On the Virtualization of CUDA Based GPU Remoting on ARM and X86 Machines in the GVirtuS Framework

The astonishing development of diverse and different hardware platforms is twofold: on one side, the challenge for the exascale performance for big data processing and management; on the other side, the mobile and embedded devices for data collection and human machine interaction. This drove to a highly hierarchical evolution of programming models. GVirtuS is the general virtualization system developed in 2009 and firstly introduced in 2010 enabling a completely transparent layer among GPUs and VMs. This paper shows the latest achievements and developments of GVirtuS, now supporting CUDA 6.5, memory management and scheduling. Thanks to the new and improved remoting capabilities, GVirtus now enables GPU sharing among physical and virtual machines based on x86 and ARM CPUs on local workstations, computing clusters and distributed cloud appliances

Ruolo del microbiota intestinale nel diabete di tipo 1 e di tipo 2

Lo scopo della tesi è quello di indagare sulla relazione tra il microbiota intestinale e il diabete di tipo 1 e di tipo 2. Per “microbiota intestinale” si intende l’ecosistema complessivo formato da funghi, virus e batteri che si sono adattati a vivere sulla superficie mucosa dell’intestino o nel suo lume, sviluppandosi immediatamente dopo la nascita. Sono 4 i phyla principali che ne determinano la componente batterica: i Firmicutes, i Bacteroidetes, i Proteobacteria e gli Actinobacteria. Quando queste comunità di microrganismi vivono in equilibrio, vi è una condizione di eubiosi e il microbiota intestinale svolge delle funzioni fondamentali per l’organismo, come la produzione di vitamine e SCFA, la fortificazione della barriera intestinale e la stimolazione e lo sviluppo del sistema immunitario. Al contrario, quando si verifica la perdita dell’equilibrio, si ha disbiosi, cioè un'alterazione della composizione e delle funzioni del microbiota, con conseguente probabilità di sviluppare diverse patologie. L’alterazione del microbiota intestinale è implicata nella patogenesi del diabete di tipo 1 e di tipo 2. Infatti cambiamenti nella composizione del microbiota intestinale sono correlati ad endotossiemia metabolica, alterazioni della permeabilità della barriera intestinale e all'innesco di una risposta infiammatoria cronica. Queste conoscenze ci consentono di intervenire con trattamenti che possono prevenire l’insorgenza e aiutare nella terapia del diabete, riportando il microbiota intestinale in una condizione di equilibrio

The importance of a molecular cytogenetic analysis before using cell lines in research : the case of the KG-1a leukemia cell line

The KG-1 and its less differentiated subline KG-1a are leukemia cell lines used in research in many laboratories. The karyotypes of the two lines were initially identical. Over the years, further analysis revealed that they had acquired additional karyotypical abnormalities and that differed for the presence of some typical chromosomal rearrangements. To obtain a cytogenetic authentication before the use these two cell lines, we analysed their karyotype combining DAPI- and CMA-chromosome bandings, and a FISH-based approach by using BAC clones useful for the identification of chromosome regions of interest. Particularly, sequences of the genes MYC, PLZF, RARA and BCR that are known to play a critical role in leukemogenesis, and some BAC clones mapped to five known common fragile sites were used for the FISH analysis. Moreover, we used a telomeric probe (TTAGGG)n, and a set of BAC clones to characterize the marker chromosome der(1) that we observed in the cell line KG-1a. The existence of notably differences between the karyotype of the KG-1a cell line previously described and that described by us demonstrate as it would be advisable that the utilization of established cancer cell lines is preceded by a cytogenetic and/or molecular characterization

The High Performance Internet of Things: Using GVirtuS to Share High-End GPUs with ARM Based Cluster Computing Nodes

The availability of computing resources and the need for high quality services are rapidly evolving the vision about the acceleration of knowledge development, improvement and dissemination. The Internet of Things is growing up. The high performance cloud computing is behind the scene powering the next big thing. In this paper, using the GVirtuS, general purpose virtualization service, we demonstrate the feasibility of accelerate inexpensive ARM based computing nodes with high-end GPUs hosted on x86_64 machines. We draw the vision of a possible next generation of low-cost, off the shelf, computing clusters we call Neowulf characterized by high heterogenic parallelism and expected as low electric power demanding and head producing

Fetal-Type Rhabdomyoma of the Cheek: A Conservative Management

Extracardiac rhabdomyomas are rare benign mesenchymal tumors diagnosed upon radiological and hystologic investigations and the treatment of choice is surgical exertion. There aren’t any similar cases managed conservatively reported in literature as in our case, to the best of our knowledge. We present a rare case of fetal cheek rhabdomyoma diagnosed in a healthy 2 months-old boy, with asymptomatic mass over the left masseter. The lesion could not be removed, due to the size and dimensions and the young age of the patient. However, the lesion did not show signs of spreading or progression over a 36 months follow-up. Fetal rhabdomyoma is a benign tumor, often located in the head and neck district, where surgery, especially in very young children, is associated with a high risk of complications and long-term sequelae. Our case report demonstrates the possibility to manage these lesions conservatively in the first years of life with close sonographic and clinical follow-up

Enabling Android-Based Devices to High-End GPGPUs

The success of Android is based on its unified Java programming model that allows to write platform-independent programs for a variety of different target platforms. In this paper we describe the first, to the best of our knowledge, offloading platform that enables Android devices with no GPU support to run Nvidia CUDA kernels by migrating their execution on high-end GPGPU servers. The framework is highly modular and exposes a rich Application Programming Interface (API) to the developers, making it highly transparent and hiding the complexity of the network layer. We present the first preliminary results, showing that not only GPGPU offloading is possible but it is also promising in terms of performance

Virtualizing CUDA enabled GPGPUs on ARM clusters

The acceleration of inexpensive ARM-based computing nodes with high-end CUDA enabled GPGPUs hosted on x86 64 machines using the GVirtuS general-purpose virtualization service is a novel approach to hierarchical parallelism. In this paper we draw the vision of a possible hierarchical remote workload distribution among different devices. Preliminary, but promising, performance evaluation data suggests that the developed technology is suitable for real world applications