5783178
SRB: shared running buffers in proxy to exploit memory locality of multiple streaming media sessions
With the falling price of the memory, an increasing number of multimedia servers and proxies are now equipped with a large DRAM memory space. Caching media objects in the memory of a proxy helps to reduce network traffic, disk I/O bandwidth requirement, and data delivery latency. The running buffer approach and its alternatives are representative techniques to cache streaming data in the memory. However, there are two limits in the existing techniques. First, although multiple running buffers for the same media object co-exist in a given processing period, data sharing among the multiple buffers is not considered. Second, user access patterns are not insightfully considered in the buffer management. In this paper, we propose two techniques based on shared running buffers (SRB) in the proxy to address these limits. Considering user access patterns and characteristics of the requested media objects, our techniques adoptively allocate memory buffers to fully utilize the currently buffered data of streaming sessions, with the aim to reduce both the server load and the network traffic. Experimentally comparing with several existing techniques, we show that the proposed techniques have achieved significant performance improvement by effectively using the shared running buffers.
7011829
QoS aware job scheduling in a cluster-based Web server for multimedia applications
We propose a cluster-based Web server where a few computing nodes are separately reserved for high-performance computing applications, such as multimedia, SSL, and CGI. As an example application, we consider a multimedia server that dynamically generates video units to satisfy the bit rate and bandwidth requirements of a variety of clients. To perform QoS aware scheduling of multiple multimedia jobs on the computing servers, a two-step algorithm is proposed. The first step is to fairly schedule multimedia streams to satisfy each stream's QoS requirement; and the second step is to balance the workload among heterogeneous computing nodes in the cluster. We propose a new quota-based adaptive coscheduling (QACS) algorithm that greatly reduces delay jitter by eliminating the out-of-order departure for outgoing streams, as well as achieves high throughput in a heterogeneous cluster. Experimental results show that the proposed scheduling technique gives adequate QoS guarantees to multiple streams.
13887054
A resource management framework for interactive Grids
Traditional use of Grid computing systems has been for batch jobs in the scientific and academic computing. We envision the next generation Grid computing systems to support graphical interactive sessions. In this paper, we propose a resource management framework for supporting graphical interactive sessions in a Grid computing system. We describe the high-level architectural resource management framework distributed among the submission node, central scheduler node, and the execution node. We then describe in detail the resource management framework on the execution node. The description of the resource management framework on the scheduler node is kept at a high level in this paper. The framework on execution nodes consists of Resource Management Agents, an Admission Control system and Application Predictor system. The agents on the execution node are Startup Agents, Sensor Agents, Monitoring Agents, Aggregator Agents, Enforcement Agents and Registration Agents. The Session Admission Control system is responsible for determining if a new application session can be admitted to the execution node. An Application Predictor system is responsible for predicting the resource utilization behavior of applications based on data obtained from the Resource Management Agents. The proposed framework allows for implementation of a scalable and extensible middleware for interactive Grid resource management. It supports fine-grained performance guarantees specified in service level agreements and brings forth some important and novel contributions to enable graphical interactive sessions on Grids. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
43271530
Compositional analysis for verification of parameterized systems
Many safety-critical systems that have been considered by the verification community are parameterized by the number of concurrent components in the system, and hence describe an infinite family of systems. Traditional model checking techniques can only be used to verify specific instances of this family. In this paper, we present a technique based on compositional model checking and program analysis for automatic verification of infinite families of systems. The technique views a parameterized system as an expression in a process algebra (CCS) and interprets this expression over a domain of formulas (modal mu-calculus), considering a process as a property transformer. The transformers are constructed using partial model checking techniques. At its core, our technique solves the verification problem by finding the limit of a chain of formulas. We present a widening operation to find such a limit for properties expressible in a subset of modal mu-calculus. We describe the verification of a number of parameterized systems using our technique to demonstrate its utility.
18808745
An improved algorithm for quantifier elimination over real closed fields
We give a new algorithm for quantifier elimination in the first order theory of real closed fields that improves the complexity of the best known algorithm for this problem till now. Unlike previously known algorithms the combinatorial part of the complexity of this new algorithm is independent of the number of free variables. Moreover, under the assumption that each polynomial in the input depend only on a constant number of the free variables, the algebraic part of the complexity can also be made independent of the number of free variables. This new feature of our algorithm allows us to obtain a new algorithm for a variant of the quantifier elimination problem. We give an almost optimal algorithm for this new problem, which we call the uniform quantifier elimination problem and apply it to solve a problem arising in the field of constraint databases. No algorithm with reasonable complexity bound was known for this latter problem till now. We also point out interesting logical consequences of this algorithmic result, concerning the expressive power of a constraint query language over the reals. Moreover, our improved algorithm for performing quantifier elimination immediately leads to improved algorithms for several problems for which quantifier elimination is a basic step, for example, the problem of computing the closure of a given semi-algebraic set.
42203358
Different Bounds on the Different Betti Numbers of Semi-Algebraic Sets 


Abstract. A classic result in real algebraic geometry due to Oleinik—Petrovskii, Thom and Milnor, bounds the topological complexity (the sum of the Betti numbers) of basic semi-algebraic sets. This bound is tight as one can construct examples having that many connected components. However, till now no significantly better bounds were known on the individual higher Betti numbers. We prove better bounds on the individual Betti numbers of basic semi-algebraic sets, as well as arrangements of algebraic hypersurfaces. As a corollary we obtain a polynomial bound on the highest Betti numbers of basic semi-algebraic sets defined by quadratic inequalities.
10508326
The Combinatorial and Topological Complexity of a Single Cell 


Abstract. The problem of bounding the combinatorial complexity of a single connected component (a single cell) of the complement of a set of n geometric objects in Rk, each object of constant description complexity, is an important problem in computational geometry which has attracted much attention over the past decade. It has been conjectured that the combinatorial complexity of a single cell is bounded by a function much closer to O(nk-1) rather than O(nk) which is the bound for the combinatorial complexity of the whole arrangement. Until now, this was known to be true only for k ≤ 3 and only for some special cases in higher dimensions. A classic result in real algebraic geometry due to Oleinik and Petrovsky [15], Thom [18], and Milnor [14], bounds the topological complexity (the sum of the Betti numbers) of basic semi-algebraic sets. However, until now no better bounds were known if we restricted attention to a single connected component of a basic semi-algebraic set. In this paper we show how these two problems are related. We prove a new bound on the sum of the Betti numbers of one connected component of a basic semi-algebraic set which is an improvement over the Oleinik—Petrovsky—Thom—Milnor bound. This also implies that the topological complexity of a single cell, measured by the sum of the Betti numbers, is bounded by O(nk-1) . The techniques used for proving this topological result combined with those developed by Halperin and Sharir for the single cell problem in three dimensions allow us to prove a bound of O(nk-1+ε) on the combinatorial complexity of a single cell. Finally, we show that under a certain natural geometric assumption on the objects (namely, that whenever they intersect, the intersection is robustly transversal) it is possible to prove a bound of O(nk-1) on the combinatorial complexity of a single cell. 

2629561
Compositional Analysis for Verification of Parameterized Systems
Many safety-critical systems that have been considered by the verification community are parameterized by the number of concurrent components in the system, and hence describe an infinite family of systems. Traditional model checking techniques can only be used to verify specific instances of this family. In this paper, we present a technique based on compositional model checking and program analysis for automatic verification of infinite families of systems. The technique views a parameterized system as an expression in a process algebra (CCS) and interprets this expression over a domain of formulas (modal mu-calculus), considering a process as a property transformer. The transformers are constructed using partial model checking techniques. At its core, our technique solves the verification problem by finding the limit of a chain of formulas. We present a widening operation to find such a limit for properties expressible in a subset of modal mu-calculus. We describe the verification of a number of parameterized systems using our technique to demonstrate its utility.