Design and Evaluation of the Hamal Parallel Computer

Parallel shared-memory machines with hundreds or thousands of processor-memory nodes have been built; in the future we will see machines with millions or even billions of nodes. Associated with such large systems is a new set of design challenges. Many problems must be addressed by an architecture in order for it to be successful; of these, we focus on three in particular. First, a scalable memory system is required. Second, the network messaging protocol must be fault-tolerant. Third, the overheads of thread creation, thread management and synchronization must be extremely low. This thesis presents the complete system design for Hamal, a shared-memory architecture which addresses these concerns and is directly scalable to one million nodes. Virtual memory and distributed objects are implemented in a manner that requires neither inter-node synchronization nor the storage of globally coherent translations at each node. We develop a lightweight fault-tolerant messaging protocol that guarantees message delivery and idempotence across a discarding network. A number of hardware mechanisms provide efficient support for massive multithreading and fine-grained synchronization. Experiments are conducted in simulation, using a trace-driven network simulator to investigate the messaging protocol and a cycle-accurate simulator to evaluate the Hamal architecture. We determine implementation parameters for the messaging protocol which optimize performance. A discarding network is easier to design and can be clocked at a higher rate, and we find that with this protocol its performance can approach that of a non-discarding network. Our simulations of Hamal demonstrate the effectiveness of its thread management and synchronization primitives. In particular, we find register-based synchronization to be an extremely efficient mechanism which can be used to implement a software barrier with a latency of only 523 cycles on a 512 node machine.

Design and Development of 3-DOF Modular Micro Parallel Kinematic Manipulator

This paper presents the research and development of a 3-legged micro Parallel Kinematic Manipulator (PKM) for positioning in micro-machining and assembly operations. The structural characteristics associated with parallel manipulators are evaluated and the PKMs with translational and rotational movements are identified. Based on these identifications, a hybrid 3-UPU (Universal Joint-Prismatic Joint-Universal Joint) parallel manipulator is designed and fabricated. The principles of the operation and modeling of this micro PKM is largely similar to a normal size Stewart Platform (SP). A modular design methodology is introduced for the construction of this micro PKM. Calibration results of this hybrid 3-UPU PKM are discussed in this paper.

A Parallel Crossbar Routing Chip for a Shared Memory Multiprocessor

This thesis describes the design and implementation of an integrated circuit and associated packaging to be used as the building block for the data routing network of a large scale shared memory multiprocessor system. A general purpose multiprocessor depends on high-bandwidth, low-latency communications between computing elements. This thesis describes the design and construction of RN1, a novel self-routing, enhanced crossbar switch as a CMOS VLSI chip. This chip provides the basic building block for a scalable pipelined routing network with byte-wide data channels. A series of RN1 chips can be cascaded with no additional internal network components to form a multistage fault-tolerant routing switch. The chip is designed to operate at clock frequencies up to 100Mhz using Hewlett-Packard's HP34 $1.2\\mu$ process. This aggressive performance goal demands that special attention be paid to optimization of the logic architecture and circuit design.

Issues in the Design and Implementation of Act 2

Act2 is a highly concurrent programming language designed to exploit the processing power available from parallel computer architectures. The language supports advanced concepts in software engineering, providing high-level constructs suitable for implementing artificially-intelligent applications. Act2 is based on the Actor model of computation, consisting of virtual computational agents which communicate by message-passing. Act2 serves as a framework in which to integrate an actor language, a description and reasoning system, and a problem-solving and resource management system. This document describes issues in Act2's design and the implementation of an interpreter for the language.

Parallel Coupled Micro-Macro Actuators

This thesis presents a new actuator system consisting of a micro-actuator and a macro-actuator coupled in parallel via a compliant transmission. The system is called the Parallel Coupled Micro-Macro Actuator, or PaCMMA. In this system, the micro-actuator is capable of high bandwidth force control due to its low mass and direct-drive connection to the output shaft. The compliant transmission of the macro-actuator reduces the impedance (stiffness) at the output shaft and increases the dynamic range of force. Performance improvement over single actuator systems was expected in force control, impedance control, force distortion and reduction of transient impact forces. A set of quantitative measures is proposed and the actuator system is evaluated against them: Force Control Bandwidth, Position Bandwidth, Dynamic Range, Impact Force, Impedance ("Backdriveability'"), Force Distortion and Force Performance Space. Several theoretical performance limits are derived from the saturation limits of the system. A control law is proposed and control system performance is compared to the theoretical limits. A prototype testbed was built using permanenent magnet motors and an experimental comparison was performed between this actuator concept and two single actuator systems. The following performance was observed: Force bandwidth of 56Hz, Torque Dynamic Range of 800:1, Peak Torque of 1040mNm, Minimum Torque of 1.3mNm. Peak Impact Force was reduced by an order of magnitude. Distortion at small amplitudes was reduced substantially. Backdriven impedance was reduced by 2-3 orders of magnitude. This actuator system shows promise for manipulator design as well as psychophysical tests of human performance.

Intelligence by Design: Principles of Modularity and Coordination for Engineerin

All intelligence relies on search --- for example, the search for an intelligent agent's next action. Search is only likely to succeed in resource-bounded agents if they have already been biased towards finding the right answer. In artificial agents, the primary source of bias is engineering. This dissertation describes an approach, Behavior-Oriented Design (BOD) for engineering complex agents. A complex agent is one that must arbitrate between potentially conflicting goals or behaviors. Behavior-oriented design builds on work in behavior-based and hybrid architectures for agents, and the object oriented approach to software engineering. The primary contributions of this dissertation are: 1.The BOD architecture: a modular architecture with each module providing specialized representations to facilitate learning. This includes one pre-specified module and representation for action selection or behavior arbitration. The specialized representation underlying BOD action selection is Parallel-rooted, Ordered, Slip-stack Hierarchical (POSH) reactive plans. 2.The BOD development process: an iterative process that alternately scales the agent's capabilities then optimizes the agent for simplicity, exploiting tradeoffs between the component representations. This ongoing process for controlling complexity not only provides bias for the behaving agent, but also facilitates its maintenance and extendibility. The secondary contributions of this dissertation include two implementations of POSH action selection, a procedure for identifying useful idioms in agent architectures and using them to distribute knowledge across agent paradigms, several examples of applying BOD idioms to established architectures, an analysis and comparison of the attributes and design trends of a large number of agent architectures, a comparison of biological (particularly mammalian) intelligence to artificial agent architectures, a novel model of primate transitive inference, and many other examples of BOD agents and BOD development.