Execution Units Research Articles

Development of an Optoelectronic Plant for the Analysis and Sorting of Grain Products

The grain industry is an important branch of agriculture. It is directly related to the harvesting, transportation, storage and processing of grain. To ensure the high quality of grain bulk products, there are currently used various electrotechnological grain cleaning plants. The most modern and effective are optoelectronic grain sort-ers (photo separators). However, there are a number of technological and structural disadvantages that reduce the efficiency of separating the grain mass into fractions and the performance of photo separators. That is why the problem of increasing the efficiency of optoelectronic installations for sorting agricultural grain products is urgent. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in development of an electrotechnological optoelectronic installation with justification of the parameters and modes of its operation. (Materials and methods) The development of an optoelectronic system for sorting agricultural grain products was carried out in accordance with the theoretical laws of mechanics, electrical engineering and optics, as well as on the basis of the norms and requirements of GOST for grain products. Testing of the efficiency of this unit was carried out on the basis of a laboratory unit in the Kuban State Agrarian University. The reliability of the results is confirmed by the repeated repetition of the conducted studies and the reproducibility of the obtained results, the use of generally accepted methods, devices, and mathematical processing of experimental data. (Results and discussion) The article presents the technological scheme and technical characteristics of the optoelectronic installation for the analysis and sorting of agricultural grain products, and parameters and modes of its operation. The main elements of this installation are: feed conveyors and an electromagnetic drum that provide a piecebypiece supply of seeds to the analysis zone, an optical unit of cameras for obtaining a threedimensional image of seeds, an executive unit for the rejection of grain products (pneumatic ejectors). (Conclusions) An experimental study of the efficiency of the designed installation was carried out. This device can be used for sorting analysis of various grain products: wheat, corn, barley, rice, buckwheat. The results of the study showed the high efficiency of the developed optoelectronic plant for the separation of grain products into fractions (the separation accuracy reaches 98%). The article reveals the possibility of determining phytopathologies by means of color analysis of seed images.

MANA: A Monolithic Adiabatic iNtegration Architecture Microprocessor Using 1.4-zJ/op Unshunted Superconductor Josephson Junction Devices

We conducted the first successful demonstration of an adiabatic microprocessor based on unshunted Josephson junction (JJ) devices manufactured using a Nb/AlO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</sub> /Nb superconductor IC fabrication process. It is a hybrid of RISC and dataflow architectures operating on 4-b data words. We demonstrate register file R/W access, ALU execution, hardware stalling, and program branching performed at 100 kHz under the cryogenic temperature of 4.2 K. We also successfully demonstrated a high-speed breakout chip of the microprocessor execution units up to 2.5 GHz. We use a logic primitive called the adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP), which has a switching energy of 1.4 zJ per JJ when driven by a four-phase 5-GHz sinusoidal ac-clock at 4.2 K. These demonstrations show that AQFP logic is capable of both processing and memory operations and that we have a path toward practical adiabatic computing operating at high-clock rates while dissipating very little energy.

A fixed-parameter algorithm for scheduling unit dependent tasks on parallel machines with time windows

This paper proves that the existence of a feasible schedule for a set of dependent tasks of unit execution times with release dates and deadlines on a limited number of processors is a fixed-parameter tractable problem. The parameter considered is the pathwidth of the interval graph associated with the time windows of the tasks. A fixed-parameter algorithm based on a dynamic programming approach is developed and proved to solve this decision problem.Fixed-parameter algorithms for the two classical problems P|prec,pi=1,ri|Cmax and P|prec,pi=1,ri|Lmax are then derived using a binary search. They are, as far as we know, the first fixed-parameter algorithms for these scheduling problems.

Development and Performance Analysis of Pneumatic Soft-Bodied Bionic Basic Execution Unit

This paper studies the design of pneumatic soft-bodied bionic basic execution unit with soft-rigid combination, which can be used as an actuator for pneumatic soft-bodied robots and soft-bodied manipulators. This study is inspired by structural characteristics and motion mechanism of biological muscles, combined with the nonlinear hyperelasticity of silica gel and the insertion of thin leaf spring structure in the nonretractable layer. Response surface analysis and numerical simulation algorithm are used to determine the optimal combination of structural dimension parameters by taking the maximum output bending angle of the basic executing unit as the optimization objective. Based on Odgen’s third-order constitutive model, the deformation analysis model of the basic execution unit is established. The physical model of pneumatic soft-bodied bionic basic execution unit is prepared through 3D printing, shape deposition, soft lithography, and other processing methods. Finally, the motion and dynamic characteristics of the physical model are tested through experiments and result analysis, thus obtaining curves and empirical formulas describing the motion and dynamic characteristics of the basic execution unit. The relevant errors are compared with the deformation analysis model of the execution unit to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the design of the pneumatic soft-bodied bionic basic execution unit. The above research methods, research process, and results can provide a reference for the research and implementation of pneumatic and hydraulic driven soft-bodied robots and grasping actuators of soft-bodied manipulators.

Preface

The 6th International Scientific Conference: NEWTECH 2020 – Advanced Manufacturing Engineering and Technologies was organized by Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, Romania. It was held between 9th-11th of September 2020 in Galati, Romania and was supported by the The Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation (UEFISCDI).The Conference: NEWTECH 2020 – Advanced Manufacturing Engineering and Technologies has a tradition of over 10 years, the inaugural edition having been organized in 2009 by the Dunarea de Jos University of Galati. This was followed by the 2011 edition in Brno, Czech Republic; 2013 at the KHT Institute of Technology, Stockholm; 2015 at Wroclaw University of Technology and 2017 at the University of Belgrade.Editors NEWTECH 2020, Conference Committees are available in the pdf.

Real-Time Scheduling for Periodic Tasks on Uniform Multiprocessors

The problem of scheduling a set of periodic tasks on a uniform multiprocessor system is considered in the present study. Each processor in a uniform multiprocessor system is characterized by its speed or computation capacity, i.e., execution of a job on a processor with speed s for t time units completes s × t units of execution. In the commonly-known partitioned scheduling, each task is assigned to a processor and all of its jobs are required to be executed on that processor. However, partitioning of periodic tasks requires solving the bin-packing problem, which is known to be intractable (NPhard in the strong sense). This paper presents a global scheduling algorithm that transforms a given periodic task system into another using a “task-splitting” (as opposed to the “set-splitting”) technique. Each transformed periodic task system is guaranteed to be scheduled successfully on any uniform multiprocessor using a partitioned scheduling algorithm. The earliest deadline first (EDF) algorithm is chosen for scheduling tasks on each processor. It is proven that the proposed algorithm results in the theoretical-maximum utilization bound on any uniform multiprocessor platform if the platform is “reasonably powerful”. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is optimal in the sense of maximizing achievable utilization. Since the task-splitting technique will incur context switches during runtime, we have also considered the ways of reducing the number of context switches, and suggest a method which can significantly reduce the number of context switches in the schedules generated by the proposed algorithm.

A New Bidirectional DC Circuit Breaker With Fault Decision-Making Capability for DC Microgrid

DC circuit breaker (DCCB) plays an important role in dc system protection as an execution unit for disconnecting fault lines. However, due to the nature of dc current, it is a challenge for DCCB to quickly turn off and isolate the fault current. Therefore, a new bidirectional DCCB with decision-making capability based on Z-source topology is proposed in this article, which is able to respond to a fault in a few microseconds. The proposed topology uses only one coupled inductor with a central tap structure in the core part, which improves the utilization ratio of the coupled inductor and reduces the volume and cost of the DCCB. Compared with previous DCCBs, the proposed topology has a simpler structure, fewer windings and components, and smaller volume. In this article, the turn off process of the proposed topology under the line fault condition is analyzed in detail, and the hardware circuit design process is given. The performance of the proposed topology was verified by MATLAB simulation and hardware experiments.

Optimized crew selection for scheduling of repetitive projects

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify optimum crew formations at unit execution level of repetitive projects that minimize project duration, project cost, crew work interruptions and interruption costs, simultaneously.Design/methodology/approachThe model consists of four modules. The first module quantifies uncertainties associated with the crew productivity rate and quantity of work using the fuzzy set theory. The second module identifies feasible boundaries for activity relaxation. The third module computes direct cost, indirect cost and interruption costs, including idle crew cost as well as mobilization and demobilization costs. The fourth module identifies near-optimum crew formation using a newly developed multi-objective optimization model.FindingsThe developed model was able to provide improvements of 0.2, 16.86 and 12.98% for minimization of project cost, crew work interruptions and interruption costs from US$1,505,960, 8.3 days and US$8,300, as recently reported in the literature, to US$1,502,979, 6.9 days and US$7,222, respectively, without impacting the optimized project duration.Originality/valueThe novelty of this paper lies in its activity-relaxation free float that considers the effect of postponing early finish dates of repetitive activities on crew work interruptions. The introduced new float allows for calculating the required crew productivity rate that minimizes crew work interruptions without delaying successor activities and without impacting the optimized project duration. It safeguards against assignment of unnecessary costly resources.

Reliability and availability modeling of Subsea Autonomous High Integrity Pressure Protection System with partial stroke test by Dynamic Bayesian

Subsea Autonomous High Integrity Pressure Protection System is used in the subsea production process to lower the pressure level of downstream equipment and pipelines and to protect low-pressure pipelines and equipment. Once failure occurs, it will cause serious environmental damage and huge economic losses. In this article, a method of Dynamic Bayesian networks is proposed based on different failure types detected by different test methods. The reliability and availability of HIPPS with different detection methods were analyzed quantitatively. The results show that the performance of the system is improved significantly after inspection and maintenance. Compared with traditional methods, the performance of HIPPS is improved after the partial stroke test is introduced. Through sensitivity analysis, it is found that failure rates have a greater impact on the reliability of HIPPS valves. Increasing partial stroke test coverage can improve HIPPS performance. To improve the reliability of HIPPS, it is necessary to improve the reliability of the execution unit, especially the HIPPS valves. The analysis of the PST strategy can provide a theoretical basis for selecting the frequency of partial stroke test and functional test interval in actual projects.

Flexible-elastomer-based active radial embedded actuation system of railway vehicles

To improve the integration of active radial systems of railway vehicles and their adaptability to the vehicle structure, this paper proposes an active radial actuation system based on flexible elastomers. The execution unit of the system has a compact layout and can be embedded in an axle box. The core functional component is a flexible elastic oil-filled rubber bladder, which has active radial actuating capabilities and provides primary longitudinal suspension stiffness. To clarify these aspects of the execution unit, the typical physical properties of the rubber bladder are analysed using a fluid-structure-interaction finite element analysis method. The resulting calculation data are used to formulate the response characteristic equation of the execution unit. This equation is used to establish a simulation model of the actuation system, and the response characteristics of the proposed actuation system and traditional hydraulic cylinder are analysed and compared. The results show that the proposed system exhibits better following performance. Subsequently, the SIMPACK-SIMULINK co-simulation results indicate that the system can realize an effective primary longitudinal suspension; further, in the active radial mode, the performance indexes of vehicle curve passing are significantly improved. These findings provide a reference for the engineering implementation of active radial technology.

Cloud‐based production logistics synchronisation service infrastructure for customised production processes

Under the customised production mode, the uncertainty of orders, resources, and processes cause the production system to inevitably be affected by various dynamics. In Industry 4.0 deployment, production logistics synchronisation (PLS) requires production systems to support synchronised operation among multiple units in the internet of things environment, thereby ensuring the optimal operation of the system. This means that enterprises need to dynamically optimise hardware/software resource configuration and execution plans for execution units. These all require a lot of capital and technology investment, which ordinary enterprises can hardly afford. Therefore, how to provide low-cost, high-quality flexible resources and synchronised decision support have become the two key challenges in achieving PLS. Then the cloud-based PLS service infrastructure (CPLSS) is proposed. The CPLSS is oriented towards the synchronised operation requirements of customised production systems and adopts an integrated service mode to provide reconfigurable hardware/software resources and synchronised decision support services for the resource service life cycle. A real-life case study of applying CPLSS solution in an air-conditioning industry has been conducted. The implementation results show that the proposed CPLSS solution can reduce operating costs and improve the efficiency of finished product warehousing.

Quality Control of the Continuous Hot Pressing Process of Medium Density Fiberboard Using Fuzzy Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

In this paper, a fuzzy failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method is proposed by combining fault theory and a failure analysis method. The method addresses the problem of board thickness control failure and the problem of thickness deviation defect blanking, which can occur during continuous hot pressing (CHP) process, which is one of the most important processes in the production of medium-density fiberboard (MDF). The method combines the fault analysis with the Hamming code method and using the Hamming code to calculate and represent the cylinder array of the continuous hot-pressed thickness control execution unit to analyze and process the potential fixed thickness failure modes in MDF hot press production, and then summarizes the decision rules for controlling the board thickness and the level of sheet deviation. By combining the fuzzy FMEA method of the Hamming code and the logical OR operation of the experimental analysis, the method of thickness deviation and recognition control fault information for the CHP of MDF, which is proposed in this paper, permits the increase of the number of error levels, which makes optimization for controller more convenient and improves the efficiency to recognize errors.

Aging-Aware Context Switching in Multicore Processors Based on Workload Classification

As transistor dimensions continue to shrink, long-term reliability threats, such as Negative Bias Temperature Instability, affect multicore processors lifespan. This letter proposes a load balancing technique, based on the rate of integer and floating-point instructions per workloads. This technique classifies workloads into integer-majority and floating-point-majority classes and migrates workloads among cores in order to relax the stressed execution units. The context switching feature of operating system is employed to reduce implementation and performance overheads of the proposed technique. According to the simulations, the proposed technique reduces the aging rate of a multicore processor by about 35 percent in 10 years of system operation. This is achieved by only 7 percent performance penalty.

Self-Adjusting Monitor for Measuring Aging Rate and Advancement

Time-variant age information of different parts of a system can be used for system-level performance improvement through high-level task scheduling, thus extending the life-time of the system. Progressive age information should provide the age state that the system is in, and the rate that it is being aged at. In this paper, we propose a structure that monitors certain paths of a circuit and detects its gradual age growth, and provides the aging rate and aging state of the circuit. The proposed monitors are placed on a selected set of nodes that represent a timing bottleneck of the system. These monitors sample expected data on these nodes, and compare them with the expected values. The timing of sampling changes as the circuit ages and its delay increases. The timing of sampling will provide a measure of aging advancement of a circuit. To assess the efficacy of the proposed method and compare it with other state-of-the-art aging monitors, we use them on selected nodes of the execution unit of different processors, as well as some circuits from ITC99 benchmarks. The results reveal that the precision of our proposed method is between 0.12 (ns) to 0.401 (ns). Its Area and power overhead are negligible and are about 2.13 and 0.69 percent respectively.

EREER: Energy-aware register file and execution unit using exploiting redundancy in GPGPUs

Nowadays, the use of GPGPUs is growing in high-performance computing including embedded system. Demanding more processing power increase the size of Register File (RF) and Execution Unit (EU) in GPGPUs, that increase the power consumption. However, energy and power consumption are vital for the embedded system due to using a battery and a simple cooling system. In this paper, initially, we have proposed a simple method to identify duplicated data in RF of GPGPUs. Afterward, we propose a compression method to improve the energy efficiency of RF by eliminating duplicated data and consequently unallocating some of RF banks. Experimental results on standard benchmarks show that our compression method reduces the total RF power consumption by 15% on average by considering overhead degradation. Furthermore, we propose a computation reuse method in the EU to exploit computation redundancy. This method utilizes the compression information of RF to identify the identical computations and turn off the processing cores that execute them. Moreover, our computation reuse method improves the EU energy efficiency by 28.8% on average.

FlexGripPlus: An improved GPGPU model to support reliability analysis

General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) have been extensively used in the last decade as accelerators in high demanding applications, such as multimedia processing and high-performance computing. Nowadays, these devices are becoming popular even in safety-critical applications, such as in autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. However, these devices can suffer from the effects of transient faults, such as those produced by radiation effects. Among those effects, Single Event Upsets (SEUs), which are the focus of this paper, can cause application misbehaviors, which may lead to catastrophic consequences. In this work, we first describe how we extended the capabilities of an open-source VHDL GPGPU model (FlexGrip) and developed a new version named FlexGripPlus to study and analyze the effects of SEUs in a GPGPU in a much more detailed manner. We also performed extensive fault injection campaigns using FlexGripPlus, which allowed identifying the most critical effects within the GPGPU architecture. We finally focused on the scheduler controller since it represents a module that is specific to the GPGPU architecture and showed that it has different levels of SEU sensibility depending on the affected location. Moreover, the results of additional analyses varying the number of parallel execution units in the system are presented, demonstrating the correlation between the number of execution units in a GPGPU and the system reliability.

Pneumatical-Mechanical Tactile Stimulation Device for Somatotopic Mapping of Body Surface During fMRI.

There is a need for devices that allow reproducible stimulation of skin areas of humans for investigating somatosensory mapping of the whole-body surface. However, their design is not simple, due to the magnetic field of MRI scanners. To accurately characterize the mapping of somatosensory presentation of the whole-body surface of subjects during functional (f)MRI scans. Prospective. A water phantom and six healthy participants (age 23-27 years; two males) were recruited for the fMRI experiment. T1 -weighted magnetization-prepared rapid acquisition gradient-echo, T2 *-weighted gradient echo sequence at 3T. The stimulation device for somatotopic mapping was composed of three units: an air-generating unit, a control unit, and an execution unit. The fMRI in response to tactile stimulation was measured to characterize somatotopic mapping of the right-side body consisting of hand, arm, and leg in six healthy subjects. Pared-samples t-test for the conditions in SII. The pneumatical-mechanical tactile stimulation offered a wide range of stimulation intensities (0-400 g) in each channel. The predetermined physical pressure was successfully reached within ~5 msec and returned to baseline within 5 msec after the end of stimulation. With this tactile device, the digressive rate of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) (271.44 without the device, 269.68 with the device) was 0.65% in the magnetic field environment. For the fMRI experiment, the primary somatosensory activation contralateral to the stimulation site was detected in response to spatial task and attentive task. This stimulation device characterized the mapping of somatosensory representation of the whole-body surface in individual participants during fMRI scans. 2. 1. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2020;52:1093-1101.

Method of hiding the architecture and configuration of the sensor network based on the dynamic topology

Sensor network usually refers to a wireless distributed self-configuring network that consists of sensors and execution units and is designed for machine-to-machine communication, automation, machine diagnostics, telemetry task solving. Sensor networks differ from other networks by the ease of use and deployment, low maintenance requirements, fault tolerance, and reliability. Every year, sensor networks, which are usually used in industrial systems, are increasingly exposed to malicious attacks. Although some sensor network communication protocols support encrypted connections, the nature of node data exchange allows attackers to identify key nodes and possible attack vectors. In this paper we present a method of hiding the architecture and configuration of the sensor network, which allows to protect against compromise not only the nodes involved in data exchange, but also the transmitted data. This method does not interfere with the attacker’s actions, but significantly complicates network traffic analysis, so that the intruder cannot carry out an attack because of the lack of data on network structure and configuration.

MicroScope: Enabling Microarchitectural Replay Attacks

A microarchitectural replay attack is a novel class of attack where an adversary can denoise nearly arbitrary microarchitectural side channels in a single run of the victim. The idea is to cause the victim to repeatedly replay by inducing pipeline flushes. In this article, we design, implement, and demonstrate our ideas in a framework, called MicroScope, that causes repeated pipeline flushes by inducing page faults. Our main result shows that MicroScope can denoise the port contention channel of execution units. Specifically, we show how MicroScope can reliably detect the presence or absence of as few as two divide instructions in a single logical run of the victim program. We also discuss the broader implications of microarchitectural replay attacks.

Comparison of High-Torque Electric Motors with Magnetic Cores Made of Amorphous Iron and Electrotechnical Steel

High-torque permanent magnet synchronous electric motors (HPMSM) are widely used in many industries due to their minimum weight and size parameters, low vibrations and high efficiency at maximum torque. A special effect from the use of HPMSM can be achieved in the aerospace industry as electric motors for various executive units, for example, a flap drive, slats or elevators. The purpose of this work is to make experimental studies and research using the finite element method of the characteristics and parameters of HPMSM with magnetic cores of ALM with more than 6 slots, created according to the technology developed by the authors for manufacturing magnetic cores of ALM. This article considers the experimental studies that have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and features of the ALM application in HPMSM. In order to assess the effectiveness of using ALM HPMSM with a magnetic core made of ALM, it is compared with a similar HPMSM, whose magnetic core is made of electrotechnical steel. A multi-polar HPMSM with a fractional toothed winding is considered. The research results show the possibility of creating HPMSM with magnetic cores of ALM and the effectiveness of using ALM in HPMSM has been proven.