AdFT: An Adaptive Framework for Fault Tolerance on Large Scale Systems using Application Malleability

Exascale systems of the future are predicted to have mean time between failures (MTBF) of less than one hour. Malleable applications, where the number of processors on which the applications execute can be changed during executions, can make use of their malleability to better tolerate high failure rates. We present AdFT, an adaptive fault tolerance framework for long running malleable applications to maximize application performance in the presence of failures. AdFT framework includes cost models for evaluating the benefits of various fault tolerance actions including checkpointing, live-migration and rescheduling, and runtime decisions for dynamically selecting the fault tolerance actions at different points of application execution to maximize performance. Simulations with real and synthetic failure traces show that our approach outperforms existing fault tolerance mechanisms for malleable applications yielding up to 23% improvement in application performance, and is effective even for petascale systems and beyond.

Large improvements in application throughput of long-running multi-component applications using batch grids

Computational grids with multiple batch systems (batch grids) can be powerful infrastructures for executing long-running multi-component parallel applications. In this paper, we evaluate the potential improvements in throughput of long-running multi-component applications when the different components of the applications are executed on multiple batch systems of batch grids. We compare the multiple batch executions with executions of the components on a single batch system without increasing the number of processors used for executions. We perform our analysis with a foremost long-running multi-component application for climate modeling, the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). We have built a robust simulator that models the characteristics of both the multi-component application and the batch systems. By conducting large number of simulations with different workload characteristics and queuing policies of the systems, processor allocations to components of the application, distributions of the components to the batch systems and inter-cluster bandwidths, we show that multiple batch executions lead to 55% average increase in throughput over single batch executions for long-running CCSM. We also conducted real experiments with a practical middleware infrastructure and showed that multi-site executions lead to effective utilization of batch systems for executions of CCSM and give higher simulation throughput than single-site executions. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Analysis of distance relay trip regions for EHV and UHV transmission lines

This paper presents comparative evaluation of the distance relay characteristics for UHV and EHV transmission lines. Distance protection relay characteristics for the EHV and UHV systems are developed using Electromagnetic Transients (EMT) program. The variation of ideal trip boundaries for both the systems are presented. Unlike the conventional distance protection relay which uses a lumped parameter model, this paper uses the distributed parameter model. The effect of larger shunt susceptance on the trip boundaries is highlighted. Performance of distance relay with ideal trip boundaries for EHV and UHV lines have been tested for various fault locations and fault resistances. Electromagnetic Transients (EMT) program has been developed considering distributed parameter line model for simulating the test systems. The voltage and current phasors are computed from the signals using an improved full cycle DFT algorithm taking 20 samples per cycle. Two practical transmission systems of Indian power grid, namely 765 kV UHV transmission line and SREB 24-bus 400kV EHV system are used to test the performance of the proposed approach.

Determination of favorable inter-particle interactions for formation of substitutionally ordered solid phases from a binary mixture of oppositely charged colloidal suspensions

The solid phase formed by a binary mixture of oppositely charged colloidal particles can be either substitutionally ordered or substitutionally disordered depending on the nature and strength of interactions among the particles. In this work, we use Monte Carlo molecular simulations along with the Gibbs-Duhem integration technique to map out the favorable inter-particle interactions for the formation of substitutionally ordered crystalline phases from a fluid phase. The inter-particle interactions are modeled using the hard core Yukawa potential but the method can be easily extended to other systems of interest. The study obtains a map of interactions depicting regions indicating the type of the crystalline aggregate that forms upon phase transition.

State estimation in power systems using linear model infinity norm-based trust region approach

State estimation is one of the most important functions in an energy control centre. An computationally efficient state estimator which is free from numerical instability/ill-conditioning is essential for security assessment of electric power grid. Whereas approaches to successfully overcome the numerical ill-conditioning issues have been proposed, an efficient algorithm for addressing the convergence issues in the presence of topological errors is yet to be evolved. Trust region (TR) methods have been successfully employed to overcome the divergence problem to certain extent. In this study, case studies are presented where the conventional algorithms including the existing TR methods would fail to converge. A linearised model-based TR method for successfully overcoming the convergence issues is proposed. On the computational front, unlike the existing TR methods for state estimation which employ quadratic models, the proposed linear model-based estimator is computationally efficient because the model minimiser can be computed in a single step. The model minimiser at each step is computed by minimising the linearised model in the presence of TR and measurement mismatch constraints. The infinity norm is used to define the geometry of the TR. Measurement mismatch constraints are employed to improve the accuracy. The proposed algorithm is compared with the quadratic model-based TR algorithm with case studies on the IEEE 30-bus system, 205-bus and 514-bus equivalent systems of part of Indian grid.

Dynamics of edge dislocations in a sheared lamellar mesophase

The dynamics and interactions of edge dislocations in a nearly aligned sheared lamellar mesophase is analysed to provide insights into the relationship between disorder and rheology. First, the mesoscale permeation and momentum equations for the displacement field in the presence of external forces are derived from the model H equations for the concentration and momentum field. The secondary flow generated due to the mean shear around an isolated defect is calculated, and the excess viscosity due to the presence of the defect is determined from the excess energy dissipation due to the secondary flow. The excess viscosity for an isolated defect is found to increase with system size in the cross-stream direction as L-3/2 for an isolated defect, though this divergence is cut-off due to interactions in a defect suspension. As the defects are sheared past each other due to the mean flow, the Peach-Koehler force due to elastic interaction between pairs of defects is found to cause no net displacement relative to each other as they approach from large separation to the distance of closest approach. The equivalent force due to viscous interactions is found to increase the separation for defects of opposite sign, and decrease the separation for defects of same sign. During defect interactions, we find that there is no buckling instability due to dilation of layers for systems of realistic size. However, there is another mechanism, which is the velocity difference generated across a slightly deformed bilayer due to the mean shear, which could result in the creation of new defects. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Design Of Start-up Power Circuit For Control Power Supplies With Wide Input Voltage Variation

This paper presents the design of a start up power circuit for a control power supply (CPS) which feeds power to the sub-systems of High Power Converters (HPC). The sub-systems such as gate drive card, annunciation card, protection and delay card etc; needs to be provided power for the operation of a HPC. The control power supply (CPS) is designed to operate over a wide range of input voltage from 90Vac to 270Vac. The CPS output supplies power at a desired voltage of Vout =24V to the auxiliary sub-systems of the HPC. During the starting, the power supply to the control circuitry of CPS in turn, is obtained using a separate start-up power supply. This paper discusses the various design issues of the start-up power circuit to ensure that start-up and shut down of the CPS occurs reliably. The CPS also maintains the power factor close to unity and low total harmonic distortion in input current. The paper also provides design details of gate drive circuits employed for the CPS as well as the design of on-board power supply for the CPS. Index terms: control power supply, start-up power supply, DSFC, pre-regulator

Study of dynamic behaviour of recession curves

Since Brutsaert and Neiber (1977), recession curves are widely used to analyse subsurface systems of river basins by expressing -dQ/dt as a function of Q, which typically take a power law form: -dQ/dt=kQ, where Q is the discharge at a basin outlet at time t. Traditionally recession flows are modelled by single reservoir models that assume a unique relationship between -dQ/dt and Q for a basin. However, recent observations indicate that -dQ/dt-Q relationship of a basin varies greatly across recession events, indicating the limitation of such models. In this study, the dynamic relationship between -dQ/dt and Q of a basin is investigated through the geomorphological recession flow model which models recession flows by considering the temporal evolution of its active drainage network (the part of the stream network of the basin draining water at time t). Two primary factors responsible for the dynamic relationship are identified: (i) degree of aquifer recharge (ii) spatial variation of rainfall. Degree of aquifer recharge, which is likely to be controlled by (effective) rainfall patterns, influences the power law coefficient, k. It is found that k has correlation with past average streamflow, which confirms the notion that dynamic -dQ/dt-Q relationship is caused by the degree of aquifer recharge. Spatial variation of rainfall is found to have control on both the exponent, , and the power law coefficient, k. It is noticed that that even with same and k, recession curves can be different, possibly due to their different (recession) peak values. This may also happen due to spatial variation of rainfall. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Simulation of inhomogeneous distributions of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice via a massively parallel implementation of nonequilibrium strong-coupling perturbation theory

We present a nonequilibrium strong-coupling approach to inhomogeneous systems of ultracold atoms in optical lattices. We demonstrate its application to the Mott-insulating phase of a two-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model in the presence of a trap potential. Since the theory is formulated self-consistently, the numerical implementation relies on a massively parallel evaluation of the self-energy and the Green's function at each lattice site, employing thousands of CPUs. While the computation of the self-energy is straightforward to parallelize, the evaluation of the Green's function requires the inversion of a large sparse 10(d) x 10(d) matrix, with d > 6. As a crucial ingredient, our solution heavily relies on the smallness of the hopping as compared to the interaction strength and yields a widely scalable realization of a rapidly converging iterative algorithm which evaluates all elements of the Green's function. Results are validated by comparing with the homogeneous case via the local-density approximation. These calculations also show that the local-density approximation is valid in nonequilibrium setups without mass transport.

Socio-cultural protection of endemic trees in humanised landscape

Culturally protected forest patches or sacred groves have been the integral part of many traditional societies. This age old tradition is a classic instance of community driven nature conservation sheltering native biodiversity and supporting various ecosystem functions particularly hydrology. The current work in Central Western Ghats of Karnataka, India, highlights that even small sacred groves amidst humanised landscapes serve as tiny islands of biodiversity, especially of rare and endemic species. Temporal analysis of landuse dynamics reveals the changing pattern of the studied landscape. There is fast reduction of forest cover (15.14-11.02 %) in last 20 years to meet up the demand of agricultural land and plantation programs. A thorough survey and assessment of woody endemic species distribution in the 25 km(2) study area documented presence of 19 endemic species. The distribution of these species is highly skewed towards the culturally protected patches in comparison to other land use elements. It is found that, among the 19 woody endemic species, those with greater ecological amplitude are widely distributed in the studied landscape in groves as well as other land use forms whereas, natural population of the sensitive endemics are very much restricted in the sacred grove fragments. The recent degradation in the sacred grove system is perhaps, due to weakening of traditional belief systems and associated laxity in grove protection leading to biotic disturbances. Revitalisation of traditional practices related to conservation of sacred groves can go a long way in strengthening natural ecological systems of fragile humid tropical landscape.

Frustration in Optical Lattices of Interacting Bosons

The realization of optical lattices of cold atoms has opened up the possibility of engineering interacting lattice systems of bosons and fermions, stimulating a frenzy of research over the last decade. More recently, experimental techniques have been developed to apply synthetic gauge fields to these optical lattices. As a result, it has become possible to study quantum Hall physics and the effects of frustration in lattices of cold atoms. In this article we describe the combined effect of frustration and interactions on the superfluidity of bosons. By focussing on a frustrated ladder of interacting bosons, we show that the effect of frustration is for ``chiral'' order to develop, which manifests itself as an alternating pattern of circulating supercurrents. Remarkably, this order persists even when superfluidity is lost and the system enters a Mott phase giving rise to a novel chiral Mott insulator. We describe the combined physics of frustration and interactions by studying a fully frustrated one dimensional model of interacting bosons. The model is studied using mean-field theory, a direct quantum simulation and a higher dimensional classical theory in order to offer a full description of the different quantum phases contained in it and transitions between the different phases. In addition, we provide physical descriptions of the chiral Mott insulator as a vortex-anitvortex super solid and indirect excitonic condensate in addition to obtaining a variational wavefunction for it. We also briefly describe the chiral Mott states arising in other microscopic models.

Performance Analysis of Space-Shift Keying in Decode-and-Forward Multihop MIMO Networks

In this paper, space-shift keying (SSK) is considered for multihop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) networks. In SSK, only one among n(s) = 2(m) available transmit antennas, chosen on the basis of m information bits, is activated during transmission. We consider two different systems of multihop co-operation, where each node has multiple antennas and employs SSK. In system I, a multihop diversity relaying scheme is considered. In system II, a multihop multibranch relaying scheme is considered. In both systems, we adopt decode-and-forward (DF) relaying, where each relay forwards the signal only when it correctly decodes. We analyze the end-to-end bit error rate (BER) and diversity order of both the systems with SSK. For binary SSK (n(s) = 2), our analytical BER expression is exact, and our numerical results show that the BERs evaluated through the analytical expression overlap with those obtained through Monte Carlo simulations. For nonbinary SSK (n(s) > 2), we derive an approximate BER expression, where the analytically evaluated BER results closely follow the simulated BER results. We show the comparison of the BERs of SSK and conventional phase-shift keying (PSK) and also show the instances where SSK outperforms PSK. We also present the diversity analyses for SSK in systems I and II, which predict the achievable diversity orders as a function of system parameters.

Structural variations in aromatic 2 pi-electron three-membered rings of the main group elements

Structural variations of different Z pi-aromatic three-membered ring systems of main group elements, especially group 14 and 13 elements as compared to the classical description of cyclopropenyl cation has been reviewed in this article. The structures of heavier analogues as well as group 13 analogues of cyclopropenyl cation showed an emergence of dramatic structural patterns which do not conform, to the general norms of carbon chemistry. Isolobal analogies between the main group fragments have been efficiently used to explain the peculiarities observed in these three-membered ring systems.

Fault Tolerance on Large Scale Systems using Adaptive Process Replication

Exascale systems of the future are predicted to have mean time between failures (MTBF) of less than one hour. At such low MTBFs, employing periodic checkpointing alone will result in low efficiency because of the high number of application failures resulting in large amount of lost work due to rollbacks. In such scenarios, it is highly necessary to have proactive fault tolerance mechanisms that can help avoid significant number of failures. In this work, we have developed a mechanism for proactive fault tolerance using partial replication of a set of application processes. Our fault tolerance framework adaptively changes the set of replicated processes periodically based on failure predictions to avoid failures. We have developed an MPI prototype implementation, PAREP-MPI that allows changing the replica set. We have shown that our strategy involving adaptive process replication significantly outperforms existing mechanisms providing up to 20 percent improvement in application efficiency even for exascale systems.

Rational molecular dynamics scheme for predicting optimum concentration loading of nano-additive in phase change materials

The present study deals with the diffusion and phase transition behaviour of paraffin reinforced with carbon nano-additives namely graphene oxide (GO) and surface functionalized single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT). Bulk disordered systems of paraffin hydrocarbons impregnated with carbon nano-additives have been generated in realistic equilibrium conformations for potential application as latent heat storage systems. Ab initio molecular dynamics(MD) in conjugation with COMPASS forcefield has been implemented using periodic boundary conditions. The proposed scheme allows determination of optimum nano-additive loading for improving thermo-physical properties through analysis of mass, thermal and transport properties; and assists in determination of composite behaviour and related performance from microscopic point of view. It was observed that nanocomposites containing 7.8% surface functionalised SWCNT and 55% GO loading corresponds to best latent heat storage system. The propounded methodology could serve as a by-pass route for economically taxing and iterative experimental procedures required to attain the optimum composition for best performance. The results also hint at the large unexplored potential of ab-initio classical MD techniques for predicting performance of new nanocomposites for potential phase change material applications. (C) 2015 Author(s).