Sharif Digital Repository

Bi-directional RSFQ benefits from using both positive and negative SFQ pulses to manipulate and transfer digital data. This allows more flexibility in the design of simpler circuits with enhanced performance. On the other hand, using the AC bias current, one can replace on-chip resistive current distributors with inductors. This resembles RQL logic, but in contrast to RQL, it is possible to use the well-established standard RSFQ cells in bi-directional RSFQ. These two advantages (energy-efficient computation and flexibility in design) make bi-directional RSFQ a powerful tool in next-generation supercomputers and also compatible with ultra-low-temperature quantum computers. In this work, to... 

In this paper, we propose and study a context-aware leader selection algorithm within the concept of mobile clouds. We deploy a dedicated Cooperative Control Server (CCS) to assist and manage the process of leader selection more efficiently. The proposed algorithm collects data regarding instantaneous conditions of Mobile Terminals (MTs) and their radio environment; and then computes and assigns a rank to each MT. The ranks calculated based on a combination of different context-related parameters and corresponding weighting factors, allow selecting the leader. Furthermore, the energy efficiency and stability of the selected leaders is investigated for different parameter values through... 

In this paper we consider the content distribution to a set of mobile users interested in the same content. We use the concept of mobile clouds, which exploits cooperation between mobile terminals over the low-power short-range links. We propose, formulate and investigate the energy efficiency and delay of four realistic cooperative content delivery strategies. The derived results, through analysis of mathematical models and simulations, demonstrate around 65% to 95% energy saving gain in mobile cloud strategies compared to conventional multicasting. We also show that using mobile clouds, content distribution delay can be reduced for up to 85%  

Network Coding (NC) is an emerging technique that helps wireless networks to have higher throughput and better energy efficiency. In this paper, a novel network coding-aware routing (S-NC) which uses NC to improve reliability and robustness in unreliable WSNs is proposed. It is based on a structure-free routing algorithm as the underlying routing engine which employs neighbor queue length to increase coding opportunity; while exploiting a spatial coding method to control the amount of redundancy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on the topic of network codingaware routing in Wsns. Simulation results in Tossim demonstrate that S-NC significantly improves the performance... 

One of the most prominent issues in fully adiabatic circuits is the breaking reversibility problem; i.e., non-adiabatic energy dissipation in the last stage adiabatic gates whose outputs are connected to external circuits. In this paper, we show that the breaking reversibility problem can result in significant energy dissipation. Subsequently, we propose an efficient technique to address the breaking reversibility problem, which is applicable to the usual fully adiabatic logic such as 2LAL, SCRL, and RERL. Detailed SPICE simulations are used to evaluate the proposed technique. The experimental results show that the proposed technique can considerably reduce (e.g., about 74% for RERL, 35% for... 

Energy reduction in embedded processors is a must since most embedded systems run on batteries and processor energy reduction helps increase usage time before needing a recharge. Register files are among the most power consuming parts of a processor core. Register file power consumption mainly depends on its size (height as well as width), especially in newer technologies where leakage power is increasing. We provide a register file architecture that, depending on the application behavior, dynamically (i) adapts the width of individual registers, and (ii) puts partitions of temporarily unused registers into low-power mode, so as to save both static and dynamic power. We show that our scheme... 

In this work we introduce Heterogeneous Interconnect for Low Resolution Cache Access (Helia). Helia improves energy efficiency in snoop-based chip multiprocessors as it eliminates unnecessary activities in both interconnect and cache. This is achieved by using innovative snoop filtering mechanisms coupled with wire management techniques. Our optimizations rely on the observation that a high percentage of cache mismatches could be detected by utilizing a small subset but highly informative portion of the tag bits. Helia relies on the snoop controller to detect possible remote tag mismatches prior to tag array lookup. Power is reduced as a) our wire management techniques permit slow... 

In this paper, the performance of an internal combustion engine is evaluated at the steady-state condition by application of energy and exergy analysis using the experimental test results. The energy and exergy balances are calculated at different engine speeds. The results show that the heat rejection of energy and exergy flow increases with increasing engine speed. The exergy efficiencies are slightly higher than the corresponding energy efficiencies. The results of this study have revealed that the most important source of the system inefficiency is the destruction of exergy by irreversible processes, mostly by the combustion. One can conclude that the use of a combined energy and exergy... 

Emerging cloud workloads in today's modern data centers have large memory footprints that make the processor's caches to be ineffective. Since L1 data cache is in the critical path, high data cache miss rates degrade the performance. To fix the issue in traditional workloads, data prefetchers predict the needed data to hide the memory latency and ultimately improve performance. In this paper, we focus on the L1 data cache to answer the question on why state-of-the-art prefetching methods are inefficient for modern workloads in terms of performance and energy consumption? This is because L1 cache is the most important player affecting the processor performance. Results show that, on the one... 

Design and fabrication of solar collectors with high performance of energy efficiency to convert solar energy to utility energy is vitally important. This article reports the results obtained from design, construction and investigation of the performance of a Combined Multi-Purpose Vacuum Solar Collector (CMPVSC). This collector consists of three sections: the vacuum section, the liquid section and the air section. In the present collector, it is capable of transferring heat to two flows (liquid and air) simultaneously and separate with the possibility of multipurpose applications. The CMPVSC is compared with the existing individual collectors and the effects of different parameters on the... 

In recent technology nodes, wide guardbands are needed to overcome reliability degradations due to aging. Such guardbands manifest as reduced efficiency and performance. Existing approaches to reduce guardbands trade off aging impact for increased circuit overhead. By contrast, the goal of this work is to completely remove guardbands through exploring, for the first time, application of approximate computing principles in the context of aging. As a result of naively narrowing or removing guardbands, timing errors start to appear as transistors age. We demonstrate that even in circuits that may tolerate errors, aging can be catastrophic due to unacceptable quality loss. Furthermore,... 

Knowing the exact pressure of the process has a great impact on the validity of the results, product quality, energy efficiency, and in some processes, on the security of work with the system. Hence, the calibration of the barometers and the accuracy of the readings should be taken seriously. Choosing the appropriate time interval for re-calibration is done according to the extent and conditions of use, uncertainty, and the inaccuracy allowed in measurement, constructive suggestion, and some other things. Failure to pay attention to the importance of periodic calibration in vacuum gauges leads to some irreparable losses in the research project and the vacuum generator system. In this study,... 

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) employ large register files to accommodate all active threads and accelerate context switching. Unfortunately, register files are a scalability bottleneck for future GPUs due to long access latency, high power consumption, and large silicon area provisioning. Prior work proposes hierarchical register file, to reduce the register file power consumption by caching registers in a smaller register file cache. Unfortunately, this approach does not improve register access latency due to the low hit rate in the register file cache. In this paper, we propose the Latency-Tolerant Register File (LTRF) architecture to achieve low latency in a two-level hierarchical... 

Due to its unique properties, helium has wide application in different industries and scientific fields, which has turned it into a strategic material. Helium liquefaction plants include wide temperature range from 300 k to 4.2 k, so these plants have high energy consumption. A lot of studies have done to optimize the operation of these cycles. In this research, an exergy analysis is performed for a liquid helium production plant. The optimal performance of 3 and 4 stage cycles is extracted using parametric study and the results are compared with those of Collins dual-expander cycle. The results show that by increasing the number of cooling stages, not only the compressor optimum discharge... 

Due to its unique properties, helium has wide application in different industries and scientific fields, which has turned it into a strategic material. Helium liquefaction plants include wide temperature range from 300 k to 4.2 k, so these plants have high energy consumption. A lot of studies have done to optimize the operation of these cycles. In this research, an exergy analysis is performed for a liquid helium production plant. The optimal performance of 3 and 4 stage cycles is extracted using parametric study and the results are compared with those of Collins dual-expander cycle. The results show that by increasing the number of cooling stages, not only the compressor optimum discharge...