of two distinct stages in the process of hardware-software co-design, hardware development, which includes all the elements of the periphery of the processor and communication elements, all developed in VHDL. An important part of the hardware development also include the development of electronic driving aids, which include traction control and torque vectoring differential gear, in hardware coprocessors, also writen in VHDL. The other part of the co-design is the development of the control software, which is going to be executed by the embedded system’s processor. This Master Thesis will be used in a range of new electric vehicles that will be built in a near future and also gives the base for future thesis in the fields of automotive, electronics and computing

Synthesis of pyrrolo[1,2-<i>a</i>]indole-1,8(5<i>H</i>)-diones as new synthons for developing novel tricyclic compounds of pharmaceutical interest

In the course of our work aimed at developing novel heterocycles of pharmaceutical interest, a new tricycle, the tetrahydropyrrolo[1,2-a]indole-1,8-dione, has been synthesized by an intramolecular Friedel-Crafts acylation, as a synthon suitable to be functionalized to give novel compounds with potential biological properties. Also, an unusual nucleophilic α-addition to methyl propiolate by 1,5,6,7-tetrahydro-4H-indol-4-one was observed and discussed

Exact and heuristic allocation of multi-kernel applications to multi-FPGA platforms

FPGA-based accelerators demonstrated high energy efficiency compared to GPUs and CPUs. However, single FPGA designs may not achieve sufficient task parallelism. In this work, we optimize the mapping of high-performance multi-kernel applications, like Convolutional Neural Networks, to multi-FPGA platforms. First, we formulate the system level optimization problem, choosing within a huge design space the parallelism and number of compute units for each kernel in the pipeline. Then we solve it using a combination of Geometric Programming, producing the optimum performance solution given resource and DRAM bandwidth constraints, and a heuristic allocator of the compute units on the FPGA cluster.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Extremely Metal-Poor Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars

Little is known about the first stars, but hints on this stellar population can be derived from the peculiar chemical composition of the most metal-poor objects in the Milky Way and in resolved stellar populations of nearby galaxies. In this paper, we review the evolution and nucleosynthesis of metal-poor and extremely metal-poor (EMP) stars with low and intermediate masses. In particular, new models of 6 M⊙ with three different levels of metallicity, namely Z=10−4, 10−6 and 10−10, are presented. In addition, we illustrate the results obtained for a 2 M⊙, Z=10−5 model. All these models have been computed by means of the latest version of the FuNS code. We adopted a fully coupled scheme of solutions for the complete set of differential equations describing the evolution of the physical structure and the chemical abundances, as modified by nuclear processes and convective mixing. The scarcity of CNO in the material from which these stars formed significantly affects their evolution, their final fate and their contribution to the chemical pollution of the ISM in primordial galaxies. We show the potential of these models for the interpretation of the composition of EMP stars, with particular emphasis on CEMP stars

Savings, fertility and public policy in an OLG small open economy

In an OLG model of a small open economy we analyse the characteristics of saving and fertility under two different public policies: i) constant per capita taxes (and endogenous public debt) and ii) constant per-capita debt (and endogenous stabilizing taxes). Our analysis highlights that a fertility recovery (reduction resp.) requires always a reduction (increase resp.) of taxes, although the implications for public debt management are not trivial, since they depend on the regime the economy is experiencing, i.e. on the relationship between the interest rate and the fertility rate in absence of taxes

Thermodynamical properties of hairy black holes in n spacetimes dimensions

The issue concerning the existence of exact black hole solutions in presence of non vanishing cosmological constant and scalar fields is reconsidered. With regard to this, in investigating no-hair theorem violations, exact solutions of gravity having as a source an interacting and conformally coupled scalar field are revisited in arbitrary dimensional non asymptotically flat space-times. New and known hairy black hole solutions are discussed. The thermodynamical properties associated with these solutions are investigated and the invariance of the black hole entropy with respect to different conformal frames is proven.Comment: Latex document, 23 pages, references added to section [1] and [3], typos correcte