The current trends in computer architecture are shifting towards smaller byte/flop ratios, while available parallelism is increasing at all levels of granularity – vector length, core count, and MPI process. Intel’s Xeon Phi coprocessor, NVIDIA’s Kepler GPU, and IBM’s BlueGene/Q all have a Byte/flop ratio close to 0.2, which makes it very difficult for most algorithms to extract a high percentage of the theoretical peak flop/s from these architectures. Popular algorithms in scientific computing such as FFT are continuously evolving to keep up with this trend in hardware. In the meantime it is also necessary to invest in novel algorithms that are more suitable for computer architectures of the future. The fast multipole method (FMM) was originally developed as a fast algorithm for ap- proximating the N-body interactions that appear in astrophysics, molecular dynamics, and vortex based fluid dynamics simulations. The FMM possesses have a unique combination of being an efficient O(N) algorithm, while having an operational intensity that is higher than a matrix-matrix multiplication. In fact, the FMM can reduce the requirement of Byte/flop to around 0.01, which means that it will remain compute bound until 2020 even if the cur- rent trend in microprocessors continues. Despite these advantages, there have not been any benchmarks of FMM codes on modern architectures such as Xeon Phi, Kepler, and Blue- Gene/Q. This study aims to provide a comprehensive benchmark of a state of the art FMM code “exaFMM” on the latest architectures, in hopes of providing a useful reference for deciding when the FMM will become useful as the computational engine in a given application code. It may also serve as a warning to certain problem size domains areas where the FMM will exhibit insignificant performance improvements. Such issues depend strongly on the asymptotic constants rather than the asymptotics themselves, and therefore are strongly implementation and hardware dependent. The primary objective of this study is to provide these constants on various computer architectures.

This thesis examines the extent to which benchmark beating by Australian firms around the earnings level and earnings changes thresholds can be reliably interpreted as evidence of earnings management. A number of recent academic papers challenge the earnings management explanation for the observed kinks in the distribution of net Income. In response to this criticisms, this thesis is motivated to conduct tests of earnings management with a refined methodology of selecting a subset of firms immediately above the threshold that have a priori incentives to achieve the benchmark. This approach allows for investigations to focus on benchmark beating observations where earnings manipulations would be more prevalent and thereby provide a powerful test for the existence of opportunistic reporting. The paper uses a number of unexpected accruals measures including the Kothari et al. (2005) performance matched models. In testing the hypotheses, this thesis utilises two approaches which were; the regression approach and the test of difference of means approach. Based on a broad sample drawn from all listed Australian firms for the years 1995-2007, small profit firms and small increase firms with high price-to-sales ratio were found to have evidence consistent with opportunistic benchmark beating behaviour. Similar results are also documented for benchmark beating firms with low book-to-market (high market-to-book) ratio. This thesis also finds that firms with equity offering incentives who reported improvement in earnings display unexpected accruals consistent with earnings management. In addition, the accounting behaviour of firms which previously incurred a loss is consistent with earnings management explanation. Firms with long strings of earnings increases also appear to use accounting discretion in order to avoid earnings deterioration. Similarly, evidence of earnings management are also displayed by small profit firms which have consistently reported negative earnings. Finally, this thesis provides evidence that resolves the apparent paradox that benchmark beating is evidence of earnings management which is devoid of the statistical artefact argument posited by Durtschi and Easton (2005) and Durtschi and Easton (2008).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Karlsruhe, 2007.

Zugl.: Hannover, Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Rostock, Univ., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: Duisburg, Essen, Univ., Diss., 2009

Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2004--Aachen.

There is an emerging demand on efficiently archiving and (temporal) querying different versions of evolving semantic Web data. As novel archiving systems are starting to address this challenge, foundations/standards for benchmarking RDF archives are needed to evaluate its storage space efficiency and the performance of different retrieval operations. To this end, we provide theoretical foundations on the design of data and queries to evaluate emerging RDF archiving systems. Then, we instantiate these foundations along a concrete set of queries on the basis of a real-world evolving dataset. Finally, we perform an empirical evaluation of various current archiving techniques and querying strategies on this data that is meant to serve as a baseline of future developments on querying archives of evolving RDF data.

Submitted by Gustavo Moraes (gusmoraes@ig.com.br) on 2011-08-29T22:27:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação MFEE-EPGE - Gustavo de Paula Moraes.pdf: 288790 bytes, checksum: 75b700ba628f559aaf81308e4aaf88c8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vitor Souza (vitor.souza@fgv.br) on 2011-08-30T13:06:29Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação MFEE-EPGE - Gustavo de Paula Moraes.pdf: 288790 bytes, checksum: 75b700ba628f559aaf81308e4aaf88c8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-09-20T20:34:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação MFEE-EPGE - Gustavo de Paula Moraes.pdf: 288790 bytes, checksum: 75b700ba628f559aaf81308e4aaf88c8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-20 / Este trabalho estuda o diferencial de retorno entre fundos de ações com benchmark em índices de renda fixa e fundos de ações com benchmark em índices de renda variável. A escolha de um índice de renda fixa como benchmark para um FIA, em média tende a ser pior para o cotista, pois gera um potencial de ganho financeiro para o gestor não associado ao real valor por ele criado. Portanto, como a remuneração dos gestores através da taxa de performance depende em parte do benchmark escolhido, fundos com benchmark em renda fixa deveriam apresentar melhores desempenhos a fim de compensarem seus cotistas por este custo. Os resultados encontrados sugerem que os gestores de fundos com benchmark em renda fixa obtêm um retorno líquido de taxas de performance e administração superior para seus cotistas e também apresentam uma menor correlação com o Índice Bovespa. / This paper analyses the difference between returns of equities funds that have fixed-income index as benchmark and equities funds that have stocks index as benchmark. The choice of a fixed-income index as benchmark for an equities fund on average tends to be worst for the investor as it creates a potential financial recompense for the fund manager that is not associated with its performance. So, as fund managers performance-fee remuneration depends on the chosen benchmark, funds with fixed-income benchmark should feature better performances to compensate their investors for this cost. The results suggests that fixed-income benchmark funds managers shows better liquid of taxes returns and lower correlation with Bovespa Index.

Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy in Lahti, a company that manufactures buses of product family Scania Interlink LD, Scania Interlink MD, Scania Interlink HD and Scania Citywide LE Suburban. As Scania receives larger customer orders, these orders are divided into both Scania Production Słupsk S.A. and Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy, which bring a desire to harmonize these factories. To achieve this harmonization an investigation is required of Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy analysis process and comparison with Scania Production Słupsk S.A. To keep up the permanent development outcome, Strategic Plan Scania Production Lahti requires a survey of the painting process in Lahti, Finland. Based on this, an internal cost performance benchmark has been implemented between the factories. Through a currant status analysis of both facility’s, based on Strategic Plan Scania Production Lahti methods and strategies, as well as complementing this with external methods and theory, the gap between the factories has been conducted from a cost perspective. Based on the more in-depth analysis made in Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy, an improvement work has been carried out. / Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy i Lahti, tillverkar idag bussfamiljerna Scania Interlink LD, Scania Interlink MD, Scania Interlink HD och Scania Citywide LE Suburban. För att kunna leverera vid större kundordrar delas dessa upp mellan två Scaniaägda fabriker, Scania Production Słupsk S.A. och Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy, detta medför att en harmonisering krävs mellan fabrikerna så att slutprodukten blir identisk. För att uppnå denna harmonisering utfördes denna studie mellan dessa fabriker. Att jobba med ständiga förbättringar är djupt inprintat i Scanias visioner och mål. I arbetet med ständiga förbättringar för processer skulle målerprocessen förbättras i denna studie. Genom en nulägesanalys i båda fabrikerna baserad på Strategic Plan Scania Production Lahti metoder och strategier såväl som kompliment från externa metoder och teorier har prestanda gapet identifierats. Baserat på en såväl djupare nulägesanalys i Scania OmniExpress Busproduction Finland Oy, har ett förbättringsarbete utförts.