Embedded, Networked and Distributed Systems
This group systematically explores architectures, models, algorithms, engineering, measurement, and control of embedded, networked, and distributed systems. The group is especially interested in large-scale systems, based on both wireless and wireline interconnection technologies, as well as high-performance system interconnects. Current group interests include:
- Environmental sensor monitoring systems
- Home network monitoring and management systems
- Complex event processing systems
- Routing and broadcasting in wireless, mobile, vehicular, ad hoc networks
- Networked multimedia - transport protocols and standards
- Scalability of the Internet routing architecture
- Content-centric networks
- Novel approaches to network protocol implementation
- Network instrumentation and traffic modelling
- Novel analysis of program code
- Runtime memory management
- Acceleration of computations on parallel platforms
- Programming models for many-core systems
- FPGA and GPU programming
- Functional hardware description languages
- Hypercomputation
Academic Staff: Dr Lewis M Mackenzie, Dr John T O'Donnell, Dr Colin Perkins, Dr Dimitrios Pezaros, Dr Jeremy Singer, Prof Joe Sventek, Dr Wim Vanderbauwhede.
Research Fellows: Dr Posco Tso, Dr David R. White.
Research Assistants and Research Students: Mr Gubran? Alkubati, Mr Khaled Alnowaiser, Mr Niaz ?Chowdhury, Mr Gregg Hamilton, Mr Paul Harvey, Mr Paul Jakma, Mrs Mozhgan Kabiri Chimeh, Mr Conor? Kahir, Mr Wing Li, Mr Stuart Monro, Mr Hassan Suru, Mr Kyle White, Mr Ashkan Tousimojarad, Mr Sharifa Al Khanjari, Mr Michael Comerford, Mr Georgios Maniatis, Simon Jouet.
- Performance measurement and analysis
- network measurement
- policy-based network management
- network modelling
- next generation internet
- complex systems engineering
- networked multimedia
- parallel programming
- embedded systems
- sensor networks
- digital circuit design
- task parallelism
- data parallelism
JVM-hosted languages: They talk the talk, but do they walk the walk?
Li, W.H., White, D.R.
Real-time verification of wireless home networks using bigraphs with sharing
Calder, M.
SICSA multicore challenge editorial preface
Loidl, H.-W., and Singer, J.
An analytical performance model for the Spidergon NoC with virtual channels
Moadeli, M.
The Glasgow raspberry pi cloud: a scale model for cloud computing infrastructures
Tso, F.P.
Implementing scalable, network-aware virtual machine migration for cloud data centers
Tso, F.P.
Internet traffic classification using energy time-frequency distributions
Marnerides, A., Pezaros, D.
Baatdaat: measurement-based flow scheduling for cloud data centers
Tso, F.P.
Control theory for principled heap sizing
White, D.R.
A comprehensive study of the usability of multiple graphical passwords
Chowdhury, S., Poet, R.
Exploring the guessability of image passwords using verbal descriptions
Chowdhury, S., Poet, R.
Multicriteria optimization to select images as passwords in recognition based graphical authentication systems
Chowdhury, S., Poet, R.
Improving user experience of submitting jobs to HPC resources
Stewart, G.
Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species enhance AMP-activated protein kinase activation in the endothelium of patients with coronary artery disease and diabetes
MacKenzie, R.M. et al. (2013) Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species enhance AMP-activated protein kinase activation in the endothelium of patients with coronary artery disease and diabetes. Clinical Science
Evaluation of collision avoidance prototype head-up display interface for older drivers
Charissis, V., Papanastasiou, S., Mackenzie, L.
Management of Networked Sensor Systems
Koliousis, A.
The Asymptotic Configuration of Application Components in a Distributed System
Pollock, G., Thompson, D., Sventek, J.
Diffusive Phenomena Reflected in the Charge and Angular Distributions of N, Ne, Ar, Kr Induced Reactions. [Master Equation, Probability Distribution, Diffusion, Charge and Angular Distributions, Deep Inelastic Scattering]
Moretto, L.G., and Sventek, J.S.
/sup 20/Ne-induced reactions with Cu and /sup 197/Au at 8.6 and 12. 6 MeV/nucleon
Matthews, G.J., Moulton, J.B., Wozniak, G.J., Cauvin, B., Schmitt, R.P., Sventek, J.S.
Execution environment framework integration
Querenet, D.S., Speyer, B., Sventek, J.
This Week’s EventsAll Upcoming EventsPast Events
This Week’s Events
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Upcoming Events
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Past Events
Open Problems in 2-level Compact Routing (14 November, 2012)
Speaker: Paul Jakma
"A quick talk on the subject of my PhD, on some of the open problems in compact routing. In particular, issues around selecting landmark nodes in 2-level compact routing schemes, and their influence on other problems such as policy in routing."
VM Migration: Juggling the Data Center. (21 November, 2012)
Speaker: Gregg Hamilton
One major goal of data center operators is to give predictable, bounded performance guarantees (or SLAs) across their network. However, with the majority of traffic flows being highly dynamic and short-lived, achieving balanced network performance is somewhat problematic. Current virtual machine (VM) migration techniques balance server workloads using CPU and memory resources as migration indicators, with few considering the effects on network performance. This talk will look at the topic of my PhD work: combining server-side and network performance indicators to achieve a stable and predictable network through VM migration.
ERMMM - Economic Resource Modelling for Memory Management (28 November, 2012)
Speaker: Jeremy Singer
How do we share resources equitably between competing individuals? In this particular case, how do we share main memory between concurrent JVM processes? Can micro-economic theory provide inspiration to software systems architects? In this week's ENDS talk I aim to address these questions in a pragmatic way.
A Parallel Task Composition Approach to Manycore Programming (20 February, 2013)
Speaker: Ashkan Tousimojarad
Many-core processors have emerged to change the parallel computation world. Efficient utilization of these platforms is a great challenge. The Glasgow Parallel Reduction Machine (GPRM) is a novel, flexible framework for parallel task-composition based manycore programming. We structure programs into task code, written as C++ classes, and communication code, written in a restricted subset of C++ with pure functional semantics and parallel evaluation. Therefore, our approach views programs as parallel compositions of (sequential) tasks.
In this talk I will discuss the GPRM, the virtual machine underlying our framework. I demonstrate the potential using an implementation of a merge sort algorithm on a 64-core Tilera processor, as well as on a conventional Intel quad-core processor. The results show that our approach actually outperforms the OpenMP code, while facilitates writing of parallel programs.
Wireless sensor networks for real time particle tracking in inaccessible environments (27 February, 2013)
Speaker: George Maniatis
One of the most difficult problems of contemporary Geophysics is the description and the prediction of the movement of the riverbeds. According to the Lagrangian description of the system the whole movement can be resolved into the combinational result of the movement of individual grains across several time and space scales. The verification of this type of models demands the acquisition of data that a) express the synergistic effect of hydrological and topographical circumstances, b)describe the movement of each grain as an continuous process, especially during events of special interest (like floods) and c) give representative macroscopic information for the riverbed (synchronous monitoring of many grains).Although many of the contemporary technologies have been applied (advanced RFID techniques, specialized piezoelectric sensors, sonar e.t.c) none of the existing datasets meets all the above three requirements. The first stage of this project is the development of a Wireless Sensor that will be able to monitor robustly all the phases of individual grain movement (entrainment, transition,deposition) by correlating measures for both causal and result factors (experienced accelerations and travel-path length/position respectively).The second stage will be the deployment of a number of sensors which will be installed into artificial and/or natural stones and will form a Wireless Network of smart-pebbles- motes that would address the need for representative macroscopic information. The final stage will be the deployment of this WSN into a motoring system that will ,along with the data concerning the movement of the grains, provide synchronous information about the state of the river (stage discharge, flow velocity, local topography e.t.c).This is a challenging application, with constrains posed on all the "aspects" of the WSN (from the motes and the physical to the network and finally the application layer) .Those constrains are driven from the special characteristics of the system (difficult initial sensor calibration,demand for robust under- water RF communication,harsh environmental conditions e.t.c) and the stochasticity of the understudy process (need for robust event detection algorithms,decision making based on very variable thresholds, real time reprogramming for recalibration e.t.c).
Optimizing Multicore Java Virtual Machines (17 April, 2013)
Speaker: Khaled Alnowaiser
The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) consumes a significant portion of its execution time performing internal services such as garbage collection and optimising compilation. Multicore processors offer the potential to reduce JVM service overhead by utilising the parallel hardware. However, the JVM developers face many challenges to adapt and achieve optimal performance. This talk will motivate and discuss multicore garbage collection performance and some behavioural observations of OpenJDK Hotspot JVM. We will propose some potential solutions to JVM performance optimisation.