Sharif Digital Repository

Spin-transfer-torque RAMs (STT-RAMs) are the most promising technology for replacing Static RAMs (SRAMs) in on-chip caches. One of the major problems in STT-RAMs is the high error rate due to stochastic switching in write operations. Cache replacement algorithms have a major role in the number of write operations into the caches. Due to this fact, it is necessary to redesign cache replacement algorithms to consider the new challenges of STT-RAM caches. This paper proposes a cache replacement algorithm, which is called least error rate (LER) , to reduce the error rate in L2 caches. The main idea is to place the incoming block in a line that incurs the minimum error rate in write operation.... 

Emerging nonvolatile memory technologies, such as spin-transfer torque RAM or resistive RAM, can increase the capacity of the last-level cache (LLC) in a latency and power-efficient manner. These technologies endure 109 - 1012 writes per cell, making a nonvolatile cache (NV-cache) with a lifetime of dozens of years under ideal working conditions. However, nonuniformity in writes to different cache lines considerably reduces the NV-cache lifetime to a few months. Writes to cache lines can be made uniformly by wear-leveling. A suitable wear-leveling for NV-cache should not incur high storage and performance overheads. We propose a novel, simple, and effective wear-leveling technique with... 

Reaction thrusters (RTs) are used as an alternative to momentum exchange devices when disturbance torques exceed the control authority of momentum exchange devices. The reaction control system (RCS) can employ some rocket thrusters to provide attitude control during the thrusting or coast phase. Within the control loop, the RCS's target could be either achieving and keeping a certain attitude or controlling the rate of an attitude change. In the coast phase, some tasks such as preacceleration, settling of liquid propellant, damping of structural vibrations, providing a velocity increment to separate stages and payloads, and carrying out orbital and nonorbital maneuvers may be included in its... 

In this paper, two online path planning methods are presented for SURENA III humanoid robot by using model predictive control scheme. The methods are general control schemes which can generate the online motions for walking of a humanoid robot. For lowering computational costs a three dimensional linear inverted pendulum model is used instead of the full dynamical model of the robot. The generated trajectories are then used for computing the zero-moment point (ZMP) of the robot and the joint torques. The resulted joint torques of the two methods are compared to torques obtained from Genetic Algorithm (GA) path planning method presented for SURENA III humanoid robot in previous studies. The... 

Nowadays, exoskeletons have been gaining popularity due to their potential use in rehabilitation and augmentation. These robots often utilize series elastic actuators to facilitate compliant interaction with the human. Numerous studies have been carried out with the purpose of identification and control of these type of actuators. The goal of this paper is to provide a method for dynamic modeling and identification of series elastic actuators. This model is then used in the control loop as a feed-forward term to eliminate the actuator's dynamics. Each series elastic actuator used in the Sharif wearable robot, uses a brushless DC motor, a torsional spring, a harmonic drive, a timing belt, a... 

Active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is applied to a one-axis gimbal mechanism. The dynamic model of the system is derived and validated from mathematical modeling and practical experiments. Disturbances acting on the complete model of the gimbal mechanism are introduced via base lateral acceleration and angular motion. The ADRC is designed by utilizing an extended state observer for observing and suppressing the effects of external disturbances and internal parameter uncertainties. A PID controller is used to form a basis of comparison for set-point tracking and disturbance rejection performance. The effects of identification errors and observer bandwidth are experimentally... 

Multi-phase induction motors feature a high fault-tolerance capability that makes them suitable for safety critical applications. On the other hand, concentrated winding is more fault-tolerant than conventional distributed winding. Therefore, the general idea is to use concentrated winding on the six-phase induction motor to gain more fault-tolerance capacity. Using concentrated winding has several advantages over distributed one, but it has the disadvantage of higher distortion of air gap flux density, which affects the motor performance significantly. In this paper, some concentrated windings are studied analytically by using the winding function analysis, and the layout with better... 

Road speed cameras are usually used in photovoltaic power plants, especially in the areas with limited or no access to grid power. However, there are many areas in Iran where wind power is more accessible than solar energy. So, in this study, a small permanent magnet vernier generator is designed to meet power concussion requirements of traffic enforcement camera. The designed generator is optimized to achieve lower harmonic content of no-load induced voltage and lower cogging torque. In this regard, the effect of geometrical dimensions and the configuration of permanent magnets are investigated using three-dimensional time stepping finite element method. Both no-load and full-load... 

Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic Random Access Memory (STT-MRAM) is a promising alternative to SRAM in cache memories. However, STT-MRAMs face with high probability of write errors due to its stochastic switching behavior. To correct the write errors, Error-Correcting Codes (ECCs) used in SRAM caches are conventionally employed. A cache line consists of several codewords and the data bits are selected in such a way that the maximum correction capability is provided based on the error patterns in SRAMs. However, the different write error patterns in STT-MRAM caches leads to inefficiency of conventional ECC configurations. In this paper, first we investigate the efficiency of ECC configurations... 

In this present research work, a new configuration of the hybrid magnetorheological (MR) brake via T-shaped drum with an arc form surface boundary - the biomechanical geometric design of the hybrid MR brake as a prosthetic knee - is discussed and experimentally tested. The main purpose of this study is to develop a prosthetic knee with one rotary disc to fulfill the desired objective. To achieve this, three steps are considered. In the first step, to model the brake, slab method modeling is used to calculate the braking torque due to the arc surface. In the second step, the biomechanical geometric design is adjusted as an optimization problem to maximize the braking torque, minimize the... 

Reliability of model-based failure detection and isolation (FDI) methods depends on the amount of uncertainty in a system model. Recently, it has been shown that the use of joint torque sensing results in a simplified manipulator model that excludes hardly identifiable link dynamics and other nonlinearities. We present a geometric approach to fault detection and isolation (FDI) for robotic manipulators using joint torque sensor in presence of model uncertainty. A systematic procedure is introduced for representing a robotic system model using joint torque sensor being affine with respect to faults and disturbances. The proposed FDI filter has smooth dynamics with freely selectable functions... 

Spin-transfer torque magnetic RAMs (STT-MRAMs) are the most promising alternative for static random-access memories in large last-level on-chip caches due to their higher density and near-zero leakage power. However, the reliability of STT-MRAMs is threatened by high probability of read disturbance and write failure. Both read disturbance and write failure, which cause a soft error in the cache cells, have an asymmetric behavior. Read disturbance occurs only in STT-MRAM cells storing '1' value, and write failure error rate in a → 1 transition is much higher than that in a 1 → 0 transition. In this paper, we propose Read/write Error-rate Aware Coding Technique (REACT) to improve the... 

Disability and motor disorders are some of the problems that people may face due to some factors such as accident, spinal cord injuries, brain damage, and the presence of a problem in neurological commands due to stroke. One of the proposed methods for solving the problems of these people is the use of exoskeletons to generate movement. The main goal of this paper is the control of Sharif Exoskeleton Robot and the reduction of interaction force between user and robot by using human intent detection. This goal is done by estimating the knee torque of one degree of freedom in a swing phase using Hill model based on the EMG data from the thigh muscles. Accordingly, the calibration algorithm is... 

Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM) is a promising alternative for SRAMs in on-chip cache memories. Besides all its advantages, high error rate in STT-MRAM is a major limiting factor for on-chip cache memories. In this paper, we first present a comprehensive analysis that reveals that the conventional Error-Correcting Codes (ECCs) lose their efficiency due to data-dependent error patterns, and then propose an efficient ECC configuration, so-called ROBIN, to improve the correction capability. The evaluations show that the inefficiency of conventional ECC increases the cache error rate by an average of 151.7% while ROBIN reduces this value by more than 28.6x. © 2019 Association for... 

Spin-transfer torque magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM) is known as the most promising replacement for static random access memory (SRAM) technology in large last-level cache memories (LLC). Despite its high density, nonvolatility, near-zero leakage power, and immunity to radiation as the major advantages, STT-MRAM-based cache memory suffers from high error rates mainly due to retention failure (RF), read disturbance, and write failure. Existing studies are limited to estimate the rate of only one or two of these error types for STT-MRAM cache. However, the overall vulnerability of STT-MRAM caches, whose estimation is a must to design cost-efficient reliable caches, has not been studied previously. In... 

Spin-transfer torque magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM) is known as the most promising replacement for static random access memory (SRAM) technology in large last-level cache memories (LLC). Despite its high density, nonvolatility, near-zero leakage power, and immunity to radiation as the major advantages, STT-MRAM-based cache memory suffers from high error rates mainly due to retention failure (RF), read disturbance, and write failure. Existing studies are limited to estimate the rate of only one or two of these error types for STT-MRAM cache. However, the overall vulnerability of STT-MRAM caches, whose estimation is a must to design cost-efficient reliable caches, has not been studied previously. In... 

Spin-transfer torque magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM) is known as the most promising replacement for static random access memory (SRAM) technology in large last-level cache memories (LLC). Despite its high density, nonvolatility, near-zero leakage power, and immunity to radiation as the major advantages, STT-MRAM-based cache memory suffers from high error rates mainly due to retention failure (RF), read disturbance, and write failure. Existing studies are limited to estimate the rate of only one or two of these error types for STT-MRAM cache. However, the overall vulnerability of STT-MRAM caches, whose estimation is a must to design cost-efficient reliable caches, has not been studied previously. In... 

Hybrid Multi-Level Cache Architectures (HCAs) are promising solutions for the growing need of high-performance and cost-efficient data storage systems. HCAs employ a high endurable memory as the first-level cache and a Solid-State Drive (SSD) as the second-level cache. Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM) is one of the most promising candidates for the first-level cache of HCAs because of its high endurance and DRAM-comparable performance along with non-volatility. However, STT-MRAM faces with three major reliability challenges named Read Disturbance, Write Failure, and Retention Failure. To provide a reliable HCA, the reliability challenges of STT-MRAM should be carefully addressed.... 

Wind turbines are generally controlled based on two control objectives: Turbine protection and the generation of acceptable power for the grid. In this paper, a robust control strategy is presented for switching between various operating modes of the turbine. The rotor angular speed is hold below the allowable speed in all operation time. It is also attempted to catch a constant power in a desirable amount during the most of operation time. For the elimination of model/environmental uncertainties, sliding mode controllers are used. For the objective of power tracking, the stability of sliding mode controller is proved for a set of sliding surfaces. Advantages and disadvantages of the... 

Torque ripple is a major difficulty in direct torque control of induction motors. The reference value of the motor flux greatly influences the torque ripple. On the other hand, many motors work in an operating cycle, which includes load intervals of less than their nominal power. In these situations, it is not necessary to set their flux value as the nominal value. In this paper, the effect of the reference value of the motor flux on the motor torque ripple is investigated. The effect of the flux reference variation on the motor power factor as well as torque dynamics is also presented. Simulation results as well as experimental results justify the validity of the proposed method on the...