Notification Oriented Paradigm Research Articles

Modeling and Performance Analysis of a Notification-Based Method for Processing Video Queries on the Fly

With the rapid growth of video data, the search for content and events in videos is becoming increasingly relevant, and many challenges arise. Various approaches have been proposed to deal with many issues. However, many open questions are still related to computational cost and latency, especially for real-time applications. Considering the need for new and efficient solutions, the so-called NOP (Notification Oriented Paradigm) could be a suitable alternative. NOP introduced a new way of thinking and developing software in which small collaborative entities perform fact execution and logical decision processing based on precise notifications. Following these concepts and practical tools, this paper proposes a new querying processing method based on NOP, focusing on search and matching in a continuous flow context. Experiments on a labeled dataset demonstrated the suitability of the proposed method for low-latency processing with polynomial complexity. The results are better than the state of the art, which works at exponential cost.

Notification Oriented Paradigm to Digital Hardware — A benchmark evaluation with Random Forest algorithm

The Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) emerges as an alternative to develop and execute applications. The NOP brings a new inference concept based on precise notifying collaborative minimal entities. This inference implicitly allows achieving decoupled solutions, thereby enabling parallelism at a granularity level as fine-grained as possible in the envisaged computational platform. Previous research has proposed a digital circuit solution based on the NOP model, which is called NOP to Digital Hardware (DH), as a sort of High-Level Synthesis (HLS) prototype tool. The results with NOP-DH were encouraging indeed. However, the previous NOP-DH works lack benchmarks that exploit well-known algorithms against known HLS tools, such as the Vivado HLS tool, which is one of the suitable commercial HLS solutions. This work proposes evaluating the NOP-DH applied to develop the well-known Random Forest algorithm. The Random Forest is a popular Machine Learning algorithm used in several classification and regression applications. Due to the high number of logic-causal evaluations in the Random Forest algorithm and the possibility of running them in parallel, it is suitable for envisaged benchmark purpose. Experiments were performed to compare NOP-DH, and two Vivado HLS approaches (an ad hoc code and a hls4ml tool-based code) in terms of performance, amount of logic elements, maximum frequency, and the number of predictions per second. Those experiments demonstrated that NOP-DH circuits achieve better results concerning the number of logical elements and prediction rates, with some scalability limitations as a drawback. On average, the NOP-DH uses 52.5% fewer resources, and the number of predictions per second is 4.7 times higher than Vivado HLS. Finally, our codes are made publicly available at https://nop.dainf.ct.utfpr.edu.br/nop-public/nop-dh-random-forest-algorithm.

The Notification Oriented Paradigm Language to Digital Hardware as an Intuitive High-level Synthesis Tool

The parallelism allowed by FPGAs has attracted attention for knowing applications that need processing power. However, the need for specific and very technical development language has not stimulate its broad use. As an alternative, there are High-level Synthesis Languages (HSL), which allow less complicated FPGA use. However, they do not tend to take full advantage of the FPGA technology. Therefore, another alternative was developed, based on the Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP), called NOP for Digital Hardware (NOP-DH). NOP allows development in high level with its rule-oriented language called NOPL. Its entity decoupling, parallelism, and redundancy avoidance are useful for best performance. In turn, the NOP-DH brings NOP for the FPGA context with the benefits observed in software but enhanced by hardware nature. This paper reviews the NOPL for NOP-DH (NOPL-DH) that aims high level programming for FPGA. The paper proposes the NOPL-DH test by independent developers, by developing a monitoring device for a box transporting bidirectional conveyer. As a result, NOPL-DH allowed high-level development under the NOP-DH structure in an FPGA, without the need for technical knowledge and, still, maintaining and exploring the NOP properties in FPGA

NOP-DH – Evaluation Over Bitonic Sort Algorithm

The growing use of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to increase application performance requires tools that simplify the digital circuit development process. Traditional approaches of Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) are complex and require specialized knowledge at a low-level abstraction. In turn, different approaches called High-Level Synthesis (HLS) aim at facilitating the development of FPGA applications, making this development process closer to those of software using programming languages such as C or C++. However, these alternatives do not properly exploit the parallelism capability of FPGAs as they are based on usual sequential approaches and, moreover, continue to depend on developer technical knowledge about the target hardware. The Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) emerges as an alternative to develop and execute applications. The NOP brings a new inference concept based on precise notifying collaborative entities. This type of inference allows presenting an innovative way of implicitly achieving decoupled and decentralized solutions, thereby enabling parallelism and distribution in a level of granularity as fine as possible in the envisaged computational platform. In this context, researches on NOP have proposed the design of digital circuits based on the NOP model, called NOP Digital Hardware (DH). In this paper, it is proposed to evaluate the use of the NOP-DH to develop the well-known Bitonic Sort, which is a sort algorithm useful as benchmark. This algorithm has particular properties that are advantageous for parallel execution, especially in FPGAs. Experiments were performed to compare the performance, amount of logic elements, and maximum frequency of NOP-DH against the traditional VHDL approach. These experiments demonstrated that even with a higher abstraction level of development, NOP-DH circuits achieve similar results when compared to the traditional development in VHDL.

Notification-oriented software design methodology

The Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) is an alternative paradigm of software programming, in which a rules-oriented and notifications approach about factual elements are applied. In Notification Oriented Paradigm, rules and factual elements are decomposed into a set of entities that communicate themselves directly through notifications, and it constitutes a process of active inference about the rules. The paradigm particulars also lead to challenges in the software design. For example, the full use of Unified Modeling Language (UML) is not suitable for the Notification Oriented Paradigm because this paradigm is not object-oriented. This paper proposes the Notification-Oriented software design Methodology (NOM), which applies concepts of software design within a new notation for modeling, defined as Holonic Flow Diagram (HFD). The Notification-Oriented software design Methodology was tried and evaluated in some use cases. In addition, it was conduced a focus group with Notification Oriented Paradigm expert developers that demonstrated the methodology viability.

NOCA — A Notification-Oriented Computer Architecture: Prototype and Simulator

The Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) introduced a new organization of software and hardware logic based on notifications among computational entities. This NOP new organization avoids processing redundancy and allows processing unit decoupling, therefore permitting proper processing performance and processing parallelism/distribution. Thus, the NOP provides means to make efficient use of the parallel execution capabilities of modern computing systems. However, as expected, the execution dynamics of NOP, based on notifications, is not efficiently performed by the hardware of most current computing systems. This paper presents a new solution called Notification-Oriented Computer Architecture (NOCA), which is suitable for the execution of software developed according to the NOP computing model. The NOCA was designed according to principles of generality and scalability, which allow it to execute NOP software of any size by fetching the application from memory. The proposed architecture is organized as a fine-grained multiprocessor that hierarchically executes instructions through sets of specialized processing cores. Preliminary experiments performed on prototypal FPGA implementation of the NOCA showed the expected behavior of executing NOP applications according to its theoretical computing model. This paper also presents experiments performed on a NOCA simulator extending the scale of parallelization of applications. Results show improvements in maximizing the speedups at higher scales of parallelization, as well as minimizing the effects of processor-to-memory communication bottlenecks by reducing the number of required memory accesses during execution.

Proposal of a declarative and parallelizable artificial neural network using the notification-oriented paradigm

Since the 1960s, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been implemented and applied in various areas of knowledge. Most of these implementations had their development guided by imperative programming (IP), usually resulting in highly coupled programs. Thus, even though intrinsically parallel in theory, ANNs do not easily take an effective distribution on multiple processors when developed under IP. As an alternative, the notification-oriented paradigm (NOP) emerges as a new programming technique. NOP facilitates the development of decoupled and distributed systems, using abstraction of knowledge through logical–causal rules, as well as the generation of an optimized code. Both features are possible by means of a notification-oriented inference process, which avoids structural and temporal redundancies in the logic–causal evaluations. These advantages are relevant to systems that have parts decoupled in order to run in parallel, such as ANN. In this sense, this work presents the development of a multilayer perceptron ANN using backpropagation training algorithm based on the concepts of a NOP implementation. Such implementation allows, transparently from high-level programming, parallel code generation that runs on multicore platforms. Furthermore, the solution based on NOP, when compared against the equivalent on IP, presents a high level of decoupling and explicit use of logic–causal elements, which are, respectively, useful to distribution, understanding and improvement of the application.

A Tool for Digital Circuits Synthesis Based on Notification Oriented Paradigm

FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) are proving to be an alternative for applications that require great processing power because they allow parallelism. Still, the high-level synthesis tools allow professionals without hardware knowledge to use FPGAs. However, this high-level tools do not allow to properly explore the parallelism because they are either based on sequential techniques or rely on languages with an insufficient level of abstraction. In this paper it is proposed the use of the Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) for Digital Hardware as a high-level synthesis tool. The NOP is a development technique that presents a new concept for designing and executing applications, based on rules and collaborative entities, which communicate through notifications in a parallel way. In order to allow the use of the NOP in the creation of digital hardware as a new high-level synthesis tool, a new programming language was proposed, and both a compiler and an emulator where implemented. With these tools it is possible to generate VHDL code directly from a high level NOP program. In order to evaluate the performance and stability of circuits generated with these tools, some experiments were performed. These experiments demonstrated that the NOP for Digital Hardware allows quickly and easily creating reliable digital circuits with suitable performance and parallelism, directly from a high-level development environment.

Notification-Oriented Paradigm to Implement Digital Hardware

The growing demand for high-performance digital circuits, mainly involving FPGAs, increases the demand for high-level synthesis (HLS) tools. Traditional Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) are complex and depend on low-level abstractions, thereby requiring hardware detailed knowledge from developers. In turn, the current HLS tools are based on proprietary or C/C[Formula: see text] derived languages, which allow easier circuit description but decrease performance. This work presents an alternative solution for designing digital circuits, which arises from the Notification-Oriented Paradigm (NOP). The NOP is an alternative computing solution based upon a set of predefined interconnected entities whose collaborations are performed through precise notifications. The NOP, when targeted to digital hardware (DH), allows the developer to describe the circuit behavior just by connecting and parameterizing elements. The result is a VHDL file that can be compiled for any platform from any manufacturer. In order to check the functionality of this approach, sorting circuits were built both with usual VHDL and with the NOP VHDL aiming to compare the resulting circuits in terms of operating frequency and resource use. The results show that the NOP VHDL approach facilitates the build of digital circuits when compared to the VHDL usual approach without limiting the operating frequency or increasing the use of resources.

Notification Oriented Paradigm Applied to Ambient Assisted Living Tool

The rising in life expectancy is reflected in an increase in the elderly population and numerous actions become necessary to ensure the elderly a proper quality of life and independence in performing daily tasks. One of the applications of the Internet of Things technology (IoT) is the creation of smart environments with interactive devices allowing integration between the physical environment and the individual. A viable application of intelligent environments is the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), which can enable elderly and people with some kind of limitations be assisted in their daily routine, independently and safely. In this context, in order to provide support technology, this research aims to evaluate the adhesion of Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) to IoT. NOP provides means for the development of robust systems, distributed, consistent, and rule-based systems for smart environments. Thus, to verify this adherence, it was created an application where is possible to manage rules and sensors dynamically and in real time, besides to enable notifications between sensors connected in different environments. This application can run on a microcomputer Raspberry Pi that simulates the rules and sensors in a virtual environment, acting as a simulator. The result of the simulation was evaluated by measuring the execution time of a set of rules notified among different environments. The results achieved for execution time, in the range of milliseconds, are sufficient for the demands required by systems in real scenarios, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the intelligent systems developed by means of NOP.

Notification-Oriented Paradigm Framework 2.0: An Implementation Based On Design Patterns

The Notification-Oriented Paradigm (NOP) is a new technique to develop software. NOP is a rule-oriented approach where every rule and fact-base element is derived into less complex entities with specific tasks. These entities particularly collaborate by means of notifications, which occur only when their state changes. This allows carrying out an inference process completely active. Due to this particular arrangement, NOP can eliminate most of the structural and temporal redundancies that affects program execution performance, difficulties in codification level, and high coupling in program modules. In order to validate the NOP state of art, a framework was initially implemented in C++. Even though it quite demonstrated the features of the paradigm in terms of the development process, it still presented a gap in execution performance. In this context, this paper presents the NOP Framework 2.0. This new version was reengineered aiming better structuration and improvements in the execution time of NOP applications. The experiments show that the new implementation is two times faster than the former one. In addition, new experiments were presented comparing the NOP applications to equivalent implementations based on Oriented-Object Paradigm (OOP) in C++. The NOP applications presented, in some cases, better performance than the OOP applications.

NOCA ‑ A Notification-Oriented Computer Architecture

Current software development processes lack techniques for the productive and quality design of software that makes efficient use of the parallel execution capabilities provided by the hardware of modern computing systems. In this context, the Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) has been recently developed aiming at a new organization of software logic based on notifications among causal-logical entities. NOP allows exploring the parallelization and/or distribution in a simpler and more efficient way than more commonly used programming paradigms. However, the execution dynamics under the NOP, based on notifications, is not efficiently performed by the hardware of current computing systems. This paper presents a new computer architecture, named NOCA, which is suitable for execution of software developed according to the NOP computing model. NOCA was designed in accordance with the principles of generality and scalability, which allow it to execute NOP software at any level of complexity by fetching it from a program memory. The developed architecture is organized as a fine grain multiprocessor that hierarchically executes instructions through sets of specialized processor cores. Preliminary experiments performed on this architecture show that NOCA presents improvements in terms of performance comparative evaluations.

Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) and Imperative Paradigm: A Comparative Study

This paper presents a new programming paradigm named Notification Oriented Paradigm (NOP) and analyses performance aspects of NOP programs by means of an experiment. NOP provides a new manner to conceive, structure, and execute software, which allows better performance, causal-knowledge organization, and entity decoupling than standard solutions based upon current paradigms. These paradigms are essentially Imperative Paradigm (IP) and Declarative Paradigm (DP). In short, DP solutions are considered easier to use than IP solutions thanks to the concept of high-level programming. However, they are considered slower to execute and lesser flexible to program than IP. Anyway, both paradigms present similar drawbacks like causal-evaluation redundancies and strongly coupled entities, which decrease software performance and processing distribution feasibility. These problems exist due to an orientation to monolithic inference mechanism based upon sequential evaluation by means of searches over passive computational entities. NOP proposes another manner to structure software and make its inferences, which is based upon small, smart, and decoupled collaborative entities whose interaction happen by means of precise notifications. This paper discusses NOP as a paradigm and presents certain comparison of NOP against IP. Actually, performance is evaluated by means of IP and NOP programs with respect to a same application, which allow demonstrating NOP superiority.

A Game Comparative Study: Object-Oriented Paradigm and Notification-Oriented Paradigm

This paper presents a new programming paradigm named Notification-Oriented Paradigm (NOP) and analyses the performance aspects of NOP programs by means of an experiment. NOP provides a new manner to conceive, structure, and execute software, which would allow better performance, causal-knowledge organization, and decoupling than standard solutions based upon usual paradigms. These paradigms are essentially Imperative Paradigm (IP) and Declarative Paradigm (DP). In short, DP solutions are considered easier to use than IP solutions due to the concept of high-level programming. However, they are considered slower in execution and less flexible in development. Anyway, both paradigms present similar drawbacks such as redundant causal-evaluation and strongly coupled entities, which decrease the software performance and the processing distribution feasibility. These problems exist due to an orientation to a monolithic inference mechanism based upon sequential evaluation by searching on passive computational entities. NOP proposes another way to structure software and make its inferences, which is based upon small, collaborative, and decoupled computational entities whose interaction happens through precise notifications. In this context, this paper presents a quantitative comparison between two equivalent implementations of a computer game simulator (Pacman simulator), one developed according to the principles of Object-Oriented Paradigm (OOP/IP) in C++ and other developed according to the principles of NOP. The results obtained from the experiments demonstrate, however, a quite lower performance of NOP implementation. This happened because NOP applications are still developed using a framework based on C++. Besides, the paper shows that optimizations in the NOP framework improve NOP program performance, thereby evidencing the necessity of developing a NOP language/compiler.

Notification Oriented and Object Oriented Paradigms Comparison via Sale System

This paper presents a new programming paradigm named Notification-Oriented Paradigm (NOP) and analyses the performance aspects of NOP programs by means of an experiment. NOP provides a new manner to conceive, structure, and execute software, which would allow causal-knowledge organization and decoupling better than standard solutions based upon current paradigms. These paradigms are essentially Imperative Paradigm (IP) and Declarative Paradigm (DP). In short, DP solutions are considered easier to use than IP solutions due to the concept of high-level programming. However, they are considered slower in execution and lesser flexible in development. Anyway, both paradigms present similar drawbacks such as redundant causal-evaluation and strongly coupled entities, which decrease software performance and processing distribution feasibility. These problems exist due to an orientation to a monolithic inference mechanism based on sequential evaluation searching on passive computational entities. NOP proposes another way to structure software and make its inferences, which is based on small, collaborative, and decoupled computational entities whose interaction happens through precise notifications. This paper presents a quantitative comparison between two equivalent implementations of a sale system, one developed according to the principles of Object-Oriented Paradigm (OOP/IP) in C++ and other developed according to the principles of NOP based on a NOP framework in C++. The results showed that NOP implementation obtained quite equivalent results with respect to OOP implementation. This happened because the NOP framework uses considerable expensive data-structures over C++. Thus, it is necessary a new compiler to NOP in order to actually use its potentiality.