An FPGA implementation of an investigative many-core processor, Fynbos : in support of a Fortran autoparallelising software pipeline

Includes bibliographical references.In light of the power, memory, ILP, and utilisation walls facing the computing industry, this work examines the hypothetical many-core approach to finding greater compute performance and efficiency. In order to achieve greater efficiency in an environment in which Moore’s law continues but TDP has been capped, a means of deriving performance from dark and dim silicon is needed. The many-core hypothesis is one approach to exploiting these available transistors efficiently. As understood in this work, it involves trading in hardware control complexity for hundreds to thousands of parallel simple processing elements, and operating at a clock speed sufficiently low as to allow the efficiency gains of near threshold voltage operation. Performance is there- fore dependant on exploiting a new degree of fine-grained parallelism such as is currently only found in GPGPUs, but in a manner that is not as restrictive in application domain range. While removing the complex control hardware of traditional CPUs provides space for more arithmetic hardware, a basic level of control is still required. For a number of reasons this work chooses to replace this control largely with static scheduling. This pushes the burden of control primarily to the software and specifically the compiler, rather not to the programmer or to an application specific means of control simplification. An existing legacy tool chain capable of autoparallelising sequential Fortran code to the degree of parallelism necessary for many-core exists. This work implements a many-core architecture to match it. Prototyping the design on an FPGA, it is possible to examine the real world performance of the compiler-architecture system to a greater degree than simulation only would allow. Comparing theoretical peak performance and real performance in a case study application, the system is found to be more efficient than any other reviewed, but to also significantly under perform relative to current competing architectures. This failing is apportioned to taking the need for simple hardware too far, and an inability to implement static scheduling mitigating tactics due to lack of support for such in the compiler

From three congregations to one autonomous church: The Swaziland Reformed Church

This article covers the time from 1985 to 1992 in the history of the Swaziland Reformed Church (SRC). In 1985, for the first time in its existence, the SRC had four missionaries working in the four districts of the country. At this stage the SRC formed a presbytery within the synodical region of the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa (DRCA) of Northern Transvaal. In 1989 – at its own request – this church became a regional synod within the DRCA. However, not long thereafter, in 1992, it was forced to become an independent Reformed church, even though it still remained part of the family of Dutch Reformed churches. Making use of original documents, this article records this history of the SRC

Switching Codes: Class, Clothing and Cultural Change in the Works of Marivaux and Watteau

Article compares the treatment of social class in the writing of Pierre Carlet de Chambalin de Marivaux and the art of Antoine Watteau

Moist turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection with Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions

Turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection with phase changes in an extended layer between two parallel impermeable planes is studied by means of three-dimensional direct numerical simulations for Rayleigh numbers between 10^4 and 1.5\times 10^7 and for Prandtl number Pr=0.7. Two different sets of boundary conditions of temperature and total water content are compared: imposed constant amplitudes which translate into Dirichlet boundary conditions for the scalar field fluctuations about the quiescent diffusive equilibrium and constant imposed flux boundary conditions that result in Neumann boundary conditions. Moist turbulent convection is in the conditionally unstable regime throughout this study for which unsaturated air parcels are stably and saturated air parcels unstably stratified. A direct comparison of both sets of boundary conditions with the same parameters requires to start the turbulence simulations out of differently saturated equilibrium states. Similar to dry Rayleigh-Benard convection the differences in the turbulent velocity fluctuations, the cloud cover and the convective buoyancy flux decrease across the layer with increasing Rayleigh number. At the highest Rayleigh numbers the system is found in a two-layer regime, a dry cloudless and stably stratified layer with low turbulence level below a fully saturated and cloudy turbulent one which equals classical Rayleigh-Benard convection layer. Both are separated by a strong inversion that gets increasingly narrower for growing Rayleigh number.Comment: 19 pages, 13 Postscript figures, Figures 10,11,12,13, in reduced qualit

Governing Boards in the Non-Profit Sector

During the past two years, Inyathelo has worked with a number of non-profit organisations (referred to inthis book as NPOs) on their long-term financial sustainability. During this work, one key issue has dominated -- that of the role of the boards of NPOs. Although it is clear that boards have specific duties of governance,it is often the more nuanced issues that impact on NPOs. These include the relationships between boards and the organisation's CEO; the fundraising responsibilities of boards; the extent towhich board members become involved in operational activitiesof the NPO, etc. This book, while providing a backdrop to the dutiesand responsibilities of boards, also explores some of these issues.We hope that it helps board members as well as NPO staff to finda way of working together that satisfies both.The experiences of board members and NPO staff should be good ones. They are, after all, involved with organisations that have a positive and transforming role in South Africa. They work towards solving many social issues and needs and this should be extremely rewarding. A true partnership between board members and NPO staff, particularly the CEO, can be an extremely satisfying experience

Embryonic Development and a Quantitative Model of Programmed DNA Elimination in Mesocyclops Edax (S. A. ) (Copepoda: Cyclopoida)

The highly programmed fragmentation of chromosomes and elimination of large amounts of nuclear DNA from the presomatic cell lineages (i.e., chromatin diminution), occurs in the embryos of the freshwater zooplankton Mesocyclops edax (S. A. Forbes, 1891) (Crustacea: Copepoda). The somatic genome is reorganized and reduced to a size five times smaller even though the germline genome remains intact. We present the first comprehensive, quantitative model of DNA content throughout embryogenesis in a copepod that possesses embryonic DNA elimination. We used densitometric image analysis to measure the DNA content of polar bodies, germline and somatic nuclei, and excised DNA “droplets.” We report: 1) variable DNA contents of polar bodies, some of which do not contain the amount corresponding to the haploid germline genome size; 2) presence of pronuclei in newly laid embryo sacs; 3) gonomeric chromosomes in the second to fourth cleavage divisions and in the primordial germ cell and primordial endoderm cell during the fifth cleavage division; 4) timing of early embryonic cell stages, elimination of DNA, and divisions of the primordial germ cell and primordial endoderm cell at 22∘C role= presentation \u3e22∘C⁠; and 5) persistence of a portion of the excised DNA “droplets” throughout embryogenesis. DNA elimination is a trait that spans multiple embryonic stages and a knowledge of the timing and variability of the associated cytological events with DNA elimination will promote the study of the molecular mechanisms involved in this trait. We propose the “genome yolk hypothesis” as a functional explanation for the persistence of the eliminated DNA that might serve as a resource during postdiminution cleavage divisions

An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy in South Africa

Abstract: Inflation affects the total economy and should be controlled effectively, to support economic growth. However, recent years have shown inefficiencies of inflationary control in South Africa as the country is faced with both structural and cost-push inflation in a low growth economy. The objective of this study was to investigate whether these inflation types are effectively controlled by the utilization of interest rates and money supply by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). Secondary data from the SARB were collected for 69 quarters from 2000 Q1 to 2017 Q1. An autoregressive distributive lag model (ARDL) was used to analyse the data for long-run co-integration and a vector error correction model (VECM) to test for short-run relationships. Variables included consumer price index (CPI), money supply, interest rate (repo rate), government expenditure as well as trade openness. The results indicated that both long and short-run relationships exist between the variables. The study revealed that structural and cost-push inflation exist in South Africa, making the current methods of monetary policy implementation less effective to control inflation and also has an impact on economic growth