Unnecessary Way Research Articles

Energy-Efficient Shared Cache Using Way Prediction Based on Way Access Dominance Detection

To meet the performance demands of chip multi-processors, chip designers have increased the capacity and hierarchy of cache memories. Accordingly, a shared lower-level cache reduces conflict misses by adopting a multi-way set-associative structure with high associativity. This structure allows fast access because it allows access to all the ways in the cache set in parallel. However, it consumes a large amount of dynamic energy. Therefore, various schemes have been proposed to increase the cache memory energy efficiency. These schemes use way prediction or partial comparison to reduce unnecessary way accesses. This paper proposes a way prediction algorithm suitable to a shared second-level cache with high associativity. This algorithm is based on the real-time way access dominance detection (WADD). Through this detection, the proposed algorithm can determine the number and location of way candidates suitable for each partial access pattern among the fragmented access patterns due to the first-level cache replacement policy and intermingled accesses by multiple cores. Through this process, the proposed algorithm can implement efficient way prediction. Simulation results show that the WADD exhibits the highest energy efficiency among the comparison group, thus reducing the energy-delay product by 13.5% compared with the conventional cache without way prediction. This result is achieved by reducing the way prediction penalty through fast detection and high prediction accuracy.

Emotions, Pre-emotions, and Jesus’ Comportment in Luke 22:39–42

AbstractSince Neyrey’s important study on Jesus’ emotional state in Luke’s garden scene, many scholars have subsequently viewed the redactions as stemming, in part, from concern over negative Stoic passions (πάθη). The present author follows a similar trajectory but goes on to show that Luke’s removal of Jesus’ affective episode comports with a popularized misunderstanding of Stoic pathology but not with well-established and current Stoic teachings on pre-emotions (προπάθειαι). The author further demonstrates how Stoic sources allow for and even require early onset emotive reactions that do not threaten a sage’s moral integrity and how Luke, unlike Matthew, over-corrects his source material in an unnecessary way.

Urine cultures: Inappropiate use. Economic impact in a public hospital. Retrospective study

Background: Asymptomatic bacteriuria (BA) increases significantly in hospitalized patients, therefore the presence of bacteriuria is not an indication of urine culture (UC) request.The diagnosis of urinary infection (UI) associated with urinary catheter (UC) is the most frequent nosocomial infection. Objetives: Define the conditions of the patients admitted to hospital to whom UC is released Calculate the economic impact that implies the UC requested in an unnecessary way. Methods & Materials: Quantitative, retrospective, descriptive and longitudinal study. Analysis of the UC archives in hospitalized patients from the period of January 1, 2016 to March 30, 2017 was carried out. The variables were: pathological background of relevance, presumptive diagnosis at the time of the request for UC, initial antimicrobial treatment directed at UI. The data was processed through the INFOSTAT Software, with a descriptive statistic of frequency distribution. Results: At the time of the UC 30% was requested with suspicion of UI by the attending physician; 4.7% were requested at the pre-surgical moment. The rest, (64.5%), was requested in the context of another diagnosis, the most frequent being the respiratory focus with 20%. In 69% the treatment by the attending physician was not initially directed to UI due to suspicion of another infectious focus: UC was negative 65% and positive in 31%; whereas the economic cost is $ 500 with a positive result and $ 100 negative; we calculate the cost that implied: $ 79,500 for the negative and $ 32,900 for the positive, with a total: $ 112,400. If we take into account that the final cost of the UC requested with criteria was $ 73,400, and the total cost of all was $ 176,800; it means that 58% of the total economic cost was for UC without clinical utility or diagnosis. Conclusion: We consider it is important to optimizing these diagnostic methods will serve to reduce the financial expenses in health care. It is also important to bear in mind that the positive data of the UC can lead to confusions by the attending physician when considering a BA as UI and thus to establish an inappropriate antimicrobial treatment.

Hybrid Approach of Filtering Unnecessary Way Accesses for Set-Associative Caches

Power has been a big issue in processor design for several years.Conventional popular approaches for addressing this issue like DVFS(Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling) now hit the law of diminishing returns.As multi/many-core processors becoming the main stream processors,caches account for more and more CPU die area and power,this paper presents using filtering unnecessary way accesses to reduce dynamic power consumption of caches shared by instruction and data.The methods include using Invalid Filter,which could eliminate accesses to cache ways contained invalid blocks,and I/D Filter,which could eliminate accesses to cache ways contained instruction/data access type mismatch blocks,and Tag-2 Filter,which could eliminate accesses to cache ways contained tag lowest 2 bits mismatch blocks.Since the methods reducing the activities happened in cache architecture,dynamical CPU power could be significantly decreased.In the paper,we also propose combining the above methods together,which is called Invalid+I/D+Tag-2 Filter,in an attempt to achieve better power saving results.We have verified the effectiveness and complementariness of the three proposed methods through analysis and experiments.Also,our evaluations show that,we could obtain 19.6%~47.8%(which is on average 34.3%) improvement on a 64KB-4way set-associative cache and 19.6%~55.2%(which is on average 39.2%) improvement on a 128KB-8way set-associative cache comparing to Invalid+I/D Filter,and 16.1%~27.7%(which is on average 16.6%) improvement on a 64KB-4way set-associative cache and 6.9%~44.4%(which is on average 25.0%) improvement on a 128KB-8way set-associative cache comparing to Invalid+Tag-2 Filter,respectively.

Caring Too Much: Misusing the False Claims Act to Target Overtreatment

As the costs of health care administration and delivery continue to grow, health care fraud enforcement actions have increased in number and severity, and, with the recently upheld Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act adding more than $350 million over the next ten years to fight health care fraud, they will likely continue to do so. Continuing a strategy it has used for decades, the federal government is relying mainly on the False Claims Act (FCA), an age-old statute with blunt penalties, to levy remarkable fines against providers in an ever-expanding net of enforcement. But recent examples indicate that the government is applying the FCA to scenarios in which its application seems unwarranted. Namely, the government is now increasingly wielding the FCA against “overtreatment” — defined as cases in which a provider has allegedly provided “too much” care in an inefficient, overly expensive, or unnecessary way — presumably to address the looming fiscal crisis. Exemplified by the Department of Justice’s ongoing implantable cardioverter defibrillator investigation, the federal government is seeking to regulate overtreatment through application of its powerful anti-fraud statute.Even though health care waste and abuse undeniably plague American health care, this Article argues that the government’s solution of applying the FCA against providers who engage in overtreatment is doctrinally unsatisfying and practically destructive. The overreliance on “data mining,” a desire to freeze vague and developing practice standards, and the FCA’s overwhelming penalties that precipitate immediate settlement make up the key components of this overtreatment enforcement model. This results in cascading settlements, allowing the government to unilaterally change developing medical practice standards with little clinical input or judicial review in what can be called “backdoor rationing.” Further, these anti-fraud initiatives often impact the wrong providers and can stifle innovation. This analysis provides an in-depth critique of this new development in health care fraud enforcement in an effort to decouple conventional health care fraud cases from overtreatment investigations. Ideally, this piece will start the conversation toward an improved and more legitimate enforcement framework. At bottom, it illustrates the doctrinal and practical problems that will likely continue to exist at the complex intersection of medical necessity, health care financing, and fraud — even as the administration of America’s health care undergoes radical change.

Minocycline decreases severity of cetuximab rash

Prophylactic treatment with oral minocycline decreases the severity of cetuximab-related rash, but the benefi cial eff ects are short-lived (J Clin Oncol 2007; 25: 5390–96). Cetuximab is an epidermal growth factor (EGFR) inhibitor that is used to treat metastatic colorectal cancer. However, cetuximab produces an acnelike rash in over 80% of patients treated. Although unpleasant, the appearance of this rash shows a response to the anti-EGFR treatment. Evidence to support an eff ective treatment for rashes linked to EGFR inhibitors has been absent; control of severe cetuximab-related eruptions has been by interrupting treatment or reducing the dose. Alon Scope (Memorial SloanKetter ing Cancer Center, NY, USA) and colleagues randomly assigned 48 patients about to start cetuximab to receive oral minocycline (100 mg daily) or placebo for 8 weeks. Patients were also randomly assigned to receive topical tazarotene treatment to either the right or left side of the face. Total facial lesion counts were lower in patients receiving minocycline between weeks 1 and 4, and at week 4, fewer patients in the minocycline group reported moderate-to-severe itch (20% vs 50%, p=0·05). By week 8, the diff erences between the two groups had diminished. Tazarotene treatment produced no clinical benefi t. The researchers conclude that prophylactic minocycline treatment at the initiation of cetuximab is reasonable, but that beyond 8 weeks, the strategy is not benefi cial. Importantly, suppression of the rash in this manner does not seem to aff ect response to cetuximab. Siegfried Segaert (University Hospital Sint-Rafael, Leuven, Belgium) suggests that prophylactic treatment should now be compared with a reactive regimen, whereby only patients developing severe rash are given the systemic tetracycline. “Then you don’t give oral tetracyclines in an unnecessary way to patients with only mild rash, and you don’t lose rash severity as a pharmacodynamic marker.”

Design and analysis of low-power cache using two-level filter scheme

Power consumption is an increasingly pressing problem in modern processor design. Since the on-chip caches usually consume a significant amount of power, it is one of the most attractive targets for power reduction. This paper presents a two-level filter scheme, which consists of the L1 and L2 filters, to reduce the power consumption of the on-chip cache. The main idea of the proposed scheme is motivated by the substantial unnecessary activities in conventional cache architecture. We use a single block buffer as the L1 filter to eliminate the unnecessary cache accesses. In the L2 filter, we then propose a new sentry-tag architecture to further filter out the unnecessary way activities in case of the L1 filter miss. We use SimpleScalar to simulate the SPEC2000 benchmarks and perform the HSPICE simulations to evaluate the proposed architecture. Experimental results show that the two-level filter scheme can effectively reduce the cache power consumption by eliminating most unnecessary cache activities, while the compromise of system performance is negligible. Compared to a conventional instruction cache (32 kB, two-way) implemented with only the L1 filter, the use of a two-level filter can result in roughly 30% reduction in total cache power consumption. Similarly, compared to a conventional data cache (32 kB, four-way) implemented with only the L1 filter, the total cache power reduction is approximately 46%.