Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, we present a reconfigurable architecture for NoCs on which arbitrary application-specific topologies can be implemented. The proposed NoC can dynamically tailor its topology to the traffic pattern of different applications at run-time. The run-time topology construction mechanism involves monitoring the network traffic and changing the inter-node connections in order to reduce the number of intermediate routers between the source and destination nodes of heavy communication flows. This mechanism should also preserve the NoC connectivity. In this paper, we first introduce the proposed reconfigurable topology and then address the problem of run-time topology reconfiguration.... 

A method to setup virtual point-to-point links between the cores of a packet-switched network-on-chip is presented in this paper which aims at reducing the NoC power consumption and delay. The router architecture proposed in this paper provides packet-switching, as well as a number of virtual point-to-point, or VIP (VIrtual Point-to-point) for short, connections. This is achieved by designating one virtual channel at each physical channel of a router to bypass the router pipeline. The mapping and routing algorithm exploits these virtual channels and tries to virtually connect the source and destination nodes of high-volume communication flows during task-graph mapping and route selection... 

In this paper, we propose a processor allocation mechanism for run-time assignment of a set of communicating tasks of input applications onto the processing nodes of a Chip Multiprocessor (CMP), when the arrival order and execution lifetime of the input applications are not known a priori. This mechanism targets the on-chip communication and aims to reduce the power and latency of the NoC employed as the communication infrastructure. In this work, we benefit from the advantages of non-contiguous processor allocation mechanisms, by allowing the tasks of the input application mapped onto disjoint regions (sub-meshes) and then virtually connecting them by bypassing the router pipeline stages of... 

Topology is an important network attribute that greatly affects the power, performance, cost, and design time/effort of NoCs. In this paper, we propose a novel NoC architecture that can exploit the benefits of both application-specific and regular NoC topologies. To this end, a subset of NoC links bypass the router pipeline stages and directly connect remotely located nodes. This results in an NoC which holds both fixed connections between adjacent nodes and long connections virtually connecting non-adjacent nodes. These shortcut paths are constructed at run-time by employing a simple and fast mechanism composed of two processes: on-chip traffic monitoring and path reconfiguration. The... 

In this paper, we propose a processor allocation mechanism for run-time assignment of a set of communicating tasks of input applications onto the processing nodes of a Chip Multiprocessor (CMP), when the arrival order and execution lifetime of the input applications are not known a priori. This mechanism targets the on-chip communication and aims to reduce the power and latency of the NoC employed as the communication infrastructure. In this work, we benefit from the advantages of non-contiguous processor allocation mechanisms, by allowing the tasks of the input application mapped onto disjoint regions (sub-meshes) and then virtually connecting them by bypassing the router pipeline stages of... 

There are two strategies for deadlock handling in routing algorithms in NoC: deadlock avoidance and deadlock recovery. Some deadlock recovery routing algorithms are re-injection based, such as: Compressionless (CR), Software-Based (SW-TFAR) and AFBAR. In spite of the performance comparison, none of existing researches have focused on the energy consumption of various routing algorithms. We evaluate these routing algorithms according to their energy consumption and latency. Our experimental results show the better performance and worse energy consumption of deadlock recovery routing algorithms compared to deadlock avoidance routing algorithms. In addition, the best and worst energy... 

Increasing usage of Solid-State Drives (SSDs) has greatly boosted the performance of storage backends. SSDs perform many internal processes such as out-of-place writes, wear-leveling, and garbage collection. These operations are complex and not well documented which make it difficult to create accurate SSD simulators. Our survey indicates that aside from complex configuration, available SSD simulators do not support both sync and discard requests. Past performance models also ignore the long term effect of I/O requests on SSD performance, which has been demonstrated to be significant. In this article, we utilize a methodology based on machine learning that extracts history-aware features at... 

Solid State Drives (SSDs) have recently emerged as a high speed random access alternative to classical magnetic disks. To date, SSD designs have been largely based on multi-channel bus architecture that confronts serious scalability problems in high-end enterprise SSDs with dozens of flash memory chips and a gigabyte host interface. This forces the community to rapidly change the bus-based inter-flash standards to respond to ever increasing application demands. In this paper, we first give a deep look at how different flash parameters and SSD internal designs affect the actual performance and scalability of the conventional architecture. Our experiments show that SSD performance improvement... 

In Solid-State Drives (SSDs) with tens of ash chips and highly parallel architecture, we can speed up I/O operations by well-utilizing resources during page allocation. Propos- als already exist for using static page allocation which does not balance the IO load and its efficiency depends on access address patterns. To our best knowledge, there have been no research thus far to show what happens if one or more internal resources can be freely allocated regardless of the request address. This paper explores the possibility of using different degrees of dynamism in page allocation and iden- tifies key design opportunities that they present to improve SSD's characteristics  

In recent years, flash memory solid state disks (SSDs) have shown a great potential to change storage infrastructure because of its advantages of high speed and high throughput random access. This promising storage, however, greatly suffers from performance loss because of frequent ''erase-before-write'' and ''garbage collection'' operations. Thus, novel circuit-level, architectural, and algorithmic techniques are currently explored to address these limitations. In parallel with others, current study investigates replacing shared buses in multi-channel architecture of SSDs with an interconnection network to achieve scalable, high throughput, and reliable SSD storage systems. Roughly... 

In Solid-State Drives (SSDs) with tens of ash chips and highly parallel architecture, we can speed up I/O operations by well-utilizing resources during page allocation. Propos- als already exist for using static page allocation which does not balance the IO load and its efficiency depends on access address patterns. To our best knowledge, there have been no research thus far to show what happens if one or more internal resources can be freely allocated regardless of the request address. This paper explores the possibility of using different degrees of dynamism in page allocation and iden- tifies key design opportunities that they present to improve SSD's characteristics  

In recent years, flash memory olid state disks (SSDs) have shown a great potential to change storage infrastructure because of its advantages of high speed and high throughput random access. This promising storage, however, greatly suffers from performance loss because of frequent ''erase-before-write'' and ''garbage collection'' operations. Thus, novel circuit-level, architectural, and algorithmic techniques are currently explored to address these limitations. In parallel with others, current study investigates replacing shared buses in multi-channel architecture of SSDs with an interconnection network to achieve scalable, high throughput, and reliable SSD storage systems. Roughly speaking,... 

The performance and capacity of solid-state drives (SSDs) are continuously improving to meet the increasing demands of modern data-intensive applications. Unfortunately, communication between the SSD controller and memory chips (e.g., 2D/3D NAND flash chips) is a critical performance bottleneck for many applications. SSDs use a multi-channel shared bus architecture where multiple memory chips connected to the same channel communicate to the SSD controller with only one path. As a result, path conflicts often occur during the servicing of multiple I/O requests, which significantly limits SSD parallelism. It is critical to handle path conflicts well to improve SSD parallelism and performance.... 

Graphics Processing Units (GPUS) are widely used as the accelerator of choice for applications with massively data-parallel tasks. However, recent studies show that GPUS suffer heavily from resource underutilization, which, combined with their large static power consumption, imposes a significant power overhead. One of the most power-hungry components of a GPU-the execution units-frequently experience idleness when (1) an underutilized warp is issued to the execution units, leading to partial lane idleness, and (2) there is no active warp to be issued for the execution due to warp stalls (e.g., waiting for memory access and synchronization). Although large in total, the idle time of... 

In this paper, we propose a packet-switched network-on-chip (NoC) architecture which can provide a number of low-power, low-latency virtual point-to-point connections for communication flows. The work aims to improve the power and performance metrics of packet-switched NoC architectures and benefits from the power and resource utilization advantages of NoCs and superior communication performance of point-to-point dedicated links. The virtual point-to-point connections are set up by bypassing the entire router pipeline stages of the intermediate nodes. This work addresses constructing the virtual point-to-point connections at run-time using a light-weight setup network. It involves monitoring... 

A novel intelligent semi-active control system for an eleven degrees of freedom passenger car's suspension system using magnetorheological (MR) damper with neuro-fuzzy (NF) control strategy to enhance desired suspension performance is proposed. In comparison with earlier studies, an improvement in problem modeling is made. The proposed method consists of two parts: a fuzzy control strategy to establish an efficient controller to improve ride comfort and road handling (RCH) and an inverse mapping model to estimate the force needed for a semi-active damper. The fuzzy logic rules are extracted based on Sugeno inference engine. The inverse mapping model is based on an artificial neural network... 

Using CNG as an additive for gasoline is a proper choice due to higher octane number of CNG enriched gasoline with respect to that of gasoline. As a result, it is possible to use gasoline with lower octane number in the engine. This would also mean the increase of compression ratio in SI engines resulting in higher performance and lower gasoline consumption. Over the years, the use of simulation codes to model the thermodynamic cycle of an internal combustion engine have developed tools for more efficient engine designs and fuel combustion. In this study, a thermodynamic cycle simulation of a conventional four-stroke spark-ignition engine has been developed. The model is used to study the... 

With the declining energy resources and increase of pollutant emissions, a great deal of efforts has been focused on the development of alternatives for fossil fuels. One of the promising alternative fuels to gasoline in the internal combustion engine is natural gas [1-5]. The application of natural gas in current internal combustion engines is realistic due to its many benefits. The higher thermal efficiency due to the higher octane value and lower exhaust emissions including CO2 as a result of the lower carbon to hydrogen ratio of the fuel are the two important feature of using CNG as an alternative fuel. It is well known that computer simulation codes are valuable economically as a cost... 

Gaining insight into possible vibratory responses of dynamical systems around their stable equilibria is an essential step, which must be taken before their design and application. The results of such a study can significantly help prevent instability in closed-loop stabilized systems by avoiding the excitation of the system in the neighborhood of its resonance. This paper investigates nonlinear oscillations of a rotary inverted pendulum (RIP) with a full-state feedback controller. Lagrange’s equations are employed to derive an accurate 2-DoF mathematical model, whose parameter values are extracted by both the measurement and 3D modeling of the real system components. Although the governing...