Energy efficient hardware acceleration of multimedia processing tools

The world of mobile devices is experiencing an ongoing trend of feature enhancement and generalpurpose multimedia platform convergence. This trend poses many grand challenges, the most pressing being their limited battery life as a consequence of delivering computationally demanding features. The envisaged mobile application features can be considered to be accelerated by a set of underpinning hardware blocks Based on the survey that this thesis presents on modem video compression standards and their associated enabling technologies, it is concluded that tight energy and throughput constraints can still be effectively tackled at algorithmic level in order to design re-usable optimised hardware acceleration cores. To prove these conclusions, the work m this thesis is focused on two of the basic enabling technologies that support mobile video applications, namely the Shape Adaptive Discrete Cosine Transform (SA-DCT) and its inverse, the SA-IDCT. The hardware architectures presented in this work have been designed with energy efficiency in mind. This goal is achieved by employing high level techniques such as redundant computation elimination, parallelism and low switching computation structures. Both architectures compare favourably against the relevant pnor art in the literature. The SA-DCT/IDCT technologies are instances of a more general computation - namely, both are Constant Matrix Multiplication (CMM) operations. Thus, this thesis also proposes an algorithm for the efficient hardware design of any general CMM-based enabling technology. The proposed algorithm leverages the effective solution search capability of genetic programming. A bonus feature of the proposed modelling approach is that it is further amenable to hardware acceleration. Another bonus feature is an early exit mechanism that achieves large search space reductions .Results show an improvement on state of the art algorithms with future potential for even greater savings

Energy-efficient acceleration of MPEG-4 compression tools

We propose novel hardware accelerator architectures for the most computationally demanding algorithms of the MPEG-4 video compression standard-motion estimation, binary motion estimation (for shape coding), and the forward/inverse discrete cosine transforms (incorporating shape adaptive modes). These accelerators have been designed using general low-energy design philosophies at the algorithmic/architectural abstraction levels. The themes of these philosophies are avoiding waste and trading area/performance for power and energy gains. Each core has been synthesised targeting TSMC 0.09 μm TCBN90LP technology, and the experimental results presented in this paper show that the proposed cores improve upon the prior art

Towards an optimised VLSI design algorithm for the constant matrix multiplication problem

The efficient design of multiplierless implementations of constant matrix multipliers is challenged by the huge solution search spaces even for small scale problems. Previous approaches tend to use hill-climbing algorithms risking sub-optimal results. The proposed algorithm avoids this by exploring parallel solutions. The computational complexity is tackled by modelling the problem in a format amenable to genetic programming and hardware acceleration. Results show an improvement on state of the art algorithms with future potential for even greater savings

Efficient hardware architectures for MPEG-4 core profile

Efficient hardware acceleration architectures are proposed for the most demandingMPEG-4 core profile algorithms, namely; texture motion estimation (TME), binary motion estimation (BME)and the shape adaptive discrete cosine transform (SA-DCT). The proposed ME designs may also be used for H.264, since both architectures can handle variable block sizes. Both ME architectures employ early termination techniques that reduce latency and save needless memory accesses and power consumption. They also use a pixel subsampling technique to facilitate parallelism, while balancing the computational load. The BME datapath also saves operations by using Run Length Coded (RLC) pixel addressing. The SA-DCT module has a re-configuring multiplier-less serial datapath using adders and multiplexers only to improve area and power. The SA-DCT packing steps are done using a minimal switching addressing scheme with guarded evaluation. All three modules have been synthesised targeting the WildCard-II FPGA benchmarking platform adopted by the MPEG-4 Part9 reference hardware group

FPGA-based conformance testing and system prototyping of an MPEG-4 SA-DCT hardware accelerator

Two FPGA implementations of a shape adaptive discrete cosine transform (SA-DCT) accelerator are presented in this paper: one PCI-based and the other AMBA-based. The former is used for conformance testing with the MPEG-4 standard requirements. The latter is an alternative platform for system prototyping and has an architecture more representative of a mobile device. The proposed accelerator meets real time constraints on both platforms with a gate count of approximately 40k, and outperforms the optimised reference software implementation by 20/spl times/. It is estimated that the accelerator consumes 250mW on a Virtex-E FPGA and 79mW on a Virtex-II FPGA in the worst case scenario

The New Politics of US Health Care Prices: Institutional Reconfiguration and the Emergence of All-Payer Claims Databases

Prices are a significant driver of health care cost in the United States. Existing research on the politics of health system reform has emphasized the limited nature of policy entrepreneurs’ efforts at solving the problem of rising prices through direct regulation at the state level. Yet this literature fails to account for how change agents in the states gradually reconfigured the politics of prices, forging new, transparency-based policy instruments called all-payer claims databases (APCDs), which are designed to empower consumers, purchasers, and states to make informed market and policy choices. Drawing on pragmatist institutional theory, this article shows how APCDs emerged as the dominant model for reforming health care prices. While APCD advocates faced significant institutional barriers to policy change, we show how they reconfigured existing ideas, tactical repertoires, and legal-technical infrastructures to develop a politically and technologically robust reform. Our analysis has important implications for theories of how change agents overcome structural barriers to health reform

Hardware acceleration architectures for MPEG-Based mobile video platforms: a brief overview

This paper presents a brief overview of past and current hardware acceleration (HwA) approaches that have been proposed for the most computationally intensive compression tools of the MPEG-4 standard. These approaches are classified based on their historical evolution and architectural approach. An analysis of both evolutionary and functional classifications is carried out in order to speculate on the possible trends of the HwA architectures to be employed in mobile video platforms

Risk assessment and implementation of risk reduction measures is not associated with increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2 compared with standard isolation at professional golf events.

Objectives The purpose of this prospective study was to report incidence and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, among professional golfers and essential support staff undergoing risk assessment and enhanced risk reduction measures when considered a close contact as opposed to standard isolation while competing on the DP World Tour during the 2021 season. Methods This prospective cohort study included all players and essential support staff participating in 26 DP World Tour events from 18 April 2021 to 21 November 2021. High-risk contacts were isolated for 10 days. Moderate-risk contacts received education regarding enhanced medical surveillance, had daily rapid antigen testing for 5 days, with reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tesing on day 5, mandated mask use and access to outside space for work purposes only. Low-risk contacts typically received rapid antigen testing every 48 hours and RT-PCR testing on day 5. Results The total study cohort compromised 13 394 person-weeks of exposure. There were a total of 30 positive cases over the study period. Eleven contacts were stratified as 'high risk'. Two of these subsequently tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. There were 79 moderate-risk contact and 73 low-risk contacts. One moderate-risk contact subsequently tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 but did not transmit the virus. All other contacts, remained negative and asymptomatic to the end of the tournament week. Conclusions A risk assessment and risk reduction-based approach to contact tracing was safe in this professional golf event setting when Alpha and Delta were the predominant variants. It enabled professional golfers and essential support staff to work

The elevated Curie temperature and half-metallicity in the ferromagnetic semiconductor Lax_{x}Eu1−x_{1-x}O

Here we study the effect of La doping in EuO thin films using SQUID magnetometry, muon spin rotation ($\mu$SR), polarized neutron reflectivity (PNR), and density functional theory (DFT). The $\mu$SR data shows that the La$_{0.15}$Eu$_{0.85}$O is homogeneously magnetically ordered up to its elevated $T_{\rm C}$. It is concluded that bound magnetic polaron behavior does not explain the increase in $T_{\rm C}$ and an RKKY-like interaction is consistent with the $\mu$SR data. The estimation of the magnetic moment by DFT simulations concurs with the results obtained by PNR, showing a reduction of the magnetic moment per La$_{x}$Eu$_{1-x}$O for increasing lanthanum doping. This reduction of the magnetic moment is explained by the reduction of the number of Eu-4$f$ electrons present in all the magnetic interactions in EuO films. Finally, we show that an upwards shift of the Fermi energy with La or Gd doping gives rise to half-metallicity for doping levels as high as 3.2 %.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figure

Advice on describing Bayesian analysis of neutron and X-ray reflectometry

Driven by the availability of modern software and hardware, Bayesian analysis is becoming more popular in neutron and X-ray reflectometry analysis. The understandability and replicability of these analyses may be harmed by inconsistencies in how the probability distributions central to Bayesian methods are represented in the literature. Herein, we provide advice on how to report the results of Bayesian analysis as applied to neutron and X-ray reflectometry. This includes the clear reporting of initial starting conditions, the prior probabilities, and results of any analysis, and the posterior probabilities that are the Bayesian equivalent of the error bar, to enable replicability and improve understanding. We believe that this advice, grounded in our experience working in the field, will enable greater analytical reproducibility among the reflectometry community, as well as improve the quality and usability of results