Task Relocation Research Articles

On the Performance of Malleable APGAS Programs and Batch Job Schedulers

Malleability—the ability for applications to dynamically adjust their resource allocations at runtime—presents great potential to enhance the efficiency and resource utilization of modern supercomputers. However, applications are rarely capable of growing and shrinking their number of nodes at runtime, and batch job schedulers provide only rudimentary support for such features. While numerous approaches have been proposed to enable application malleability, these typically focus on iterative computations and require complex code modifications. This amplifies the challenges for programmers, who already wrestle with the complexity of traditional MPI inter-node programming. Asynchronous Many-Task (AMT) programming presents a promising alternative. In AMT, computations are split into many fine-grained tasks, which are processed by workers. This makes transparent task relocation via the AMT runtime system possible, thus offering great potential for enabling efficient malleability. In this work, we propose an extension to an existing AMT system, namely APGAS for Java. We provide easy-to-use malleability programming abstractions, requiring only minor application code additions from programmers. Runtime adjustments, such as process initialization and termination, are automatically managed by our malleability extension. We validate our malleability extension by adapting a load balancing library handling multiple benchmarks. We show that both shrinking and growing operations cost low execution time overhead. In addition, we demonstrate compatibility with potential batch job schedulers by developing a prototype batch job scheduler that supports malleable jobs. Through extensive real-world job batches execution on up to 32 nodes, involving rigid, moldable, and malleable programs, we evaluate the impact of deploying malleable APGAS applications on supercomputers. Exploiting scheduling algorithms, such as FCFS, Backfilling, Easy-Backfilling, and one exploiting malleable jobs, the experimental results highlight a significant improvement regarding several metrics for malleable jobs. We show a 13.09% makespan reduction (the time needed to schedule and execute all jobs), a 19.86% increase in node utilization, and a 3.61% decrease in job turnaround time (the time a job takes from its submission to completion) when using 100% malleable job in combination with our prototype batch job scheduler compared to the best-performing scheduling algorithm with 100% rigid jobs.

The Employment Effects of Technology, Trade, and Consumption in Global Value Chains: Evidence for Developing Asia

Global value chains (GVCs) have been a vehicle for job creation in developing Asia, but technology can also displace workers through automation or reshoring of production. We use an input–output approach to examine how employment responded to consumption, trade, and technological progress in 16 economies that accounted for about 95% of employment in developing Asia from 2008 to 2018. Structural decomposition analysis based on the Asian Development Bank’s Multiregional Input–Output database combined with harmonized cross-economy occupation by industry data indicates that, other things being equal, technological change within GVCs and task relocation relate to a decline of routine manual, relative to nonroutine cognitive, occupations in manufacturing. We find no evidence of major shifts in labor demand due to reshoring. Domestic consumption expenditure of goods and services is associated with an increase in labor demand that is large enough to offset efficiency changes in GVCs.

Secured Data Transmission with Integrated Fault Reduction Scheduling in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing offers end users a scalable and cost-effective way to access multi-platform data. While the Cloud Storage features endorse it, resource loss is also likely. A fault-tolerant mechanism is therefore required to achieve uninterrupted cloud service performances. The two widely used defect-tolerant mechanisms are task relocation and replication. But the replication approach leads to enormous overhead storage and computing as the number of tasks gradually increases. When a large number of defects occur, it creates more overhead storage and time complexity depending on task criticalities. An Integrated Fault Reduction Scheduling (IFRS) cloud computing model is used to resolve these problems. The probability of failure of a VM is calculated by finding the previous failures and active executions in this model. Then a fault-related adaptive recovery timer is retained, modified depending on the fault type. Experimental findings showed that IFRS reached 67% lower storage costs and 24% less response time when comparing with the current technique for sensitive tasks.

Critical Assessment of Phases of Partitioning and Offloading Tasks in Edge Computing

Edge computing defeats high correspondence defer weakness of customary distributed computing and furnishes figuring administrations with high unwavering quality and high transfer speed for cell phones. At present, edge processing has turned into the front line and hotspot of versatile edge distributed computing (MEC) look into. In any case, with the expanding prerequisites and administrations of versatile clients, offloading procedure of straightforward edge registering is never again relevant to MEC design. This paper advances another astute calculation offloading based MEC design in blend with man-made brainpower (AI) innovation. As indicated by the information size in calculation undertaking of portable clients and the exhibition highlights of edge figuring hubs, a calculation offloading and task relocation calculation dependent on errand expectation is proposed. The calculation task expectation dependent on LSTM calculation, calculation offloading procedure for cell phone dependent on errand forecast, and undertaking relocation for edge cloud planning plan are utilized to help with upgrading the edge processing offloading model.

A Hierarchical and Distributed Fault Tolerant Proposal for NoC-Based MPSoCs

Aggressive scaling of CMOS process technology allows the fabrication of highly integrated chips such as NoC-based MPSoCs. However, fault probability increases when devices’ size reduces. Hence, fault tolerant design has an important role in current nanometric technologies, leading to research on fault mitigation techniques for NoC-based MPSoCs. Most of the state-of-the-art papers present partial solutions to design a fault tolerant MPSoC, i.e., they present fault tolerant mechanisms for either NoCs or processing elements (PEs). The goal of this paper is to propose a comprehensive integration of previously defined recovery mechanisms. The main novelty is the system-level integration itself, which is organized in a hierarchical and distributed manner, ensuring the correct execution of applications in the presence of multiple transient or permanent faults in both the NoC and/or the PEs. The combination of both NoC and PE recovery methods enable the proposed system to tolerate a very severe number of faults. Depending on the severity of the fault in the NoC, it may operate in degraded mode or require the search of fault-free paths. In both cases, the communication is reestablished in less than 50 microseconds. Faults detected into the PEs fire a lightweight and fast task relocation protocol, which executes in less than one millisecond.

Technology, offshoring and the rise of non-routine jobs

This paper documents the growing share of non-routine jobs in the labor force of thirty-seven advanced and emerging countries over the period 1999–2007. To examine the role of offshoring and technological change in driving this labor market development, we develop a task-based model of production in global value chains and propose a decomposition of changes in occupational labor demand. In the setup of the model, technological change affects the total number of workers with a certain occupation throughout the production chain, while task relocation consists of a shift in occupational labor demand from one location to another. For the empirical implementation we combine harmonized cross-country occupations data with world input-output tables. The results of our decomposition suggest that technological change increased the number of non-routine relative to routine occupations in all countries. The effect of task relocation is less strong, and works in the same direction for advanced countries such as Germany and the United States but in the opposite direction for emerging countries such as China and Poland.

A modeling front-end for seamless design and generation of context-aware Dynamically Reconfigurable Systems-on-Chip

In this paper, we present a Model Driven Engineering (MDE) methodology for facilitating the modeling of the partial reconfiguration process, and for implementing Dynamic Reconfigurable System-on-Chip (DRSoC). The rationale for this approach is to provide a modeling front-end that enables to visually compose a hardware platform, containing heterogeneous components, using both static and context-management hardware wrappers. A model transformations engine (MTE) processes the high-level models to obtain the inputs for the Xilinx dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) design flow, with the benefit of better exploiting and reusing the designer intentions regarding the allocation of tasks into reconfigurable areas. Furthermore, the automatic synthesis of a reconfiguration controller (RecOS) with context-management and task relocation capabilities is supported in this version of our tool. The latter feature is possible due to the integration of relocation tool OORBIT into the design chain, but we point out at other avenues of research. We present a case study in which we assess the benefits of the methodology and present a thorough analysis of the reconfiguration costs associated with the context and relocation management, showing speedups of 1.5x over other solutions.

Multi-product offshoring

We show that the labor market effects of production linerelocations within multi-product firms differ significantly from the relocation of production tasks within single-product firms. By incorporating offshoring of labor-intensive goods in a model with multi-product firms, and exploring its implications in partial and general equilibrium, we identify the cannibalization effect of offshoring as an important transmission mechanism within multi-product firms and show that this effect hits domestic labor demand in addition to the well-known relocation effect. Furthermore, we contribute to the growing literature on multi-product firms and trade by showing that lower offshoring costs tend to increase the range of products produced.

Lean Product Development for Small and Medium-sized Suppliers

Product development processes (PDP) in the manufacturing industry have been increasingly designed according to the principles of lean development (LD). This concept is based on the fundamentals of lean production systems (LPS) and was transferred into the specifics of PDP. Supporting this concept, numerous companies were already able to partially realize and anchor significant improvements in their PDP. In addition to these improvements, an enhanced relocation of individual tasks and activities in the direction of the suppliers can be continuously observed in the context of product development (PD). As a result, external development service providers and suppliers thus obtain considerable influence on the dimensions cost, quality, and time of PD. While the concept of LD is successfully adopted for the manufacturers, suppliers hardly or do not work at all according to these principles and methods. Recent studies show that these methods and principles are of limited use for suppliers. This circumstance results from the difference in the process structure and the supplier-specific task and activity depth. Due to the proven successes of LD, it is necessary that – for further serious measures of improvement in the PDP – measures of improvement can also be transferred to suppliers. This article pursues the question of how such a LD should be designed for small and medium-sized suppliers (SMSSes). For this purpose, the existing LD concept is explained, and the characteristics of SMSSes are highlighted. Supplier-specific requirements that need to be considered for SMSSes in LD arise from these characteristics. Suitable established principles and methods are to be included in the supplier-specific concept or, if necessary, adapted to changed requirements. The article's aim is to develop and present a comparative concept, which highlights the differences and is specifically adapted to the SMSSes’ requirements.

Biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass - a multi-criteria approach for comparing overall concepts

Globally, due to rising mobility in the future, the fuel demand will continue to increase significantly. Thus, in addition to other options, like efficiency increase, traffic reduction and relocation of transportation tasks as well as electro mobility, biofuels are strongly required to cover at least part of the expected additional fuel consumption in the years to come. But the respective options are controversially discussed. Thus, for benchmarking different biofuel options and concepts, a methodical approach for the technical, economic and environmental analysis and evaluation of future biofuel concepts has been developed. This easily transferable multi-criteria approach is based on technical development prospects along the overall fuel supply chain and applied for selected biofuel options (i.e. ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, synthetic natural gas) based on lignocelluloses' biomass (i.e. willow as short rotation crop) provided in Central Europe. For each of these investigated biofuel options, reference concepts are developed relevant for the short, medium and long term taking into account detectible technical development prospects. They are analysed and evaluated according to selected technical, economic and environmental parameters. Finally, an overall assessment is done for all concepts.

The organizational design of offshoring: Taking stock and moving forward

Offshoring can be defined as the relocation of organizational tasks and services to foreign locations. At the same time as the scale and scope of offshoring have reached unprecedented levels in recent years, firms have increasingly been exposed to the challenges relating to managing an organization consisting of a number of offshored activities. In this special issue introduction paper, we argue that an organizational design perspective on offshoring can benefit research and practice in understanding how firms can coordinate and integrate offshoring activities. Specifically, we argue that offshoring implies an organizational reconfiguration consisting of three stages: disintegration, relocation and reintegration. We discuss the implications of this perspective and outline a research agenda.

Modeling a distributed intrusion detection system using collaborative building blocks

Developing complex distributed systems is a non-trivial task. It is even more difficult when the systems need to dynamically reconfigure the distributed functionalities or tasks. Not only do we need to deal with the application-specific functionalities that are intricate, but we also have to handle the complex logic of coordinating the distribution and relocation of tasks. In this paper, we model an intrusion detection system that distributes its analysis units to a number of hosts and assigns fine-grained analysis tasks to these hosts in order to cope with the rapid increase of audit data from today's IT systems. The system is further capable to react to overload situations and to shift tasks to other hosts. To develop this complex system, we apply the model-based engineering method SPACE. In particular, we show that the collaborative specification style of the method can significantly reduce the development effort. Also, the formal semantics of SPACE ensures the correctness of important design properties.

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF OFFSHORING: THE IMPACT OF COMPLEXITY, DESIGN ORIENTATION AND EXPERIENCE

This study seeks to explain hidden costs of offshoring, i.e. unexpected costs resulting from the relocation of business tasks and activities outside the home country. We develop a model that highli...

Scheduling and Placement of Hardware/Software Real-Time Relocatable Tasks in Dynamically Partially Reconfigurable Systems

With the gradually fading distinction between hardware and software, it is now possible to relocate tasks from a microprocessor to reconfigurable logic and vice versa. However, existing hardware-software scheduling can rarely cope with such runtime task relocation. In this work, we propose a new Relocatable Hardware-Software Scheduling (RHSS) method that not only can be applied to dynamically relocatable hardware-software tasks, but also increases the reconfigurable hardware resource utilization, reduces the reconfigurable hardware resource fragmentation with realistic placement methods, and makes best efforts at meeting the real-time constraints of tasks. The feasibility of the proposed relocatable hardware-software scheduling algorithm was proved by applying it to some randomly generated examples and a real dynamically reconfigurable network security system example. Compared to the quadratic time complexity of the state-of-the-art Adaptive Hardware-Software Allocation (AHSA) method, RHSS is linear in time complexity, and improves the reconfigurable hardware utilization by as much as 117.8%. The scheduling and placement time and the memory usage are also drastically reduced by as much as 89.5% and 96.4%, respectively.

Dynamic relocation of hybrid tasks: Strategies and methodologies

Reconfiguration-based architectures are increasingly gaining attention of designers due to their benefits of flexibility, re-programmability and high computational performance. The combination of general purpose processors and reconfigurable fabrics (e.g., FPGAs), may provide those valuable characteristics, which are becoming essential for modern and future embedded systems. Such hybrid systems permit the existence of hardware tasks, which shall be properly managed by the operating system, thus allowing for their coexistence with software tasks. Nevertheless, in order to completely exploit this feature, the operating system must be capable of relocating a task between hardware and software execution domains. Runtime relocation of tasks (including preemption and resumption) between two devices following different computation paradigms (parallel vs. instruction based) however is a challenging job. In this work we propose a comprehensive and embracing methodology, which starts from a unified task representation, and goes to the final implementation of such hybrid tasks. For its accomplishment, a framework is proposed to help the user in designing a hybrid task, which also generates automatically the underlying infrastructure that is in charge of performing the dynamic relocation of a hybrid task. In order to prove the applicability of our concept and the efficiency of our framework, a case study is presented including its results.

Run-time support for heterogeneous multitasking on reconfigurable SoCs

In complex reconfigurable systems on chip (SoC), the dynamism of applications requires an efficient management of the platform. To allow run-time management of heterogeneous resources, operating systems (OS) and reconfigurable SoC platforms should be developed together. For run-time support of reconfigurable architectures, the OS must abstract the reconfigurable computing resources and provide an efficient communication layer. This paper presents our efforts to simultaneously develop the run-time support and the communication layer of reconfigurable SoCs. We show that networks-on-chip (NoC) are an ideal communication layer for dynamically reconfigurable SoCs, explain how our OS provides run-time support for dynamic task relocation and detail how hardware parts of the OS are integrated into the higher layers of the NoC. An implementation of the OS and of the dedicated communication layer on our reconfigurable architecture supports the concepts we describe.

On Task Relocation in Two-Dimensional Meshes

In parallel computer systems with a number of processors, external fragmentation is caused by continuous allocation and deallocation of processors to tasks which require exclusive use of several contiguous processors. With this condition, the system may not be able to find contiguous processors to be allocated to an incoming task even with a sufficient number of free processors. Relocation is an approach for alleviating this problem by reassigning the running tasks to other processors. In this paper, we examine two relocation schemes—full relocation and partial relocation scheme—for two-dimensional meshes. The full relocation scheme is desirable when the system is highly fragmented, while the partial relocation scheme is used for minimizing the number of relocated tasks. For the relocation process, we formally define and use two basic submesh movement operations—shifting and rotating. Comprehensive computer simulation reveals that the proposed schemes are beneficial when the relocation overhead is not high, which is machine dependent.

The performance and workload effects of task re-location during automation

We report an experiment which investigated the performance and workload effects associated with the functional grouping of automated displays in a multi-task flight simulation. Eleven rated pilots performed tracking, systems monitoring, and target acquisition sub-tasks in manual conditions and when the targeting task was automated. In the latter condition, the target acquisition display was relocated either proximally, distally, or neutrally with respect to the functionally similar, systems monitoring display. It was hypothesized that an automated task display relocated near its functional equivalent (the proximal condition) would result in increased performance efficiency and lower perceived workload compared to the other relocation positions. An advantage for adaptive automation was confirmed with pilots exhibiting less tracking error, lower monitoring response times, lower target response times, and increased percentage of target responses during automated compared with manual conditions. Results did not confirm the hypothesized benefits for display location. However, when interpreted within the Proximity Compatibility Principle framework where both perceptual and processing proximity are recognized, results confirmed an advantage for the functional grouping layout of the display. Specifically, the proximal grouping condition was the only condition that resulted in both performance and workload benefits. Some observations on the implications for display design in systems using automation are provided.