Near-Threshold Computing

Valmistustekniikoiden kehittyessä IC-piireille saadaan mahtumaan yhä enemmän transistoreja. Monimutkaisemmat piirit mahdollistavat suurempien laskutoimitusmäärien suorittamisen aikayksikössä. Piirien aktiivisuuden lisääntyessä myös niiden energiankulutus lisääntyy, ja tämä puolestaan lisää piirin lämmöntuotantoa. Liiallinen lämpö rajoittaa piirien toimintaa. Tämän takia tarvitaan tekniikoita, joilla piirien energiankulutusta saadaan pienennettyä. Uudeksi tutkimuskohteeksi ovat tulleet pienet laitteet, jotka seuraavat esimerkiksi ihmiskehon toimintaa, rakennuksia tai siltoja. Tällaisten laitteiden on oltava energiankulutukseltaan pieniä, jotta ne voivat toimia pitkiä aikoja ilman akkujen lataamista. Near-Threshold Computing on tekniikka, jolla pyritään pienentämään integroitujen piirien energiankulutusta. Periaatteena on käyttää piireillä pienempää käyttöjännitettä kuin piirivalmistaja on niille alunperin suunnitellut. Tämä hidastaa ja haittaa piirin toimintaa. Jos kuitenkin laitteen toiminnassa pystyään hyväksymään huonompi laskentateho ja pienentynyt toimintavarmuus, voidaan saavuttaa säästöä energiankulutuksessa. Tässä diplomityössä tarkastellaan Near-Threshold Computing -tekniikkaa eri näkökulmista: aluksi perustuen kirjallisuudesta löytyviin aikaisempiin tutkimuksiin, ja myöhemmin tutkimalla Near-Threshold Computing -tekniikan soveltamista kahden tapaustutkimuksen kautta. Tapaustutkimuksissa tarkastellaan FO4-invertteriä sekä 6T SRAM -solua piirisimulaatioiden avulla. Näiden komponenttien käyttäytymisen Near-Threshold Computing –jännitteillä voidaan tulkita antavan kattavan kuvan suuresta osasta tavanomaisen IC-piirin pinta-alaa ja energiankulusta. Tapaustutkimuksissa käytetään 130 nm teknologiaa, ja niissä mallinnetaan todellisia piirivalmistusprosessin tuotteita ajamalla useita Monte Carlo -simulaatioita. Tämä valmistuskustannuksiltaan huokea teknologia yhdistettynä Near-Threshold Computing -tekniikkaan mahdollistaa matalan energiankulutuksen piirien valmistaminen järkevään hintaan. Tämän diplomityön tulokset näyttävät, että Near-Threshold Computing pienentää piirien energiankulutusta merkittävästi. Toisaalta, piirien nopeus heikkenee, ja yleisesti käytetty 6T SRAM -muistisolu muuttuu epäluotettavaksi. Pidemmät polut logiikkapiireissä sekä transistorien kasvattaminen muistisoluissa osoitetaan tehokkaiksi vastatoimiksi Near- Threshold Computing -tekniikan huonoja puolia vastaan. Tulokset antavat perusteita matalan energiankulutuksen IC-piirien suunnittelussa sille, kannattaako käyttää normaalia käyttöjännitettä, vai laskea sitä, jolloin piirin hidastuminen ja epävarmempi käyttäytyminen pitää ottaa huomioon.

The Changing Role of the CIO: Developing Skills by Means of Postgraduate Educational Programs

The objective of this research was to identify the skills and competences required by Chief Information Officers in their professional life and whether these skills can be developed by means of postgraduate education pro-grams. Although the changing role of the CIO has been studied for years by the academia, the ways of necessary skills development have not been paid significant attention. In order to obtain understanding of the topic and its main issues qualitative method was implemented and questionnaires and interviews were conducted with CIOs and other C-level executives to-gether with analysis of the curricula of postgraduate educational programs in the field of business designed for executives. Business skills and knowledge along with developed communication and leadership skills are among the most discussed and required from CIOs. According to the collected data and its further analysis, although the most important competences of an IT executive are technological, the im-portance of business related skills is emphasized by the majority of re-spondents and supported by the existing theory. Postgraduate educational programs have curricula that can develop the required competences, alt-hough not equally.

On Energy Efficient Computing Platforms

In accordance with the Moore's law, the increasing number of on-chip integrated transistors has enabled modern computing platforms with not only higher processing power but also more affordable prices. As a result, these platforms, including portable devices, work stations and data centres, are becoming an inevitable part of the human society. However, with the demand for portability and raising cost of power, energy efficiency has emerged to be a major concern for modern computing platforms. As the complexity of on-chip systems increases, Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proved as an efficient communication architecture which can further improve system performances and scalability while reducing the design cost. Therefore, in this thesis, we study and propose energy optimization approaches based on NoC architecture, with special focuses on the following aspects. As the architectural trend of future computing platforms, 3D systems have many bene ts including higher integration density, smaller footprint, heterogeneous integration, etc. Moreover, 3D technology can signi cantly improve the network communication and effectively avoid long wirings, and therefore, provide higher system performance and energy efficiency. With the dynamic nature of on-chip communication in large scale NoC based systems, run-time system optimization is of crucial importance in order to achieve higher system reliability and essentially energy efficiency. In this thesis, we propose an agent based system design approach where agents are on-chip components which monitor and control system parameters such as supply voltage, operating frequency, etc. With this approach, we have analysed the implementation alternatives for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling and power gating techniques at different granularity, which reduce both dynamic and leakage energy consumption. Topologies, being one of the key factors for NoCs, are also explored for energy saving purpose. A Honeycomb NoC architecture is proposed in this thesis with turn-model based deadlock-free routing algorithms. Our analysis and simulation based evaluation show that Honeycomb NoCs outperform their Mesh based counterparts in terms of network cost, system performance as well as energy efficiency.

What are the opportunities and challenges of cloud computing technology in the healthcare information systems

This thesis discusses the opportunities and challenges of the cloud computing technology in healthcare information systems by reviewing the existing literature on cloud computing and healthcare information system and the impact of cloud computing technology to healthcare industry. The review shows that if problems related to security of data are solved then cloud computing will positively transform the healthcare institutions by giving advantage to the healthcare IT infrastructure as well as improving and giving benefit to healthcare services. Therefore, this thesis will explore the opportunities and challenges that are associated with cloud computing in the context of Finland in order to help the healthcare organizations and stakeholders to determine its direction when it decides to adopt cloud technology on their information systems.

Video transcoding in a distributed cloud computing environment

Video transcoding refers to the process of converting a digital video from one format into another format. It is a compute-intensive operation. Therefore, transcoding of a large number of simultaneous video streams requires a large amount of computing resources. Moreover, to handle di erent load conditions in a cost-e cient manner, the video transcoding service should be dynamically scalable. Infrastructure as a Service Clouds currently offer computing resources, such as virtual machines, under the pay-per-use business model. Thus the IaaS Clouds can be leveraged to provide a coste cient, dynamically scalable video transcoding service. To use computing resources e ciently in a cloud computing environment, cost-e cient virtual machine provisioning is required to avoid overutilization and under-utilization of virtual machines. This thesis presents proactive virtual machine resource allocation and de-allocation algorithms for video transcoding in cloud computing. Since users' requests for videos may change at di erent times, a check is required to see if the current computing resources are adequate for the video requests. Therefore, the work on admission control is also provided. In addition to admission control, temporal resolution reduction is used to avoid jitters in a video. Furthermore, in a cloud computing environment such as Amazon EC2, the computing resources are more expensive as compared with the storage resources. Therefore, to avoid repetition of transcoding operations, a transcoded video needs to be stored for a certain time. To store all videos for the same amount of time is also not cost-e cient because popular transcoded videos have high access rate while unpopular transcoded videos are rarely accessed. This thesis provides a cost-e cient computation and storage trade-o strategy, which stores videos in the video repository as long as it is cost-e cient to store them. This thesis also proposes video segmentation strategies for bit rate reduction and spatial resolution reduction video transcoding. The evaluation of proposed strategies is performed using a message passing interface based video transcoder, which uses a coarse-grain parallel processing approach where video is segmented at group of pictures level.

Handshake ecosystem for Educational Contents between Institutional Repository and OER based Repository

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Development of agnostic mobile applications with cross-platform cloud computing platforms

Smart phones became part and parcel of our life, where mobility provides a freedom of not being bounded by time and space. In addition, number of smartphones produced each year is skyrocketing. However, this also created discrepancies or fragmentation among devices and OSes, which in turn made an exceeding hard for developers to deliver hundreds of similar featured applications with various versions for the market consumption. This thesis is an attempt to investigate whether cloud based mobile development platforms can mitigate and eventually eliminate fragmentation challenges. During this research, we have selected and analyzed the most popular cloud based development platforms and tested integrated cloud features. This research showed that cloud based mobile development platforms may able to reduce mobile fragmentation and enable to utilize single codebase to deliver a mobile application for different platforms.

Analyzing and Computing the Sustainability Gains of Building Automation

Smart home implementation in residential buildings promises to optimize energy usage and save significant amount of energy simply due to a better understanding of user's energy usage profile. Apart from the energy optimisation prospects of this technology, it also aims to guarantee occupants significant amount of comfort and remote control over home appliances both at home locations and at remote places. However, smart home investment just like any other kind of investment requires an adequate measurement and justification of the economic gains it could proffer before its realization. These economic gains could differ for different occupants due to their inherent behaviours and tendencies. Thus it is pertinent to investigate the various behaviours and tendencies of occupants in different domain of interests and to measure the value of the energy savings accrued by smart home implementations in these domains of interest in order to justify such economic gains. This thesis investigates two domains of interests (the rented apartment and owned apartment) for primarily two behavioural tendencies (Finland and Germany) obtained from observation and corroborated by conducted interviews to measure the payback time and Return on Investment (ROI) of their smart home implementations. Also, similar measures are obtained for identified Australian use case. The research finding reveals that building automation for the Finnish behavioural tendencies seems to proffers a better ROI and payback time for smart home implementations.

Power Consumption Measurement and Scenario Based Energy Model in Wearable Computing Applications

The power is still today an issue in wearable computing applications. The aim of the present paper is to raise awareness of the power consumption of wearable computing devices in specific scenarios to be able in the future to design energy efficient wireless sensors for context recognition in wearable computing applications. The approach is based on a hardware study. The objective of this paper is to analyze and compare the total power consumption of three representative wearable computing devices in realistic scenarios such as Display, Speaker, Camera and microphone, Transfer by Wi-Fi, Monitoring outdoor physical activity and Pedometer. A scenario based energy model is also developed. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus I9250 smartphone, the Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses and the SimValley Smartwatch AW-420.RX are the three devices representative of their form factors. The power consumption is measured using PowerTutor, an android energy profiler application with logging option and using unknown parameters so it is adjusted with the USB meter. The result shows that the screen size is the main parameter influencing the power consumption. The power consumption for an identical scenario varies depending on the wearable devices meaning that others components, parameters or processes might impact on the power consumption and further study is needed to explain these variations. This paper also shows that different inputs (touchscreen is more efficient than buttons controls) and outputs (speaker sensor is more efficient than display sensor) impact the energy consumption in different way. This paper gives recommendations to reduce the energy consumption in healthcare wearable computing application using the energy model.

Cloud computing contribution to manufacturing industry

Manufacturing industry has been always facing challenge to improve the production efficiency, product quality, innovation ability and struggling to adopt cost-effective manufacturing system. In recent years cloud computing is emerging as one of the major enablers for the manufacturing industry. Combining the emerged cloud computing and other advanced manufacturing technologies such as Internet of Things, service-oriented architecture (SOA), networked manufacturing (NM) and manufacturing grid (MGrid), with existing manufacturing models and enterprise information technologies, a new paradigm called cloud manufacturing is proposed by the recent literature. This study presents concepts and ideas of cloud computing and cloud manufacturing. The concept, architecture, core enabling technologies, and typical characteristics of cloud manufacturing are discussed, as well as the difference and relationship between cloud computing and cloud manufacturing. The research is based on mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, and a case study. The case is a prototype of cloud manufacturing solution, which is software platform cooperated by ATR Soft Oy and SW Company China office. This study tries to understand the practical impacts and challenges that are derived from cloud manufacturing. The main conclusion of this study is that cloud manufacturing is an approach to achieve the transformation from traditional production-oriented manufacturing to next generation service-oriented manufacturing. Many manufacturing enterprises are already using a form of cloud computing in their existing network infrastructure to increase flexibility of its supply chain, reduce resources consumption, the study finds out the shift from cloud computing to cloud manufacturing is feasible. Meanwhile, the study points out the related theory, methodology and application of cloud manufacturing system are far from maturity, it is still an open field where many new technologies need to be studied.

Development and Effect Analysis of the Asteri Consultative Auditing Process - Safety and Security Management in Educational Institutions

The Finnish legislation requires for a safe and secure learning environment. However, the comprehensive, risk based safety and security management (SSM) and the management commitment in the implementation and development of the SSM are not mentioned in the legislation. Multiple institutions, operators and researchers have studied and developed safety and security in educational institutions over the past decade. Typically the approach has been fragmented and without bringing up the importance of the comprehensive SSM. The development needs of the safety and security operations in universities have been studied. However, in universities of applied sciences (UASs) and in elementary schools (ESs), the performance level, strengths and weaknesses of the comprehensive SSM have not been studied. The objective of this study was to develop the comprehensive, risk based SSM of educational institutions by developing the new Asteri consultative auditing process and study its effects on auditees. Furthermore, the performance level in the comprehensive SSM in UASs and ESs were studied using Asteri and the TUTOR model developed by the Keski-Uusimaa Department for Rescue Services. In addition, strengths, development needs and differences were identified. In total, 76 educational institutions were audited between the years 2011 and 2014. The study is based on logical empiricism, and an observational applied research design was used. Auditing, observation and an electronic survey were used for data collection. Statistical analysis was used to analyze the collected information. In addition, thematic analysis was used to analyze the development areas of the organizations mentioned by the respondents in the survey. As one of the main contributions, this research presents the new Asteri consultative auditing process. Organizations with low performance levels on the audited subject benefit the most from the Asteri consultative auditing process. Asteri may be usable in many different types of audits, not only in SSM audits. As a new result, this study provides new knowledge on attitudes related to auditing. According to the research findings, auditing may generate negative attitudes and the auditor should take them into account when planning and preparing for audits. Negative attitudes can be compensated by producing added value, objectivity and positivity for the audit and, thus, improve the positive effects of auditing on knowledge and skills. Moreover, as the results of this study shows, auditing safety and security issues do not increase feelings of insecurity, but rather increase feelings of safety and security when using the new Asteri consultative auditing process with the TUTOR model. The results showed that the SSM in the audited UASs was statistically significantly more advanced than that in the audited ESs. However, there is still room for improvement in the ESs and the UASs as the approach to the SSM was fragmented. It can be assumed that the majority of Finnish UASs and ESs do not likely meet the basic level of the comprehensive, risk based the SSM.

Implementation of educational change in Finland: The case of the undivided basic education reform

For the past decades, educational large-scale reforms have been elaborated and implemented in many countries and often resulted in partial or complete failure. These results brought researchers to study policy processes in order to address this particular challenge. Studies on implementation processes brought to light an existing causal relationship between the implementation process and the effectiveness of a reform. This study aims to describe the implementation process of educational change in Finland, who produced efficient educational reforms over the last 50 years. The case study used for the purpose of this study is the national reform of undivided basic education (yhtenäinen peruskoulu) implemented in the end of the 1990s. Therefore, this research aims to describe how the Finnish undivided basic education reform was implemented. This research was carried out using a pluralist and structuralist approach of policy process and was analyzed according to the hybrid model of implementation process. The data were collected using a triangulation of methods, i.e. documentary research, interviews and questionnaires. The data were qualitative and were analyzed using content analysis methods. This study concludes that the undivided basic education reform was applied in a very decentralized manner, which is a reflection of the decentralized system present in Finland. Central authorities provided a clear vision of the purpose of the reform, but did not control the implementation process. They rather provided extensive support in the form of transmission of information and development of collaborative networks. Local authorities had complete autonomy in terms of decision-making and implementation process. Discussions, debates and decisions regarding implementation processes took place at the local level and included the participation of all actors present on the field. Implementation methods differ from a region to another, with is the consequence of the variation of the level of commitment of local actors but also the diversity of local realities. The reform was implemented according to existing structures and values, which means that it was in cohesion with the context in which it was implemented. These results cannot be generalized to all implementation processes of educational change in Finland but give a great insight of what could be the model used in Finland. Future studies could intent to confirm the model described here by studying other reforms that took place in Finland.

Implementation of educational change in Finland: The case of the undivided basic education reform

For the past decades, educational large-scale reforms have been elaborated and implemented in many countries and often resulted in partial or complete failure. These results brought researchers to study policy processes in order to address this particular challenge. Studies on implementation processes brought to light an existing causal relationship between the implementation process and the effectiveness of a reform. This study aims to describe the implementation process of educational change in Finland, who produced efficient educational reforms over the last 50 years. The case study used for the purpose of this study is the national reform of undivided basic education (yhtenäinen peruskoulu) implemented in the end of the 1990s. Therefore, this research aims to describe how the Finnish undivided basic education reform was implemented. This research was carried out using a pluralist and structuralist approach of policy process and was analyzed according to the hybrid model of implementation process. The data were collected using a triangulation of methods, i.e. documentary research, interviews and questionnaires. The data were qualitative and were analyzed using content analysis methods. This study concludes that the undivided basic education reform was applied in a very decentralized manner, which is a reflection of the decentralized system present in Finland. Central authorities provided a clear vision of the purpose of the reform, but did not control the implementation process. They rather provided extensive support in the form of transmission of information and development of collaborative networks. Local authorities had complete autonomy in terms of decision-making and implementation process. Discussions, debates and decisions regarding implementation processes took place at the local level and included the participation of all actors present on the field. Implementation methods differ from a region to another, with is the consequence of the variation of the level of commitment of local actors but also the diversity of local realities. The reform was implemented according to existing structures and values, which means that it was in cohesion with the context in which it was implemented. These results cannot be generalized to all implementation processes of educational change in Finland but give a great insight of what could be the model used in Finland. Future studies could intent to confirm the model described here by studying other reforms that took place in Finland.

The university as an educational institution

Teema: Yliopistohistoria.