X-ray diffraction experiments are used extensively in the sciences to study the structure, chemicalcomposition and physical properties of materials. The output of such experiments are samples of thediffraction pattern, which essentially constitutes a 3D unstructured dataset. In this thesis, wedevelop a method for visualizing such datasets.Our visualization method is based on volume ray casting, but operates directly on the unstructuredsamples, rather than resampling them to form voxels. We estimate the intensity of the X-raydiffraction pattern at points along the rays by interpolation using nearby samples, taking advantageof an octree to facilitate efficient range search. The method is implemented on both the CPUand the GPU.To test our method, actual X-ray diffraction datasets is used, consisting of up to 120M samples.We are able to generate images of good quality. The rendering time varies dramatically, between 5 sand 200 s, depending upon dataset, and settings used. A simple performance model is developedand empirically tested to better understand this variation. Our implementation scales exceptionallywell to more CPU cores, with a speedup of 5.9 on a 6-core CPU. Furthermore, the GPU implementationachieves a speedup of around 4.6 compared to the CPU version.

As smartphone sales increase, the demand for content for these devices alsoincreases. Service providers that want to reach out to as many users as possibleneed to create smartphone applications that satisfy people that do not fall intothe "normal user" category. People that require non-visual feedback, such asvisually impaired persons, need output in form of auditory signals. Text-tospeechsynthesis provides this functionality, giving the smartphone the abilityto convey messages in the form of speech.This thesis describes TaleTUC: Text-to-speech, a proof of concept text-to-speechsystem for the domain of bus route information. The system uses a client-serverarchitecture where the server converts text to computer-generated speech signalsand provides playable audio files either directly to the smartphone, orthrough a Java Servlet that provides functionality to tailor the output (e.g., audiocompression). Descriptions of other enhancements to bus route informationsystems, that are are not directly related to synthesized speech, have also beengiven.Three text-to-speech modules have been evaluated and to establish whetherthere is a link between intelligibility and naturalness in synthesized speech.Non-functional tests (transfer, response time, etc) have also been conductedto get an impression of whether service providers that use "cloud" technologyprovide a better service than an in-house system. There are no definitive answersto these questions, but results indicate that there might be a link (howeversmall) between intelligibility and naturalness and that an in-house systemis still preferable in the domain of bus route information.

NUTS er en 2U CubeSat, planlagt for oppskyting i 2014. NUTS er utviklet ved NTNU, og studenter ta del det å bygge og designe satellitten. Miniatyrsatellitter som følge Cubesat spesifikasjonen er ofte sammensatt av separate moduler. En databuss er vanlig metode for inter-modul kommunikasjon. Men å være en delt medium, trafikk på databusser følsomme for forstyrrelser fra sviktende moduler. NUTS bruker I2C som busstypen. Mangelen på sentraliserte voldgift positurer flere utfordringer med hensyn rettferdig bruk av buss tid, feil motstand og feilretting.Dette notatet beskriver prosessen med å utvikle en buss protokoll for NUTS. De viktigste målene for NUTS bussen protokollen er å gi noen grad av rettferdighet mellom modulene, diktere en nedre grense på data gjennomstrømming gitt visse forutsetninger, samt gi en nyttig abstraksjon å lette gjennomføringen av høyere nivå logikk. Flere støttefunksjoner for å gjøre dette mulig. Dette inkluderer å definere et system arkitektur og utvikle en grunnleggende sett med drivere som kreves for å kommunisere over en I2C buss.Hver modul deltar i utprøving av bussjåføren gjennomføringen, har USB-grensesnitt kontakter. Dette grensesnittet vil bli brukt til å kontrollere modulen eller moduler under test. Hvis noen ventetider skal ha garantert banen, må ventetid i avbruddet behandlingen være både forutsigbar og begrenset. Avbruddet behandling latency måles for å finne ut om dette kan være et problem.For å lette både testing og debugging, ble en USB-grensesnitt som brukes til å kontrollere de modulene under testing. Den eksisterende USB stabelen ble utvidet for å gi en egen kommunikasjonskanal, noe som gjør det mulig å gi terminal tjenester og dataoverføring funksjoner samtidig. Et design for NUTS bussen protokollen er også foreslått. For å hjelpe gjennomføringen av denne protokoll, har en I2C mester driver blitt utviklet. Et design for en $ I ^ 2C $ slavedriver har også blitt foreslåttVi finner ut at garantere rettferdig tilgang til en I2C buss krever spesielle hensyn i både sender og mottaker. Rettferdighet er et problem som må respekteres på system-nivå. Variasjoner i avbruddet behandling ventetid ved bruk FreeRTOS antyder at det kan være rom for forbedring.

Most of the existing poker agents using case-based reasoning (CBR) are based on imitation of other poker agents and have weak capabilities of adapting their own strategies to different opponents or playing styles. We address these concerns in the development of UpperCase, a heads up no-limit Texas Hold'em poker agent representing a new approach to the application of CBR in poker. Using methods of perfect information hindsight analysis, the poker agent attempts to more accurately determine the quality of poker decisions. Through extensive exploration of the quality of different decisions, UpperCase is able to invent new poker strategies. The agent also tries to recognize different opponents by observing their actions and perform adaptation accordingly. Experimental results suggest that the agent is able to successfully create new profitable strategies, as well as achieve increased performance by dynamically changing its strategy during play.

In previous work, a cache-aware sparse matrix multiplication for linear programming interior point methods was proposed. The serial implementations achieved speedups ranging from 1.2 to 108.0 over the implementation in GLPK, an open-source linear programming solver. In this work, the same ideas and data structures are used to develop a cache-aware sparse cholesky decomposition as it is implemented in GLPK. The serial implementation achieves a speedup of up to 2.5 on the problem set considered. The matrix multiplication and cholesky decomposition are analysed by use of performance counters on both an AMD-based and an Intel-based system. The analysis shows that the applied blocking techniques reduce the number of floating point operations performed, and that this effect is even more important than the achieved cache utilization to produce speedup for some problems.

This thesis concerns the modeling of running speed in orient-eering by means of multi-layered feed forward artificial neu-ral networks with Backpropagation learning, using GPS tracks of orienteers, an orienteering map and a digital eleva-tion model as the basis for the training data. A learning sys-tem was implemented and tested with GPS data collected by a test subject. A trained speed model was applied in a third-party application for arithmetic analysis of route choices. The proposed method is shown to have potential, even though the results as of now are not good enough to be considered useful to orienteers.

The scalability of an information system describes the relationship between system ca-pacity and system size. This report studies the scalability of Microsoft Lync Server 2010 in order to provide guidelines for provisioning hardware resources. Optimal pro-visioning is required to reduce both deployment and operational costs, while keeping an acceptable service quality.All Lync servers in the test setup are virtualizedusingVMware ESXi 5.0 and the system runs on a Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) platform. The scenario is a typical hosted Lync deployment with external users only and telephone integration. While several companies offer hosted virtual Lync deployments and the Cisco UCS platform has a rich market share, Microsoft’s capacity planning guides don’t provide help for such a deployment scenario or hardware platform. This report consequently fill an information gap.The scalability is determined by using empirical measurements with different work-loads and system sizes. The workload is determined by the number of Lync end-users and the system size varies from 1/4 to 4/4 Cisco UCS blade server. The results show a linear scaling in the range of 1/4 to 4/4 blade servers. The processor is found to be the main bottleneck resource in this deployment. Themean opinion score (MOS) aswell as the front end server utilization are the best metrics formonitoring service quality.

This thesis presents a technique for GPU-based terrain rendering and the changes made to the HPC-lab snow simulator to integrate the new terrain rendering technique into the simulator. Our novel terrain rendering technique combines ideas from existing terrain rendering techniques such as CDLODcite{CDLOD} and Geometry Clipmapscite{geoclipmaps} into a hybrid method. The terrain rendering works on patches of quads, that are tessellated, using hardware tessellation based on the level of detail needed. The tessellated patches are then displaced, using a vertex texture fetch of the heightmap in the tessellation shader. The implemented GPU terrain rendering technique is then added to the HPC-lab snow simulator, and changes to the simulator are implemented to facilitate the new terrain rendering technique, all of the old GLSL shaders are updated to the newest standard, the code structure is changed, and the collision detection of the snow simulator is updated to accommodate changes made to the terrain.The results from our benchmarks show that the tessellation pipeline can be used to facilitate terrain triangle count of over 16 million triangles while maintaining a stable frame rate of over 1400 FPS. When used in combination with the simulator, the implementation is still able to achieve frame rates that are vastly greater than the old implementation in the snow simulator. The visual results acheived from using Perlin noise gives the simulator a more realistic feel, while not degrading the performance of the implementation. Suggestions for futher improvements are also included.

Since the mid-1980s processor performance growth has been remarkable, with an annual growth of about 52 %. Methods such as architectural enhancements exploiting ILP and frequency scaling have been effective at increasing performance, but are now limited by its diminishing returns and the power wall. Heterogeneous processors as an alternative source for continued growth looks promising, but research on heterogeneous software is made difficult as heterogeneous hardware is in low supply. This thesis cover the design and implementation of a heterogeneous processor called SHMAC and its framework. Flexibility of the delivered system allows rapid exploration of both hardware and software sides of heterogeneous processor research questions. The system is intended for research at CARD at NTNU. Two processor tiles and a set of additional tiles for extended functionality are provided, yielding a wide range of possible hardware setups in the delivered framework. Using a Xilinx Virtex 6 we were able to implement 40 integer cores or 16 floating-point cores.

The purpose of this study has been to test the use of gaze interaction in common everyday computer tasks, with the intent to suggest design guidelines for gaze interaction in Microsoft Windows 7. This has been done by organizing a user test with fifteen participants, using a self-made gaze interactive software called Discovery and a Tobii X60 eye tracker.Five demo applications have been created within the Discovery software, all utilizing gaze interaction. They are customized to reflect five user test tasks; playing a video game, exploring a picture gallery, doing drag and drop operations, browsing a web page and interacting with different Microsoft Windows controls. The four types of controls tested are command buttons, links, check boxes and sliders. Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered during the user test.Through a discussion of the test results, we were able to suggest ten specific design guidelines for gaze interaction. These covers both the tested controls, drag and drop operations, automatic scrolling as well as the use of head gestures. Additional findings indicate that gaze interaction is more suitable for passive tasks such as reading with automatic scrolling, than for more physical tasks like doing drag and drop operations. To support gaze interaction, we found that current software will either require a major redesign or to be used in a combination with other interaction styles.Eye tracking technology has improved over the last years, becoming increasingly affordable and accurate. Through this study we have seen that gaze interaction has much to offer everyday computing. By recommending fundamental design guidelines we hope to aid software developers and designers in the development of future gaze interactive systems.