In this thesis we design and implement a benchmarking tool for applications' sensitivity to main memory bandwidth contention, in a multi-core environment, on an ARM Cortex-A15 CPU. The tool is supposed to minimize usage of shared resources, except for the main memory bandwidth, allowing it to isolate the effects of the bandwidth contention only. The difficulty in doing this lies in using a correct memory access pattern for this purpose, i.e. which memory addresses to access, in which order and at what rate in order to minimize cache usage while generating a high and controllable main memory bandwidth usage. We manage to implement a tool with low cache memory usage while still being able to saturate the main memory bandwidth. The tool uses a proportional-integral controller to control the amount of bandwidth it uses. We then use the tool to investigate the memory behaviour of the platform and of some applications when the tool is using a variable amount of bandwidth. However, we have some difficulties in analyzing the results due to the lack of support for hardware performance counters in the operating system we are using and are forced to rely on hardware timers for our data gathering. Another difficulty is the platform's limited L2 cache bandwidth, which leads to a heavy impact on L2 cache read latency by the tool. Despite this, we are able to draw some conclusions on the bandwidth usage of other applications in optimal cases with the help of the tool.

<p>This thesis is an effort to analyze the importance of business network partners for successful participation in trade shows for small firms to grow more in international markets. This study would be helpful to demonstrate the value of trade shows. Trade shows provide the opportunities to introduce new products, expand network connection, and enhancing firm’s corporate image. To participate in any trade show may be a very lucrative process, but there are many challenges and tasks which are to be met to get the maximum share of international market. </p><p>To analyse the effectiveness of business network for successful participation in trade shows, I have included one case study of trade shows, named Beauty World 2009, held at Frankfurt Germany. In this show, among the firms from all over the world, 16 small companies manufacturing beauty instruments, companies from my home city, namely Sialkot, Pakistan, also participated. Their experiences, participation, views and observation will also be used to analyze the importance of trade show for creating new business networks through this show.</p><p>This research indicates the effectiveness of network member providing support to small and growing firms for successful participation in trade shows. With the help of these network members, trade shows can be used as exclusive platforms to introduce new firms, as well as products, to potential consumers. In general, we can indicate that existing network partners, if mobilized accordingly, have the ability to reduce the overall cost incurred at trade shows.</p>

This thesis is an effort to analyze the importance of business network partners for successful participation in trade shows for small firms to grow more in international markets. This study would be helpful to demonstrate the value of trade shows. Trade shows provide the opportunities to introduce new products, expand network connection, and enhancing firm’s corporate image. To participate in any trade show may be a very lucrative process, but there are many challenges and tasks which are to be met to get the maximum share of international market. To analyse the effectiveness of business network for successful participation in trade shows, I have included one case study of trade shows, named Beauty World 2009, held at Frankfurt Germany. In this show, among the firms from all over the world, 16 small companies manufacturing beauty instruments, companies from my home city, namely Sialkot, Pakistan, also participated. Their experiences, participation, views and observation will also be used to analyze the importance of trade show for creating new business networks through this show. This research indicates the effectiveness of network member providing support to small and growing firms for successful participation in trade shows. With the help of these network members, trade shows can be used as exclusive platforms to introduce new firms, as well as products, to potential consumers. In general, we can indicate that existing network partners, if mobilized accordingly, have the ability to reduce the overall cost incurred at trade shows.

This master's thesis is about analysis, design and implementation of a system for shared resources reservation and its remote control. Subjects of sharing are test and development prototypes. For remote control are used I/O devices ET-7042 and SITOP PSU8600. The reader is introduced to target environment, REST application interfaces and communication standards Modbus and Profinet. The knowledge gathered is used in design and implementation of the system. The main goal of thesis is to make development and testing in lab more effective.

This dissertation follows in the tradition of role theory and organizational scholarship by examining how one role can be taken over by another, which can be referred to as encroachment. Previous organizational role research has not explored fully encroachment and its effects. Therefore, this study investigated factors that lead to role encroachment, especially the sharing of internal resources, and how individuals cope with the effects of encroachment. To conduct the study, focus groups of marketing and public relations departments were analyzed to explain how roles are enacted within their practical context. The goals of this dissertation were to (a) investigate how shared resources affect role boundaries and role enactment that can lead to encroachment, (b) explain the concept of encroachment and how it affects role enactment, and (c) investigate the conflict between public relations and marketing that can lead to encroachment in the age of social media. The study found themes related to: (a) definitions of encroachment, (b) factors facilitating encroachment, (c) factors affecting the intensity of encroachment, (d) shared resources and their effects on encroachment, (e) implications of encroachment to the individual, department, and organization, and (f) ways people deal with encroachment. First, encroachment was defined in three ways: the overtaking of tasks, or receiving unwanted strategic guidance, or interference of organizational processes. Second, the study found that role ambiguity and the communication of and adherence to cultural norms invite or prevent encroachment. Third, role ambiguity and organizational culture were found to be the dominant factors that affect the intensity of encroachment. Fourth, the study found that tangible macro resources, like organizational culture and structure, and practical resources, such as information and skill sets, facilitate encroachment. Fifth, findings indicated that implications of encroachment include stress, frustration, and confusion at the individual level; an us versus them mentality and role conflict at the departmental level; and broken relationships with external partners, lack of organizational nimbleness, and wasted time and money at the organizational level. Lastly, the study found that people deal with encroachment by providing and receiving emotional and informational social support, and by accumulating and spending social capital through relationship building within the organization. Theoretical implications of this research indicate that role conflict, role ambiguity, and boundary spanning role theory relate to encroachment. In addition, previous theory focused on external resource use by organizations can be expanded to evaluate the internal use of resources. Theory from interpersonal communication, such as social exchange theory, social support, and social capital, relate to how people facing encroachment cope with their roles being infringed upon. Practical implications of this dissertation include recommendations for organizations including increased communication of role boundaries and evaluations of restrictive cultural norms. The findings from this study provide an understanding of encroachment and indicate directions for further development of theory about encroachment and role enactment. / Media & Communication

Today’s computer systems develop towards less energy consumption while keeping high performance. These are contradictory requirement and pose a great challenge. A good example of an application were this is used is the smartphone. The constraints are on long battery time while getting high performance required by future 2D/3D applications. A solution to this is heterogeneous systems that have components that are specialized in different tasks and can execute them fast with low energy consumption. These could be specialized i.e. encoding/decoding, encryption/decryption, image processing or communication. At the apartment of Computer Architecture and Parallel Processing Laboratory (CAPPL) at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) a vector co-processor has been developed. The Vector co-processor has the unusual feature of being able to receive instructions from multiple hosts (scalar cores). In addition to this a test system with a couple of scalar processors using the vector processor has been developed. This thesis describes this processor and its test system. It also shows the development of math applications involving matrix operations. This results in the conclusions of the vector co-processing saving substantial amount of energy while speeding up the execution of the applications. In addition to this the thesis will describe an extension of the vector co-processor design that makes it possible to monitor the throughput of instructions and data in the processor.

This thesis deals with chemical plants constituted by parallel batch-continuous production lines with shared resources. For such plants, it is highly desirable to have optimal operation schedules which determine the starting times of the various batch processes and the flow rates of the continuous processes in order to maximize the average plant productivity and to have a continuous production without interruptions. This optimization problem is constrained by the limitation of the resources that are shared by the reactors and by the capacities of the various devices that constitute the plant. Such plants are "hybrid" by nature because they combine both continuous-time dynamics and discrete-event dynamics. The formalism of "Hybrid Automata" is there fore well suited for the design of plant models. The first contribution of this thesis is the development of a hybrid automaton model of the chemical plant in the Matlab-Simulink-Stateflow environment and its use for the design of an optimal periodic schedule that maximises the plant productivity. Using a sensitivity analysis and the concept of Poincaré; map, it is shown that the optimal schedule is a stable limit cycle of the hybrid system that attracts the system trajectories starting in a wide set of initial conditions. The optimal periodic schedule is valid under the assumption that the hybrid model is an exact description of the plant. Under perturbations on the plant parameters, it is shown that two types of problems may arise. The first problem is a drift of the hybrid system trajectory which can either lead to a convergence to a new stable sub-optimal schedule or to a resource conflict. The second problem is a risk of overflow or underflow of the output buffer tank. The second contribution of the thesis is the analysis of feedback control strategies to avoid these problems. For the first problem, a control policy based on a model predictive control (MPC) approach is proposed to avoid resource conflicts. The feedback control is run on - line with the hybrid Simulink-Stateflow simulator used as an internal model. For the solution of the second problem, a classical PI control is used. The goal is not only to avoid over- or under-filling of the tank but also to reduce the amplitude of outflow rate variations as much as possible. A methodological analysis for the PI controller tuning is presented in order to achieve an acceptable trade-off between these conflicting objectives.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3568.pdf: 2269626 bytes, checksum: abc81afada516e3439244198b3e60e74 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-12-14 / Search strategies have been used to solve the problem of scheduling of Manufacturing Systems with Shared Resources. However, depending on the size and complexity of the manufacturing system, the response time of the search becomes critical. Reseaches aim to use of Genetic Algorithms as a search method to solve the scheduling problem. This work proposes a modeling of Genetic Algorithm to solve this problem having as performance criteria the minimum makespan of the scheduling and obtaining a low response time of the search. / Várias estratégias de busca têm sido usadas para resolver o problema da programação da produção de sistemas de manufatura com recursos compartilhados. Entretanto, dependendo do tamanho e complexidade do sistema de manufatura, o tempo de resposta da busca torna-se crítico. Várias pesquisas apontam para o uso de Algoritmos Genéticos como método de busca para resolver o problema da programação da produção. O presente trabalho propõe uma modelagem de Algoritmo Genético para resolver tal problema de maneira eficiente, tendo como critério de desempenho o mínimo makespan da programação e obtendo baixo tempo de resposta da busca.

Résumé de la thèseCette recherche doctorale propose une analyse de l’impact des pratiques de mutualisation et de leur mise en œuvre sur la performance globale des organisations publiques. Cette recherche propose une définition des pratiques de mutualisation, en s’appuyant en particulier sur celles plus connues dans le privé comme la collaboration, le reengineering ou encore les fusions-acquisition. Elle s’appuie aussi sur la théorie des coûts de transaction et du changement organisationnel. D’autre part, l’analyse de la performance se fait à travers un prisme multidimensionnel que notre étude vient opérationnaliser. L’originalité de la recherche repose sur l’usage mixte d’une méthode quantitative, avec une enquête réalisée auprès des services départementaux d’incendie et de secours (SDIS) en France, et d’une méthode qualitative, à travers l’analyse approfondie d’une recherche-intervention de trois ans effectuée au sein d’un SDIS. Au global, les apports de la recherche apparaissent multiples. Tout d’abord, sur le plan théorique, il est notamment proposé un modèle novateur d’analyse de l’influence des pratiques de mutualisation et de leurs modalités de mise en œuvre sur les différentes dimensions de la performance publique locale. / This doctoral research is dedicated to the analysis of the impact of shared-resources mechanisms and their implementation on the global performance of public organizations. This research gives a proper definition to this mechanisms based on different concepts used for the private sector such as collaboration, reengineering or mergers and acquisitions. Moreover, this study is based on transaction cost theory and organizational changes. In addition, the analysis of performance that we propose uses a five dimension model that we were able to operationalize. The originality of the approach is linked to the use of both quantitative and qualitative analysis through a quantitative survey carried out in all Departmental Fire and Emergency Service in France, and, on the other and, a research-action led in one of them. The results of our research are numerous. The most important result is that the methodology of the implementation of shared resources mechanisms appears to be the most significant element which can create performance. Secondly, we propose a range of key success criteria of the methodology that can be used by manager in the public sector to run efficient shared-resources mechanisms.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3127.pdf: 25890453 bytes, checksum: d4cbd429325861ff182934e97ff94c28 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-11-20 / Manufacturing systems with shared resources have been designed to meet the market needs, which require high quality products, low cost and the guarantee of the conditions agreed with the customer. The production scheduling in a manufacturing system is a complex task due to its combinatorial nature. Several studies show the use of search methods, such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Tabu Search (TS), applied to the refinement of the production scheduling problem. The GAs present as disadvantages, the premature convergence, the lack of search intensification mechanisms in promising regions and also the lack of mechanisms which maintain the diversification of the population. In order to make GAs more effective in their search, by avoiding the premature convergence and ensuring the population diversity, some mechanisms are added to them so as to adjust their parameters during the search process, the so called Adaptative Genetic Algorithms (AGAs). However, these mechanisms do not guarantee the search intensification in the promising regions found. On the other hand, the TS presents mechanisms of search intensification and diversification, although its computational time depends on how optimal its initial solution is (solution by which the search process starts). In order to overcome the limitations of the traditional search methods, the Hybrid Algorithms (HAs) have been developed. They consist of the association of one method with another so that one helps the other in its deficiencies . This dissertation proposes the development of a Genetic-Tabu Algorithm (GTA) applied to the problem of the production reactive scheduling in a manufacturing system with shared resources, in order to ensure good compromise between makespan values and feedback time. The TS will be a functionality added to the AG and to the AGA, in other words, it will be a procedure to refine the individual(s) of the initial position and also to refine the individual obtained by the search methods. Tests have been conducted to determine which selection method (roulette or tournament) is more adequate for the definition of the neighborhood structure and also for the definition of the time to apply the mutation operator. Besides, other tests have been conducted by using different ways to calculate the makespan; one of them proposed in this dissertation and the others by Deriz (2007) and by Sanches (2008). / Os sistemas de manufatura com recursos compartilhados têm sido projetados para atender às necessidades do mercado, que demanda produtos que apresentem elevado padrão de qualidade, baixo custo e garantia das condições acordadas com o cliente. A programação da produção é uma tarefa complexa, pois é de natureza combinatória. Várias pesquisas apontam para a utilização de métodos de busca, como Algoritmos Genéticos (AGs) e Buscas Tabu (BTs), aplicados ao refinamento do problema da programação da produção. Os AGs apresentam como desvantagens a convergência prematura, a falta de mecanismos de intensificação da busca nas regiões promissoras e a falta de mecanismos que mantenham a diversificação da população. Para que os AGs possam ser mais efetivos em sua busca, de forma a evitar sua convergência prematura e garantir a diversidade populacional, acrescentam-se aos AGs, mecanismos que ajustam seus parâmetros no decorrer do processo de busca, os chamados Algoritmos Genéticos Adaptativos (AGAs). Esses mecanismos, no entanto, não garantem a intensificação da busca nas regiões promissoras encontradas. A BT, por sua vez, possui mecanismo de intensificação e diversificação da busca, porém o seu tempo computacional depende do quão ótimo é a sua solução inicial (solução pela qual se inicia o processo de busca). A fim de superar as limitações dos métodos de busca tradicionais, desenvolveram-se os Algoritmos Híbridos que agregam (ou associam) um método a outro, de forma que um auxilia o outro em sua deficiência . Neste trabalho, propõe-se o desenvolvimento de um Algoritmo Genético-Tabu (AGT) aplicado ao problema da programação reativa da produção em um sistema de manufatura com recursos compartilhados, a fim de garantir um bom compromisso entre valores de makespan e o tempo de obtenção da resposta. A BT será uma funcionalidade agregada ao AG e ao AGA, ou seja, é um procedimento que realizará o refinamento do(s) indivíduo(s) da população inicial e o refinamento do indivíduo obtido pelos métodos de busca. Realizam-se testes para definir qual método de seleção (roleta ou torneio) é mais bem aplicado ao problema, definição da estrutura da vizinhança e definição do momento de aplicação do operador de mutação. Além disso, foram também realizados testes com as diferentes formas de cálculo do makespan, sendo uma delas proposta neste trabalho e as demais propostas por Deriz (2007) e Sanches (2008).