With the advent of mass-market consumer multicore processors, the growing trend in the consumer off-the-shelf general purpose processor industry has moved away from increasing clock frequency as the classical approach for achieving higher performance. This is commonly attributed to the well-known problems of power consumption and heat dissipation with high frequencies and voltage. This paradigm shift has prompted research into a relatively new field of "many-core" processors, such as the Intel Single-chip Cloud Computer. The SCC is a concept vehicle, an experimental homogenous architecture employing 48 IA32 cores interconnected by a high-speed communication network. As similar multiprocessor systems, such as the Cell Broadband Engine, demonstrate a significantly higher aggregate bandwidth in the interconnect network than in memory, we examine the viability of a pipelined approach to sorting on the Intel SCC. By tailoring an algorithm to the architecture, we investigate whether this is also the case with the SCC and whether employing a pipelining technique alleviates the classical memory bottleneck problem or provides any performance benefits. For this purpose, we employ and combine different classic algorithms, most significantly, parallel mergesort and samplesort.

<p>A few aspects of aircraft noise were evaluated. These were (i) methods of subjective evaluations, (ii) effects of equalization and (iii) the effects of cognitive aspects.</p><p>In the first paper, sorting algorithms were used instead of conventional paired comparison method in order to reduce the number of pairs in the evaluation of subjective judgments. The quick sorting algorithm method revealed more than 99% correlation coefficient with paired comparison method although the method used N*log(N) evaluations instead of N(N-1)/2.</p><p>In the second paper, equalization effects on perception were evaluated in two steps, first with stationary aircraft sounds and second with non-stationary aircraft sounds.</p><p>The first experiment examined the effects of stationary sound segments respect to three different angle positions of the aircrafts relative to the observer (78.7°, 90° & 101.3°), two different SNR conditions (sounds having original broadband plus tonal components versus control broadband sounds having no tonal components) and two different flight conditions (arrival and take-off). Subjects were asked to scale five perceptual attributes (loudness, annoyance, hardness, power and pitch) using Borg CR100 scale. The angle condition showed highly significant effects on annoyance and hardness. Maximal effects were found at an angle of 78.7°. The SNR revealed a significant impact on loudness, power and pitch.</p><p>The second experiment analyzed the effects of tonal components and the problem of appropriate equalization. The spectrum of the signals was modified in two steps (buzz-saw, isolated BPF tone). Further EPNL-equalization, A-, B-, C-, D- and spectral broadband equalizations were applied to the synthesized sounds. Annoyance, loudness, hardness and pitch in the isolated tone conditions showed significantly stronger effects than the buzz-conditions on the perceived judgments. The EPNL-equalization led to a lower degree of differentiation between the spectral conditions compared to B- and C-level equalization.</p><p>In the third paper, the effects of aircraft sounds on children’s cognitive performance were investigated. Impact of aircraft noise on children cognition was found significantly higher in reading comprehensions than in basic mathematics and problem solving tests. It seems children are very sensitive to the modifications in the aircraft noise but further studies are necessary to compliment such a finding.</p>

A few aspects of aircraft noise were evaluated. These were (i) methods of subjective evaluations, (ii) effects of equalization and (iii) the effects of cognitive aspects. In the first paper, sorting algorithms were used instead of conventional paired comparison method in order to reduce the number of pairs in the evaluation of subjective judgments. The quick sorting algorithm method revealed more than 99% correlation coefficient with paired comparison method although the method used N*log(N) evaluations instead of N(N-1)/2. In the second paper, equalization effects on perception were evaluated in two steps, first with stationary aircraft sounds and second with non-stationary aircraft sounds. The first experiment examined the effects of stationary sound segments respect to three different angle positions of the aircrafts relative to the observer (78.7°, 90° &amp; 101.3°), two different SNR conditions (sounds having original broadband plus tonal components versus control broadband sounds having no tonal components) and two different flight conditions (arrival and take-off). Subjects were asked to scale five perceptual attributes (loudness, annoyance, hardness, power and pitch) using Borg CR100 scale. The angle condition showed highly significant effects on annoyance and hardness. Maximal effects were found at an angle of 78.7°. The SNR revealed a significant impact on loudness, power and pitch. The second experiment analyzed the effects of tonal components and the problem of appropriate equalization. The spectrum of the signals was modified in two steps (buzz-saw, isolated BPF tone). Further EPNL-equalization, A-, B-, C-, D- and spectral broadband equalizations were applied to the synthesized sounds. Annoyance, loudness, hardness and pitch in the isolated tone conditions showed significantly stronger effects than the buzz-conditions on the perceived judgments. The EPNL-equalization led to a lower degree of differentiation between the spectral conditions compared to B- and C-level equalization. In the third paper, the effects of aircraft sounds on children’s cognitive performance were investigated. Impact of aircraft noise on children cognition was found significantly higher in reading comprehensions than in basic mathematics and problem solving tests. It seems children are very sensitive to the modifications in the aircraft noise but further studies are necessary to compliment such a finding.