A Content Oriented Information Sharing System for Disaster Management

In response to natural and man-made hazards multiple organisations usually are involved in a very complex situation. On the other hand, extreme weather situations due to the climate change create hazards in areas which were considered safe before. In order to improve the capabilities of involved organisations in responding and preparing for disaster events, the availability of an efficient information sharing approach is a key enabler. To this end, we propose a communication system based on a content oriented architecture tailored to disaster management. It includes a catalogue that is offering web services for publishing and subscribing of disaster information and for further collaboration amongst agencies and first responders. Moreover, the considered approach also allows for full content access control and enables a flexible system. The paper shows the current status of the system design. Next steps will include the implementation and evaluation of the approach

Systematic Methodology for Exploration of Performance – Energy Trade-offs in Network Applications Using Dynamic Data Type Refinement

Modern network applications require high performance and consume a lot of energy. Their inherent dynamic nature makes the dynamic memory subsystem a critical contributing factor to the overall energy consumption and to the execution time performance. This paper presents a novel, systematic methodology for generating performance-energy trade-offs by implementing optimal Dynamic Data Types, finely tuned and refined for network applications. Our systematic methodology is supported by a new, fully automated tool. We assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach in four representative, real-life case studies and provide significant energy savings and performance improvements compared to the original implementations

Dynamic Data Type Refinement Methodology for Systematic Performance-Energy Design Exploration of Network Applications

Network applications are becoming increasingly popular in the embedded systems domain requiring high performance, which leads to high energy consumption. In networks is observed that due to their inherent dynamic nature the dynamic memory subsystem is a main contributor to the overall energy consumption and performance. This paper presents a new systematic methodology, generating performance-energy trade-offs by implementing Dynamic Data Types (DDTs), targeting network applications. The proposed methodology consists of: (i) the application-level DDT exploration, (ii) the network-level DDT exploration and (iii) the Pareto-level DDT exploration. The methodology, supported by an automated tool, offers the designer a set of optimal dynamic data type design solutions. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is tested on four representative real-life case studies. By applying the second step, it is proved that energy savings up to 80% and performance improvement up to 22% (compared to the original implementations of the benchmarks) can be achieved. Additional energy and performance gains can be achieved and a wide range of possible trade-offs among our Pareto-optimal design choices are obtained, by applying the third step. We achieved up to 93% reduction in energy consumption and up to 48% increase in performance

Systematic Design Flow for Dynamic Data Management in Visual Texture Decoder of MPEG-4

There is a clear trend of future embedded systems in moving toward wireless, multimedia, multi-functional and ubiquitous applications. This emerges new challenges in the existing solutions on performance, power, flexibility and costs, calling for innovations in both architecture and design methodology. In this paper we propose a design flow consisting of three stages to handle dynamic data, allowing the designer to create highly customized dynamic memory managers, make them bank-aware and create a design-time schedule of the different tasks of the application. We evaluated the proposed flow using the Visual Texture Coding (VTC) application, mapping it on a dual processor embedded platform achieving 5.5% reduction in memory footprint and 10% gains in execution time

Design of Energy Efficient Wireless Networks Using Dynamic Data Type Refinement Methodology

This paper presents a new perspective to the design of wireless networks using the proposed dynamic data type refinement methodology. In the forthcoming years, new portable devices will execute wireless network applications with extensive computational demands (2 – 30 GOPS) with low energy consumption demands (0.3 – 2 Watts). Nowadays, in such dynamic applications the dynamic memory subsystem is one of the main sources of energy consumption and it can heavily affect the performance of the whole system, if it is not properly managed. The main objective is to arrive at energy efficient realizations of the dominant dynamic data types of this dynamic memory subsystem. The simulation results in real case studies show that our methodology reduces energy consumption 50% on average

Современное состояние электрификации России

В статье показано, что современное развитие электрификации РФ в сопоставлении с государствами, входящими в G8, очевидно недостающее. При этом есть большой потенциал электросбережения в секторах экономики. Потребление электроэнергии населением существенно находится в зависимости от значения их денежных доходов и темпов роста тарифов на электричество

Embedded systems design in multi processor platfrorms for dynamic

The next generation of embedded systems will be dominated by the presence of mobile devices able to deliver rich communication and multimedia services everywhere and anytime. On the software side, such applications are composed into multiple threads of execution and heavily rely on the usage of dynamic data in order to adapt to the dynamic constraints of the user and the environment. On the hardware side, embedded systems will use a multitude of processing cores and memory modules. One of the components that play a key role in the energy consumption of embedded systems is the memory one. Data storage as well as the dynamic allocation, deallocation and accesses greatly affect the performance and energy consumption of the system. Furthermore, the designers have to find a solution on how to design the on-chip interconnection among the components in order to communicate efficiently. Additionally, the emerging 3-D process and integration technologies introduce new challenges to the embedded systems design space. The methodologies and tools developed in this Thesis target the efficient utilization of the available memory components when the embedded system executes dynamic multi-threaded applications. In more detail, the first step that the designer has to perform is to characterize the dynamic behaviour of software applications with special emphasis on dynamic data usage. To this end, I have developed the software metadata structure, which is used to represent such behaviour. The appropriate tools for profiling and analysis have been developed allowing the easy construction of the software metadata structure. Additionally, I have developed new methodologies for dynamic data block transfers and dynamic data assignment, which heavily rely on the software metadata information. The most important benefit from the development of the software metadata is that it enabled the unification of separate dynamic data management methodologies into a design flow. Another aspect of software metadata usage is that when combined with vertical interconnection patterns allowed us to explore three-dimensional Network-on-Chip architectures. Such architectures offer an efficient on-chip interconnection network, able to support the big number of on-chip components. To this end, I have developed a high-level Network-on-Chip simulator, triggered by synthetic and real-application inputs. Additionally, I have linked the simulator to a physical prototyping EDA tool, thus being able to get accurate estimation on the length and the energy consumption of the on-chip interconnect from early design steps. Summarizing, the results presented in this Research Thesis offer solutions that tackle the problems of: a) characterizing the behaviour of dynamic multi-threaded application; b) dynamic data management and c) exploration of alternative three-dimensional Network-on-Chip architectures.Η επόµενη γενιά ενσωµατωµένων συστηµάτων θα κυριαρχείται από φορητές συσκευές, ικανές να προσφέρουν πλούσιες υπηρεσίες επικοινωνιών και πολυµέσων σε οποιαδήποτε περιοχή και στιγµή. Τέτοιου τύπου εφαρµογές χρησιµοποιούν πολλαπλά νήµατα εκτέλεσης και χειρίζονται δυναµικά δεδοµένα έτσι ώστε να ανταποκρίνονται καλύτερα στις δυναµικές απαιτήσεις του χρήστη αλλά και τις δυναµικές συνθήκες του περιβάλλοντος λειτουργίας. Για την παροχή υψηλής ποιότητας υπηρεσιών τα ενσωµατωµένα συστήµατα θα απαρτίζονται από πολλαπλά επεξεργαστικά στοιχεία και αρθρώµατα µνήµης. Ένα από τα κύρια σηµεία των ενσωµατωµένων συστηµάτων που παίζει σηµαντικό ρόλο στις επιδόσεις και την κατανάλωση ενέργειας είναι το υποσύστηµα µνήµης. Η αποθήκευση των δεδοµένων καθώς και ο δυναµικός τρόπος δέσµευσης, αποδέσµευσης και πρόσβασης σε αυτά καθορίζουν σε πολύ µεγάλο βαθµό τις επιδόσεις και την κατανάλωση ενέργειας του ενσωµατωµένου συστήµατος. Ένα άλλο σηµαντικό σηµείο είναι ο τρόπος διασύνδεσης των αρθρωµάτων του συστήµατος µεταξύ τους. Επιπλέον, νέες τεχνολογίες κατασκευής, όπως είναι η τρισδιάστατη ολοκλήρωση, φέρνουν νέες προκλήσεις στο σχεδιασµό των ενσωµατωµένων συστηµάτων. Οι µεθοδολογίες και τα εργαλεία λογισµικού που αναπτύχθηκαν στο πλαίσιο της Διδακτορικής Διατριβής έχουν ως στόχο την αξιοποίηση των διαθέσιµων πόρων µνήµης του ενσωµατωµένου συστήµατος όταν αυτό εκτελεί δυναµικές εφαρµογές µε πολλαπλά νήµατα επεξεργασίας. Πιο συγκεκριµένα, το πρώτο βήµα που πρέπει να κάνει ο σχεδιαστής είναι ο χαρακτηρισµός της (δυναµικής) συµπεριφοράς των εφαρµογών λογισµικού όσον αφορά τις προσβάσεις στα δυναµικά δεδοµένα. Για το σκοπό αυτό ανέπτυξα τη δοµή των µεταδεδοµένων λογισµικού, η οποία είναι ικανή να απεικονίσει τη συµπεριφορά δυναµικών εφαρµογών. Για την εξαγωγή των µεταδεδοµένων λογισµικού ανέπτυξα εργαλεία λογισµικού που χρησιµοποιούνται για τις εργασίες της σκιαγράφησης και ανάλυσης των δυναµικών εφαρµογών. Η ύπαρξη των µεταδεδοµένων λογισµικού βοήθησε στην ανάπτυξη των µεθοδολογιών αναγνώρισης µπλοκ µεταφορών δεδοµένων και εκχώρησης των δυναµικών δεδοµένων στο υποσύστηµα µνήµης. Αλλά, το µεγαλύτερο όφελος που πρόσφερε η ανάπτυξη των µεταδεδοµένων λογισµικού είναι ότι επέτρεψαν την ενοποίηση µεθοδολογιών διαχείρισης δυναµικών δεδοµένων σε µια ενιαία ροή σχεδιασµού για πρώτη φορά. Μια άλλη εφαρµογή των µεταδεδοµένων λογισµικού είναι ότι σε συνδυασµό µε τα µοτίβα κάθετης διασυνδεσιµότητας επέτρεψαν τη συστηµατική διερεύνηση τρισδιάστατων αρχιτεκτονικών Δικτύου-σε- Πυρίτιο. Αρχιτεκτονικές τέτοιου τύπου είναι ικανές να παρέχουν µια αποδοτική διασύνδεση στο µεγάλο αριθµό αρθρωµάτων που θα έχουν τα µελλοντικά ενσωµατωµένα συστήµατα. Για τους σκοπούς αυτής της διερεύνησης ανέπτυξα έναν προσοµοιωτή υψηλού επιπέδου, ο οποίος δέχεται συνθετικές αλλά και πραγµατικές εισόδους. Επιπλέον, πραγµατοποιήθηκε η σύνδεση του προσοµοιωτή µε εργαλείο φυσικής προτυποποίησης, παρέχοντας τη δυνατότητα ακριβής εκτίµησης του µήκους και της κατανάλωσης ενέργειας του δικτύου διασύνδεσης από τα αρχικά βήµατα του σχεδιασµού. Συνοπτικά, τα ερευνητικά αποτελέσµατα που παρουσιάζονται στην παρούσα Διδακτορική Διατριβή παρέχουν λύσεις που αφορούν το χαρακτηρισµό της συµπεριφοράς δυναµικών πολυνηµατικών εφαρµογών, τη δυναµική διαχείριση δεδοµένων αλλά και το σχεδιασµό εναλλακτικών τρισδιάστατων αρχιτεκτονικών Δικτύου-σε- Πυρίτιο

Architecture-Level Exploration of Alternative Interconnection Schemes Targeting 3D FPGAs: A Software-Supported Methodology

In current reconfigurable architectures, the interconnection structures increasingly contribute more to the delay and power consumption. The demand for increased clock frequencies and logic density (smaller area footprint) makes the problem even more important. Three-dimensional (3D) architectures are able to alleviate this problem by accommodating a number of functional layers, each of which might be fabricated in different technology. However, the benefits of such integration technology have not been sufficiently explored yet. In this paper, we propose a software-supported methodology for exploring and evaluating alternative interconnection schemes for 3D FPGAs. In order to support the proposed methodology, three new CAD tools were developed (part of the 3D MEANDER Design Framework). During our exploration, we study the impact of vertical interconnection between functional layers in a number of design parameters. More specifically, the average gains in operation frequency, power consumption, and wirelength are 35%, 32%, and 13%, respectively, compared to existing 2D FPGAs with identical logic resources. Also, we achieve higher utilization ratio for the vertical interconnections compared to existing approaches by 8% for designing 3D FPGAs, leading to cheaper and more reliable devices

A System for Collaboration and Information Sharing in Disaster Management

Natural and man-made hazards are complex situations involving multiple organizations that need to collaborate. Communication and information exchange are critical for responding to these situations while at the same time organizations can locally and internationally benefit from expertise, knowledge, and information exchange also outside of an ongoing response for preparation. In order to improve the capabilities of these involved organizations a communication system is designed based on a content-oriented federated architecture tailored to disaster management. It includes a catalogue that is offering web services for publishing, subscribing and discovery of disaster information and further services for collaboration of agencies and first responders. Main requirement is access control as responders deal with sensitive data. The system has been designed and successfully evaluated together with end users from several disciplines involved in disaster management