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Today nucleate boiling is widely used in numerous industrial applications such as cooling processes because of the high achieved heat transfer rates for low temperature differences. It remains a possible cooling solution for the next generation of central processing units (CPU), which dissipate heat fluxes exceeding the capabilities of today’s conventional forced air cooling. However, nucleate boiling is a very complex and elusive process involving many mechanisms which are not fully understood yet and a comprehensive model is still missing. For this study a new experimental setup was designed, constructed and commissioned to investigate bubble nucleation, growth, departure and interaction during nucleate pool boiling from a silicon device fully immersed in fluorinert FC-72. The location of bubble nucleation is controlled by artificial cavities etched into the silicon substrate. Boiling is initiated with a heater integrated on the back and micro-sensors indicate the wall temperature at the bubble nucleation site. During this work three different silicon test section designs were fabricated and boiling experiments on these substrates successfully conducted. Bubble growth, bubble departure frequencies and bubble departure diameters for different dimensioned artificial cavities, varied pressure and increasing wall temperature were measured from high-speed imaging sequences. Bubble interactions like vertical and horizontal coalescence were visualised and their impact on the boiling heat transfer investigated. The influence of spacing between two neighbouring artificial cavities on bubble nucleation and departure frequencies, vertical coalescence frequencies and departure diameters was analysed. The acquired data are used as input for a numerical code developed by our collaborators (Brunel University, UK and Los Alamos National Laboratories, USA) and are a first step to validate the code. The code studies the interactions between bubble nucleation sites on solid surfaces as a network. The simulations will help design boiling substrates utilised for chip cooling applications with optimal artificial cavity distribution to maximise the cooling heat transfer.

Αντικείμενο της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η εξομοίωση της λειτουργίας ενός επεξεργαστή με διευρυμένο ρεπερτόριο εντολών μέσω του διαδικτύου. Αναλυτικότερα αναπτύχθηκε ένα διαδικτυακό εργαλείο που δέχεται την αλληλουχία των εντολών και στην συνέχεια αφού εκτελέσει έλεγχο αυτών, συμβολομεταφράζει και αποθηκεύει τον κώδικα που προκύπτει στην μνήμη της εφαρμογής. Αφού όλα τα παραπάνω έχουν ολοκληρωθεί και το πρόγραμμα έχει ελεγχθεί και αποθηκευθεί στην μνήμη τότε το γραφικό τμήμα της εφαρμογής αναλαμβάνει να εξομοιώσει την λειτουργία του επεξεργαστή, προβάλλοντας τις τιμές που παίρνουν οι καταχωρητές την κάθε στιγμή καθώς και την αλληλουχία των δεδομένων που μεταφέρονται από και προς αυτούς. / The purpose of this study is to simulate the operation of a processor with an expanded set of instructions through the Internet. In more details, it has been developed an online tool that accepts a sequence of instructions and then do various checks on them, compiles them and stores the code in application’s memory. As long as all this has been completed and the program has been tested and stored in memory, the simulation part of the application starts, in order to simulate the operation of the processor, providing registers with the correct value each time and the sequence of data transferred to and from them.

It is as easy to imagine that celebrities featured in anti-drug commercials uniformly encourage all viewers to abstain from drugs, as it is to imagine that the more closely viewers watch these commercials, the more effective the messages will be. The current research reconsiders both assumptions. Highly anti-marijuana (state of balance) and highly pro-marijuana (state of imbalance) viewers were selected, and their processing style (central vs. peripheral) was manipulated as they watched commercials (with anti-marijuana messages from celebrities for whom all viewers previously reported high appeal). The dependent measures were SOA (Strength of Association conveys the likelihood that attitudes will automatically activate to guide behavior related to marijuana), change in celebrity appeal (pre- to post-commercial), and level of counter argument after the messages. The findings confirm past research (Wagner and Sundar, 2003) suggesting that a peripheral processing style is more effective than central processing, in terms of SOA. They also suggest the usefulness of balance theory (Heider, 1946; Osgood and Tannenbaum, 1966) in studying media effects. In particular, they help understand how the presence of a celebrity, instead of leading to a decrease in the appeal of drugs for its viewers, may have unintended effects of a decrease in the appeal of the celebrity bearing the anti-drug message, and of greater counter-argument after the message. Ironically, these unintended effects were characteristic mostly of pro marijuana viewers who employed a central message processing style; this suggests that advertisers need to reconsider the effectiveness of this genre of messages, and underscores the relevance of social psychology to mass communication. / text

Η παρούσα ειδική ερευνητική εργασία εκπονήθηκε στα πλαίσια του Διατμηματικού Προγράμματος Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών Ειδίκευσης στην “Ηλεκτρονική και Επεξεργασία της Πληροφορίας” στο Τμήμα Φυσικής του Πανεπιστημίου Πατρών. Αντικείμενο της παρούσας εργασίας είναι η σχεδίαση και ανάπτυξη ενός βασικού μικροϋπολογιστικού συστήματος με τη χρήση της VHDL και FPGAs. Το σύστημα βασίζεται σε μία επαυξημένη, σε δυνατότητες, εκδοχή της σχετικά απλής cpu του Carpinelli και ενσωματώνει τη δυνατότητα παράλληλης διασύνδεσης μίας σειράς περιφερειακών διατάξεων και υποκυκλωμάτων. Στο πρώτο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζεται πλήρως η σχεδίαση ενός τέτοιου συστήματος και μελετάται η δομή των επιμέρους δομικών στοιχείων που το απαρτίζουν. Στο δεύτερο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζεται η περιγραφή του μικροϋπολογιστικού συστήματος σε γλώσσα VHDL και η πλήρης εξομοίωσή του με τη βοήθεια του λογισμικού Quartus v7.2 της ALTERA. Στο τελευταίο κεφάλαιο παρουσιάζεται η υλοποίηση του μικροϋπολογιστικού συστήματος στην αναπτυξιακή πλατφόρμα DE2 της εταιρείας ALTERA. / This project objective is the design and development of an FPGA based microcomputer system in VHDL. The system is based on an enhanced version of Carpinelli’s relative simple cpu and is implemented with parallel input and output ports and interrupts. The first chapter presents the full design of such a system and study the structure of the individual components that compose it. The second chapter presents the implementation of the microcomputer system in VHDL and the simulation results using Quartus v7.2 software suite. The last chapter presents the implementation of the system in a FPGA using DE2 development board of ALTERA.

<p>In this age of ubiquitous advertisement, people are getting more and more burdened withadvertising clutter. Digital Signage (DS) has evolved to be a new medium that can cut throughthis clutter and reach a large number of consumers. Though Digital Signage was introduced asan in-store advertising medium, soon it started to replace traditional static billboards with thebenefit of technological advancement.</p><p>While advertising effectiveness is a much discussed subject, effectiveness of an advertisingmedia is still a less explored area. Our research explored the effectiveness of Digital Signageas an advertising media in terms of its placement inside of a store and outside of a store. Atthe beginning we developed a model to measure the effectiveness of Digital Signage on thebasis of an existing model, termed as Advertising Response Model (ARM). Based onprofound study and analysis of previous literature on advertising and media effectiveness,consumer psychology, outdoor advertising and intermediate measurement variables weconstructed the modified version of ARM that deemed to be the best fit with our purpose. Wefurther developed four hypotheses on the basis of the four major variables of our model.</p><p>The result of our study indicated that placement of Digital Signage inside and outside of thestore environment impacts the variables of Attention, Recall and Media Liking of theaudience differently. However, no significant difference in consumers’ Buying Interest issupported. Placing Digital Signage inside of the store as well outside of the store both hasdifferent degrees of impact on consumers in terms of Attention, Recall and Media Liking. Thecorrelations among the variables were also explored and thus we presented some strategicinsights about the placement of Digital Signage and practical implications for managers in thescope of our study.</p><p>Our research area has received comparatively less academic attention than other advertisingmedia. However, considering the growing importance of Digital Signage as a groundbreakingadvertising medium and scope of future research work, we believe Digital Signage will be asubject of interest for the academics, the advertisers as well as for the companies.</p>

In this age of ubiquitous advertisement, people are getting more and more burdened withadvertising clutter. Digital Signage (DS) has evolved to be a new medium that can cut throughthis clutter and reach a large number of consumers. Though Digital Signage was introduced asan in-store advertising medium, soon it started to replace traditional static billboards with thebenefit of technological advancement. While advertising effectiveness is a much discussed subject, effectiveness of an advertisingmedia is still a less explored area. Our research explored the effectiveness of Digital Signageas an advertising media in terms of its placement inside of a store and outside of a store. Atthe beginning we developed a model to measure the effectiveness of Digital Signage on thebasis of an existing model, termed as Advertising Response Model (ARM). Based onprofound study and analysis of previous literature on advertising and media effectiveness,consumer psychology, outdoor advertising and intermediate measurement variables weconstructed the modified version of ARM that deemed to be the best fit with our purpose. Wefurther developed four hypotheses on the basis of the four major variables of our model. The result of our study indicated that placement of Digital Signage inside and outside of thestore environment impacts the variables of Attention, Recall and Media Liking of theaudience differently. However, no significant difference in consumers’ Buying Interest issupported. Placing Digital Signage inside of the store as well outside of the store both hasdifferent degrees of impact on consumers in terms of Attention, Recall and Media Liking. Thecorrelations among the variables were also explored and thus we presented some strategicinsights about the placement of Digital Signage and practical implications for managers in thescope of our study. Our research area has received comparatively less academic attention than other advertisingmedia. However, considering the growing importance of Digital Signage as a groundbreakingadvertising medium and scope of future research work, we believe Digital Signage will be asubject of interest for the academics, the advertisers as well as for the companies.

Software parallelization has gained increasing interest since the transistor manufacturing of smaller chips within an integrated circuit has begun to stagnate. This has led to the development of new processing units with an increasing number of cores. Parallelization is an optimization technique that allows the user to utilize parallel processes in order to streamline algorithm flows. This study examines the performance benefits that a passive bistatic radar system can obtain by parallelization and code refactorization. The study focuses mainly on investigating the use of parallel instructions within a shared memory model on a Central Processing Unit (CPU) with the use of an application programming interface, namely OpenMP. Quantitative data is collected to compare the runtime of the most central algorithm in the passive radar system, namely the Extensive Cancellation Algorithm (ECA). ECA can be used to suppress unwanted clutter in the surveillance signal, which purpose is to create clear target detections of airborne objects. The algorithm on the other hand is computationally demanding, which has led to the development of faster versions such as the Sliding ECA (ECA-S). Despite the ongoing development, the algorithm is still relatively computationally demanding which can lead to long execution times within the radar system. In this study, a MATLAB implementation of ECA-S is transformed to C in order to take advantage of the fast execution time of the procedural programming language. Parallelism is introduced within the converted algorithm by the use of Intel's thread methodology and then applied within two different operating systems. The study shows that a speedup can be obtained, in the programming language C, by a factor of 24 while still ensuring the correctness of the results. The results also showed that code refactorization of a MATLAB algorithm could result in 73% faster code and that C-MEX implementations are twice as slow as a C-implementation. Finally, the study pointed out that real-time can be achieved for a passive bistatic radar system with the use of the programming language C and by using parallel instructions within a shared memory model on a CPU. / Parallellisering av mjukvara har fått ett ökat intresse sedan transistortillverkningen av mindre chip inom en integrerade krets har börjat att stagnera. Detta har lett till utveckling av moderna processorer med ett ökande antal av kärnor. Parallellisering är en optimeringsteknik vilken tillåter användaren att utnyttja parallella processer till att effektivisera algoritmflöden. Denna studie undersöker de tidsmässiga fördelar ett passivt bistatiskt radarsystem kan erhålla genom att, bland annat tillämpa parallellisering och omformning. Studien fokuserar främst på att undersöka användandet av parallella trådar inom det delade minnesutrymmet på en centralprocessor (CPU), detta med hjälp av applikationsprogrammeringsgränssnittet OpenMP. Kvantitativa jämförelser tas fram med hjälp av en av de mest centrala algoritmerna inom det passiva radarsystemet, nämligen Extensive Cancellation Algorithm (ECA). ECA kan används till att undertrycka oönskat klotter i övervakningssignalen, vilket har till syfte att skapa klara måldetektioner av luftföremål. Algoritmen är däremot beräkningstung, vilket har medfört utveckling av snabbare versioner som exempelvis Sliding ECA (ECA-S). Trots utvecklingen är algoritmen fortfarande relativt beräkningstung och kan medföra en lång exekeveringstid inom hela radarsystemet. I denna studie transformeras en MATLAB-implementation av ECA-S till C för att kunna dra nytta av den snabba exekeveringstiden i det procedurella programmeringsspråket. Parallellism införs inom den transformerade algoritmen med hjälp av Intels trådmetodik och appliceras sedan inom två olika operativsystem. Studien visar på en tidsmässig optimering i C med upp till 24 gånger snabbare exekeveringstid och bibehållen noggrannhet. Resultaten visade även på att en enklare omformning av en MATLAB-algoritm kunde resultera till 73% snabbare kod och att en C-MEX-implementation är dubbelt så långsam i jämförelse med en C-implementering. Slutligen pekade studien på att realtid kan uppnås för ett passivt bistatiskt radarsystem vid användandet av programmeringsspråket C och med utnyttjandet av parallella instruktioner inom det delade minnet på en CPU.

Computing systems have become heterogeneous with the increasing prevalence of multi-core CPUs, Graphics Processing Units (GPU) and other accelerators in them. OpenCL has emerged as an attractive programming framework for heterogeneous systems. However, utilizing mul- tiple devices in OpenCL is a challenge as it requires the programmer to explicitly map data and computation to each device. Utilizing multiple devices simultaneously to speed up execu- tion of a kernel is even more complex, as the relative execution time of the kernel on different devices can vary significantly. Also, after each kernel execution, a coherent version of the data needs to be established. This means that, in order to utilize all devices effectively, the programmer has to spend considerable time and effort to distribute work across all devices, keep track of modified data in these devices and correctly perform a merging step to put the data together. Further, the relative performance of a program may vary across different inputs, which means a statically determined work distribution may not work well. In this work, we present FluidiCL, an OpenCL runtime that takes a program written for a single device and uses multiple heterogeneous devices to execute each kernel. The runtime performs dynamic work distribution and cooperatively executes each kernel on all available devices. Since we consider a setup with devices having discrete address spaces, our solution ensures that execution of OpenCL work-groups on devices is adjusted by taking into account the overheads for data management. The data transfers and data merging needed to ensure coherence are handled transparently without requiring any effort from the programmer. Flu- idiCL also does not require prior training or profiling and is completely portable across dif- ferent machines. Because it is dynamic, the runtime is able to adapt to system load. We have developed several optimizations for improving the performance of FluidiCL. We evaluate the runtime across different sets of devices. On a machine with an Intel quad-core processor and an NVidia Fermi GPU, FluidiCL shows a geomean speedup of nearly 64% over the GPU, 88% over the CPU and 14% over the best of the two devices in each benchmark. In all benchmarks, performance of our runtime comes to within 13% of the best of the two devices. FluidiCL shows similar results on a machine with a quad-core CPU and an NVidia Kepler GPU, with up to 26% speedup over the best of the two. We also present results considering an Intel Xeon Phi accelerator and a CPU and find that FluidiCL performs up to 45% faster than the best of the two devices. We extend FluidiCL from a CPU–GPU scenario to a three-device setup hav- ing a quad-core CPU, an NVidia Kepler GPU and an Intel Xeon Phi accelerator and find that FluidiCL obtains a geomean improvement of 6% in kernel execution time over the best of the three devices considered in each case.

Facial expression recognition (FER) is still a challenging concept, and machines struggle to comprehend effectively the dynamic shifts in facial expressions of human emotions. The existing systems, which have proven to be effective, consist of deeper network structures that need powerful and expensive hardware. The deeper the network is, the longer the training and the testing. Many systems use expensive GPUs to make the process faster. To remedy the above challenges while maintaining the main goal of improving the accuracy rate of the recognition, we create a generic hierarchical structure with variable settings. This generic structure has a hierarchy of three convolutional blocks, two dropout blocks and one fully connected block. From this generic structure we derived four different network structures to be investigated according to their performances. From each network structure case, we again derived six network structures in relation to the variable parameters. The variable parameters under analysis are the size of the filters of the convolutional maps and the max-pooling as well as the number of convolutional maps. In total, we have 24 network structures to investigate, and six network structures per case. After simulations, the results achieved after many repeated experiments showed in the group of case 1; case 1a emerged as the top performer of that group, and case 2a, case 3c and case 4c outperformed others in their respective groups. The comparison of the winners of the 4 groups indicates that case 2a is the optimal structure with optimal parameters; case 2a network structure outperformed other group winners. Considerations were done when choosing the best network structure, considerations were; minimum accuracy, average accuracy and maximum accuracy after 15 times of repeated training and analysis of results. All 24 proposed network structures were tested using two of the most used FER datasets, the CK+ and the JAFFE. After repeated simulations the results demonstrate that our inexpensive optimal network architecture achieved 98.11 % accuracy using the CK+ dataset. We also tested our optimal network architecture with the JAFFE dataset, the experimental results show 84.38 % by using just a standard CPU and easier procedures. We also compared the four group winners with other existing FER models performances recorded recently in two studies. These FER models used the same two datasets, the CK+ and the JAFFE. Three of our four group winners (case 1a, case 2a and case 4c) recorded only 1.22 % less than the accuracy of the top performer model when using the CK+ dataset, and two of our network structures, case 2a and case 3c came in third, beating other models when using the JAFFE dataset. / Electrical and Mining Engineering