15308955
Avoiding priority inversion on the processing of requests by active replicated servers
We consider the priority inversion problem in an actively replicated system. Priority inversion was originally defined in the context of non-replicated systems. Therefore we first introduce the concept of group priority inversion, which extends the concept of (local) priority inversion to the context of a group of processors that perform an actively replicated processing. We then present the properties of a request scheduling protocol to enforce a total ordering for the processing of requests while avoiding group priority inversions. These properties have been implemented in a protocol that relies on a timed asynchronous system model equipped with a failure detector of the class /spl square/S. The proposed solution allows one to replicate a critical server while ensuring that the processing of all the incoming requests is consistent (mechanisms for solving the atomic broadcast problem) and predictable (mechanisms for solving the group priority inversion problem). Thus, the described request scheduling protocol is a key component which can be used to develop fault tolerant real time applications in a timed asynchronous system.
7500432
A Method to Organize A Small-World Based Publish/Subscribe Network In Large-Scale Environment
The paper proposes a Small-World Network Publish/ Subscribe (SWN-P/S) model in large-scale environment, which is a novel Event-based Middleware with Small-World Network (SWN) model. Through connecting brokers into a small world network, SWN-P/S achieves both a strong local clustering and a small average path length among vast brokers. These characteristics help to spread information through the system more rapidly. The paper also put forwards a cloud-partition method to organize brokers in terms of clustering coefficient in SWN. The method is useful to reduce the amount of routing information stored in each broker and to accelerate information dissemination. Comparisons of SWN-P/S with other construction ways for Publish/Subscribe Event-based Middleware show that SWN-P/S is more suitable for building large-scale distributed systems.
6709613
A Nonblocking Approach for Reaching an Agreement on Request Total Orders
In distributed systems that use active replication to achieve robustness, it is important to efficiently enforce consistency among replicas. The nonblocking mode helps to speed up system execution. Unfortunately, this benefit comes at the expense of introducing decision conflicts when the replicas form a single logical token ring and client requests are processed in sequence following the ring. In order to reach an agreement regarding request total orders, this paper proposes a forward-confirmation (FC) approach to identify and solve decision conflicts when up to k successive replicas fail simultaneously. The FC approach can obtain consistent decisions among replicas. An implementation of the FC approach, namely, the queueing method, is proposed. Test results show that our protocol in the nonblocking mode outperforms the Totem protocol regarding delays and failure recovery.
27110930
Solving the Group Priority Inversion Problem in a Timed Asynchronous System
Considers the priority inversion problem in an actively replicated system. Priority inversion was originally defined in the context of nonreplicated systems. Therefore, we first introduce the concept of group priority inversion, which extends the concept of (local) priority inversion to the context of a group of processors that perform an actively replicated processing. We then present the properties of a request scheduling protocol to enforce a total ordering for the processing of requests while avoiding group priority inversions. These properties have been implemented in a protocol that relies on a timed asynchronous system model equipped with a failure detector of the class /spl diams/S. The proposed solution allows us to replicate a critical server while ensuring that the processing of all the incoming requests is consistent (mechanisms for solving the atomic broadcast problem) and predictable (mechanisms for solving the group priority inversion problem). Thus, the described request scheduling protocol is a key component which can be used to develop fault-tolerant real-time applications in a timed asynchronous system.
18448866
Estimation of Multiple Illuminants from a Single Image of Arbitrary Known Geometry
We present a new method for the detection and estimation of multiple illuminants, using one image of any object with known geometry and Lambertian reflectance. Our method obviates the need to modify the imaged scene by inserting calibration objects of any particular geometry, relying instead on partial knowledge of the geometry of the scene. Thus, the recovered multiple illuminants can be used both for image-based rendering and for shape reconstruction. We first develop our method for the case of a sphere with known size, illuminated by a set of directional light sources. In general, each point of such a sphere will be illuminated by a subset of these sources. We propose a novel, robust way to segment the surface into regions, with each region illuminated by a different set of sources. The regions are separated by boundaries consisting of critical points (points where one illuminant is perpendicular to the normal). Our region-based recursive least-squares method is impervious to noise and missing data and significantly outperforms a previous boundary-based method using spheres[21]. This robustness to missing data is crucial to extending the method to surfaces of arbitrary smooth geometry, other than spheres. We map the normals of the arbitrary shape onto a sphere, which we can then segment, even when only a subset of the normals is available on the scene. We demonstrate experimentally the accuracy of our method, both in detecting the number of light sources and in estimating their directions, by testing on images of a variety of synthetic and real objects.
3009217
Design and Implementation of an Out-of-Band Virtualization System on Solaris 10
In out-of-band virtualization systems, it is typical that the virtual storage manager (VSM) maintains the metadata for all Agents and performs the address mapping. The Agent performs I/O access according to the mapped address. High network latency, poor performance and low scalability are the main problems of this method. This article introduces an improved design and implementation of an out-of-band virtualization system, in which each Agent maintains a copy of the metadata and performs the address mapping by itself, so as to improve performance, reliability and scalability. This article discusses the on-line extension of a logical volume and the related problems such as synchronization. This function improves the ability of uninterrupted service. The system was tested on the UFS of Solaris 10 and the results showed that the performance of a stripe volume consisting of four disks exceeded that of a linear volume by an average of 103.65%.
2498388
Scheduling fixed-priority tasks with preemption threshold
In the context of fixed-priority scheduling, feasibility of a task set with non-preemptive scheduling does not imply the feasibility with preemptive scheduling and vice versa. We use the notion of preemption threshold, first introduced by Express Logic, in their ThreadX real-time operating system, to develop a scheduling model that subsumes both preemptive and non-preemptive fixed priority scheduling. Preemption threshold allows a task to only disable preemption of tasks up to a specified threshold priority. Tasks having priorities higher than the threshold are still allowed to preempt. With this new scheduling model, we show that schedulability is improved as compared to both the preemptive and nonpreemptive scheduling models. We develop the equations for computing the worst-case response times, using the concept of level-i busy period. Some useful results about the generalized model are presented and an algorithm for optimal assignment of priority and preemption threshold is designed based on these results.
14783345
Designing of LED Illuminating System and Testing Notice
With the development of LED, LED lighting has been gradually developed to commercial stage for its advantage of non-pollution, long life, easy to transport, and other advantages. Because of uneven development of LED industry in China and some engineering staff is short of professional knowledge, which result in the LED lighting was used inappropriately and unreasonable and unqualified phenomenon of the LED lighting system. This paper was based on the principles and characteristics of LED lighting, discussed the LED lighting system design process and points for attention, combined with experience in engineering practice, and provided suggestions to resolve some related problems. We hope to help the engineering staff of LED lighting system design.
1772294
Scalable real-time system design using preemption thresholds
The maturity of schedulability analysis techniques for fixed-priority preemptive scheduling has enabled the consideration of timing issues at design time using a specification of the tasking architecture and estimates of execution times for tasks. While successful, this approach has limitations since the preemptive multi-tasking model does not scale well for a large number of tasks, and the fixed-priority scheduling theory does not work well with many object-oriented design methods. In this paper, we present an approach that scales well even when the design consists of a large number of concurrent jobs. The approach avoids any unnecessary preemptability in the system, thereby resulting in reduced run-time overheads from preemptions and associated context switches. It also allows significant memory savings by grouping jobs into non-preemptive groups and then sharing the stack space between them. Our approach is based on our earlier work on scheduling using preemption thresholds that allows parametric control over preemptability in a priority-based system. We show that our approach provides significant advantages over one using a fixed-priority preemptive scheduling architecture. The benefits include higher schedulability for small numbers of tasks and lower run-time overheads, and hence better scalability. We develop algorithms that allow design-time consideration of schedulability and automatic synthesis of an implementation model to minimize run-time overheads.