Resource management and application customization for hardware accelerated systems

Computational demands are continuously increasing, driven by the growing resource demands of applications. At the era of big-data, big-scale applications, and real-time applications, there is an enormous need for quick processing of big amounts of data. To meet these demands, computer systems have shifted towards multi-core solutions. Technology scaling has allowed the incorporation of even larger numbers of transistors and cores into chips. Nevertheless, area constrains, power consumption limitations, and thermal dissipation limit the ability to design and sustain ever increasing chips. To overpassthese limitations, system designers have turned towards the usage of hardware accelerators. These accelerators can take the form of modules attached to each core of a multi-core system, forming a network on chip of cores with attached accelerators. Another option of hardware accelerators are Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). GPUs can be connected through a host-device model with a general purpose system, and are used to off-load parts of a workload to them. Additionally, accelerators can be functionality dedicated units. They can be part of a chip and the main processor can offload specific workloads to the hardware accelerator unit.In this dissertation we present: (a) a microcoded synchronization mechanism for systems with hardware accelerators that provide distributed shared memory, (b) a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM) allocation policy for single application execution on GPUs, (c) an SM allocation policy for concurrent applications that execute on GPUs, and (d) a framework to map neural network (NN) weights to approximate multiplier accuracy levels. Theaforementioned mechanisms coexist in the resource management domain. Specifically, the methodologies introduce ways to boost system performance by using hardware accelerators. In tandem with improved performance, the methodologies explore and balance trade-offs that the use of hardware accelerators introduce

STRIDE REGULATION AT THE APPROACH PHASE OF LONG JUMP IN VISUALLY IMPAIRED (F13) ATHLETES

The present work studied whether visually impaired (VI) class F13 long jumpers showed at the approach run the same pattern of variability in footfall placement across trials as their non-VI counterparts. The long jump finalists (men and women), of the IBSA 2009 European Athletics Championship were recorded. VI long jumpers demonstrated an initial ascending variability followed by a descending one suggesting some type of regulation. This control emerged on the 5th and 4th stride prior to take-off and at a mean distance of 8.8±1.9m and 8.3±2.6m from the take-off board for men and women respectively. TBD variability reached a maximum value of 30.0±18.9cm and 25.2± 14.4cm and was finally reduced to 7.73cm (± 6.65cm) and 8.2± 2.6cm for males and females respectively. The striding pattern observed was similar to that reported in the literature for non-VI athletes

STRIDE LENGTH REGULATION AT THE APPROACH PHASE OF LONG JUMP IN VISUALLY IMPAIRED (F12 CLASS) ATHLETES

The present study examined whether long jumpers with visual impairment (class F12) demonstrate at the approach run the same pattern of footfall variability across trials as athletes without visual impairment. Five male and five female elite F12 class long jumpers were recorded during a competition. The athletes demonstrated an initial ascending footfall variability followed by a descending one, suggesting the existence of stride length regulation. This regulation emerged on the fourth and the third stride prior to take-off area and at a mean distance of 9.09 ± 0.26 m and 6.28 ± 0.26 m for the males and the females respectively from the take-off line. Results indicated that the stride pattern of F12 class long jumpers was similar to that reported in the literature for athletes without visual impairment, with stride regulation commencing one stride closer to the take-off board

Expression and clinical significance of concomitant FAK/SRC and p-Paxillin in mobile tongue squamous cell carcinoma.

Copyright© 2017, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reservedBACKGROUND/AIM: The focal adhesion kinase (FAK)/SRC phosphorylation cascade and its downstream target paxillin have been implicated in malignant transformation, tumor growth and progression, together with metastasis. The present study aimed to evaluate the clinical significance of concomitant FAK/SRC and p-paxillin expression in mobile tongue squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). MATERIALS AND METHODS: FAK, SRC and phospho-paxillin expression in 48 mobile tongue SCC tissue samples was assessed immunohistochemically and analyzed with respect to clinicopathological characteristics and patient survival. RESULTS: Concomitant high FAK/SRC expression was significantly associated with high grade of tumor differentiation (p=0.048) and longer disease-free patient survival (log-rank test, p=0.019). High p-paxillin expression was significantly associated with greater depth of invasion (p=0.002), lymph node metastasis (p=0.048) and poorer disease-free patient survival (log-rank test, p=0.021; Cox-regression analysis, p=0.031). CONCLUSION: The present study provides evidence that FAK/SRC and paxillin play a role in the pathophysiological aspects of mobile tongue SCC and could constitute therapeutic targets.Final Accepted Versio

Clinical Significance and Biological Role of HuR in Head and Neck Carcinomas

Background. Hu-antigen R (HuR) is a posttranscriptional regulator of several target mRNAs, implicated in carcinogenesis. This review aims to present the current evidence regarding the biological role and potential clinical significance of HuR in head and neck carcinomas. Methods. The existing literature concerning HuR expression and function in head and neck carcinomas is critically presented and summarised. Results. HuR is expressed in the majority of the examined samples, showing higher cytoplasmic levels in malignant or premalignant cases. Moreover, HuR modulates several genes implicated in biological processes important for malignant transformation, growth, and invasiveness. HuR seems to be an adverse prognosticator in patients with OSCCs, whereas a correlation with a more aggressive phenotype is reported in several types of carcinomas. Conclusions. A consistent role of HuR in the carcinogenesis and progression of head and neck carcinomas is suggested; nevertheless, further studies are warranted to expand the present information

Automatic memory-based vertical elasticity and oversubscription on cloud platforms

Hypervisors and Operating Systems support vertical elasticity techniques such as memory ballooning to dynamically assign the memory of Virtual Machines (VMs). However, current Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs), such as OpenNebula or OpenStack, do not currently support dynamic vertical elasticity. This paper describes a system that integrates with the CMP to provide automatic vertical elasticity to adapt the memory size of the VMs to their current memory consumption, featuring live migration to prevent overload scenarios, without downtime for the VMs. This enables an enhanced VM-per-host consolidation ratio while maintaining the Quality of Service for VMs, since their memory is dynamically increased as necessary. The feasibility of the development is assessed via two case studies based on OpenNebula featuring (i) horizontal and vertical elastic virtual clusters on a production Grid infrastructure and (ii) elastic multi-tenant VMs that run Docker containers coupled with live migration techniques. The results show that memory oversubscription can be integrated on CMPs to deliver automatic memory management without severely impacting the performance of the VMs. This results in a memory management framework for on-premises Clouds that features live migration to safely enable transient oversubscription of physical resources in a CMP. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The authors would like to thank the Spanish "Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" for the project CLUVIEM (TIN2013-44390-R) and the European Commission for the project INDIGO-DataCloud with grant number 653549.Moltó, G.; Caballer Fernández, M.; Alfonso Laguna, CD. (2016). Automatic memory-based vertical elasticity and oversubscription on cloud platforms. Future Generation Computer Systems. 56:1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2015.10.002S1105