Economic analysis and evaluation of sport events and sports infrastructure is a widely researched topic, especially when it comes to mega-sports events. As many of major and mega events require large amount of resources, governments and municipalities worldwide have to make decisions regarding support for the events. To determine whether and to what extent events should be subsidised with public resources, a thorough analysis of potential impacts of the event has to be conducted. Most of the studies within this field choose Economic Impact Analysis as a method, while many researchers point out a need for costbenefit analysis, as only a comprehensive analysis of costs and benefits for society can justify public subsidies for sport events and sports infrastructure. This paper presents a cost-benefit approach of sports venue evaluation. A cost-benefit analysis made in this paper, on the case of Swedish outdoor area of Lugnet, Falun, presents possible effects of sports infrastructure investments on social welfare. Analysis was aimed towards investments made prior to hosting 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in Falun. Presenting results for three alternative scenarios, this study compares different effects on social benefit. This research paper highlights areas that need to be investigated to ensure the better quality of the results, thus it can be beneficial for further studies of the topic. Results presented in this paper can also be beneficial for policy makers, as many of the potential welfare effects were described.

Les langages de programmation typés dynamiquement tels que JavaScript et Python repoussent la vérification de typage jusqu’au moment de l’exécution. Afin d’optimiser la performance de ces langages, les implémentations de machines virtuelles pour langages dynamiques doivent tenter d’éliminer les tests de typage dynamiques redondants. Cela se fait habituellement en utilisant une analyse d’inférence de types. Cependant, les analyses de ce genre sont souvent coûteuses et impliquent des compromis entre le temps de compilation et la précision des résultats obtenus. Ceci a conduit à la conception d’architectures de VM de plus en plus complexes. Nous proposons le versionnement paresseux de blocs de base, une technique de compilation à la volée simple qui élimine efficacement les tests de typage dynamiques redondants sur les chemins d’exécution critiques. Cette nouvelle approche génère paresseusement des versions spécialisées des blocs de base tout en propageant de l’information de typage contextualisée. Notre technique ne nécessite pas l’utilisation d’analyses de programme coûteuses, n’est pas contrainte par les limitations de précision des analyses d’inférence de types traditionnelles et évite la complexité des techniques d’optimisation spéculatives. Trois extensions sont apportées au versionnement de blocs de base afin de lui donner des capacités d’optimisation interprocédurale. Une première extension lui donne la possibilité de joindre des informations de typage aux propriétés des objets et aux variables globales. Puis, la spécialisation de points d’entrée lui permet de passer de l’information de typage des fonctions appellantes aux fonctions appellées. Finalement, la spécialisation des continuations d’appels permet de transmettre le type des valeurs de retour des fonctions appellées aux appellants sans coût dynamique. Nous démontrons empiriquement que ces extensions permettent au versionnement de blocs de base d’éliminer plus de tests de typage dynamiques que toute analyse d’inférence de typage statique. / Dynamically typed programming languages such as JavaScript and Python defer type checking to run time. In order to maximize performance, dynamic language virtual machine implementations must attempt to eliminate redundant dynamic type checks. This is typically done using type inference analysis. However, type inference analyses are often costly and involve tradeoffs between compilation time and resulting precision. This has lead to the creation of increasingly complex multi-tiered VM architectures. We introduce lazy basic block versioning, a simple just-in-time compilation technique which effectively removes redundant type checks from critical code paths. This novel approach lazily generates type-specialized versions of basic blocks on the fly while propagating context-dependent type information. This does not require the use of costly program analyses, is not restricted by the precision limitations of traditional type analyses and avoids the implementation complexity of speculative optimization techniques. Three extensions are made to the basic block versioning technique in order to give it interprocedural optimization capabilities. Typed object shapes give it the ability to attach type information to object properties and global variables. Entry point specialization allows it to pass type information from callers to callees, and call continuation specialization makes it possible to pass return value type information back to callers without dynamic overhead. We empirically demonstrate that these extensions enable basic block versioning to exceed the capabilities of static whole-program type analyses.

Background: Generative Adversarial Networks (Goodfellow et al., 2014) (GANs)are the current state of the art machine learning data generating systems. Designed with two neural networks in the initial architecture proposal, generator and discriminator. These neural networks compete in a zero-sum game technique, to generate data having realistic properties inseparable to that of original datasets. GANs have interesting applications in various domains like Image synthesis, 3D object generation in gaming industry, fake music generation(Dong et al.), text to image synthesis and many more. Despite having a widespread application domains, GANs are popular for image data synthesis. Various architectures have been developed for image synthesis evolving from fuzzy images of digits to photorealistic images. Objectives: In this research work, we study various literature on different GAN architectures. To understand significant works done essentially to improve the GAN architectures. The primary objective of this research work is synthesis of plant images using Style GAN (Karras, Laine and Aila, 2018) variant of GAN using style transfer. The research also focuses on identifying various machine learning performance evaluation metrics that can be used to measure Style GAN model for the generated image datasets. Methods: A mixed method approach is used in this research. We review various literature work on GANs and elaborate in detail how each GAN networks are designed and how they evolved over the base architecture. We then study the style GAN (Karras, Laine and Aila, 2018a) design details. We then study related literature works on GAN model performance evaluation and measure the quality of generated image datasets. We conduct an experiment to implement the Style based GAN on leaf dataset(Kumar et al., 2012) to generate leaf images that are similar to the ground truth. We describe in detail various steps in the experiment like data collection, preprocessing, training and configuration. Also, we evaluate the performance of Style GAN training model on the leaf dataset. Results: We present the results of literature review and the conducted experiment to address the research questions. We review and elaborate various GAN architecture and their key contributions. We also review numerous qualitative and quantitative evaluation metrics to measure the performance of a GAN architecture. We then present the generated synthetic data samples from the Style based GAN learning model at various training GPU hours and the latest synthetic data sample after training for around ~8 GPU days on leafsnap dataset (Kumar et al., 2012). The results we present have a decent quality to expand the dataset for most of the tested samples. We then visualize the model performance by tensorboard graphs and an overall computational graph for the learning model. We calculate the Fréchet Inception Distance score for our leaf Style GAN and is observed to be 26.4268 (the lower the better). Conclusion: We conclude the research work with an overall review of sections in the paper. The generated fake samples are much similar to the input ground truth and appear to be convincingly realistic for a human visual judgement. However, the calculated FID score to measure the performance of the leaf StyleGAN accumulates a large value compared to that of Style GANs original celebrity HD faces image data set. We attempted to analyze the reasons for this large score.

<p>The Ericsson AXE-based systems are programmed using an internally developed language called Plex-C. Plex-C is normally compiled to execute on an Ericsson internal processor architecture. A transition to standard processors is currently in progress. This makes it interesting to examine if Plex-C can be compiled to execute on the JVM, which would make it processor independent. </p><p>The purpose of the thesis is to examine if parts of the run-time environment of Plex-C can be translated to Java and if this can be done so that sufficient performance is obtained. It includes how language constructions in Plex-C can be translated to Java. </p><p>The thesis describes how a limited part of the Plex-C run-time environment is implemented in Java. Optimizations are an important part of the implementation. </p><p>It is also described how the JVM system was tested with a benchmark test. </p><p>The test results indicate that the implemented system is a few times faster than the Ericsson internal processor architecture. But this performance is still not sufficient for the JVM system to be an interesting replacement for the currently used processor architecture. It might still be useful as a processor independent test platform.</p>

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur Malmö stad använder sig av evenemang för en ökad attraktionskraft.  Studiens syfte och frågeställningar har besvarats genom intervjuer med Malmö stad, Malmö Turistbyrå, Tourism in Skåne och Event in Skåne. Insamlingen av empiri har utförts genom kvalitativa telefonintervjuer samt en kvalitativ mailintervju, alla dessa baserades på ett icke-sannolikhetsurval gällande urvalet av respondenter. Samtliga intervjuer har haft öppna frågor och varit semistrukturerade. Intervjufrågorna har utformats utifrån studiens frågeställningar och har anpassats efter respektive respondent. I studien har även en litteraturstudie genomförts utifrån tre rapporter med fokus på de effekter som uppstod genom Handbolls-VM 2011. Studiens teoretiska referensram utgår från förklaring av attraktionskraft, typer av evenemang, effekter av evenemang, evenemangsturism, samarbete och image. Undersökningen har strukturerats upp utefter de intervjuer och litteraturstudie som har gjorts. Gemensamma rubriker har skapats för att få en tydligare struktur och en röd tråd för att göra studien läsvänlig. Analysen har strukturerats upp utifrån studiens frågeställningar. Slutsatsen av studien är att Malmös attraktionskraft ökar genom evenemang då staden har ett bra utvecklat samarbete mellan stadens aktörer. Detta gör att staden skapar möjligheter för att arrangera fler attraktiva evenemang. Attraktionskraften ökar även genom att det finns en medvetenhet i staden när det gäller vilka positiva effekter evenemang kan bidra till, exempelvis att stärka stadens image, skapa en bättre gemenskap bland lokalbefolkningen och ett ökat besöksantal. Studien visar att både Handbolls-VM 2011 och Eurovision Song Contest 2013 har bidragit till ovanstående effekter.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-12T20:22:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcelo Pereira da Silva.pdf: 1790996 bytes, checksum: 8b61245ad63935d86a70520f22eae9bc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / With the ever-increasing dependence on computers and networks, many systems are required to be continuously available in order to fulfill their mission. Virtualization technology enables high availability to be offered in a convenient, cost-effective manner: with the encapsulation provided by virtual machines (VMs), entire systems can be replicated transparently in software, obviating the need for expensive fault-tolerant hardware. Remus is a VM replication mechanism for the Xen hypervisor that provides high availability despite crash failures. Replication is performed by checkpointing the VM at fixed intervals. However, there is an antagonism between processing and communication regarding the optimal checkpointing interval: while longer intervals benefit processorintensive applications, shorter intervals favor network-intensive applications. Thus, any chosen interval may not always be suitable for the hosted applications, limiting Remus usage in many scenarios. This work introduces Adaptive Remus, a proposal for adaptive checkpointing in Remus that dynamically adjusts the replication frequency according to the characteristics of running applications. Experimental results indicate that our proposal improves performance for applications that require both processing and communication, without harming applications that use only one type of resource. / Com a dependência cada vez maior de computadores e redes, muitos sistemas precisam estar continuamente disponíveis para cumprir sua missão. A tecnologia de virtualização permite prover alta disponibilidade de forma conveniente e a um custo razoável: com o encapsulamento oferecido pelas máquinas virtuais (MVs), sistemas inteiros podem ser replicados em software, de forma transparente, eliminando a necessidade de hardware tolerante a faltas dispendioso. Remus é um mecanismo de replicação de MVs que fornece alta disponibilidade diante de faltas de parada. A replicação é realizada através de checkpointing, seguindo um intervalo fixo de tempo predeterminado. Todavia, existe um antagonismo entre processamento e comunicação em relação ao intervalo ideal entre checkpoints: enquanto intervalos maiores beneficiam aplicações com processamento intensivo, intervalos menores favorecem as aplicações cujo desempenho é dominado pela rede. Logo, o intervalo utilizado nem sempre é o adequado para as características de uso de recursos da aplicação em execução na MV, limitando a aplicabilidade de Remus em determinados cenários. Este trabalho apresenta Adaptive Remus, uma proposta de checkpointing adaptativo para Remus, que ajusta dinamicamente a frequência de replicação de acordo com as características das aplicações em execução. Os resultados indicam que a proposta obtém um melhor desempenho de aplicações que utilizam tanto recursos de processamento como de comunicação, sem prejudicar aplicações que usam apenas um dos tipos de recursos.

Recent years have witnessed a surge in demand for infrastructure and services to cover high demands on processing big chunks of data and applications resulting in a mega Cloud Datacenter. A datacenter is of high complexity with increasing difficulties to identify, allocate efficiently and fast an appropriate host for the requested virtual machine (VM). Establishing a good awareness of all datacenter’s resources enables the allocation “placement” policies to make the best decision in reducing the time that is needed to allocate and create the VM(s) at the appropriate host(s). However, current algorithms and policies of placement “allocation” do not focus efficiently on awareness of the resources of the datacenter, and moreover, they are based on conventional static techniques. Which are adversely impacting on the allocation progress of the policies. This thesis proposes a new Agent-based allocation/placement policy that employs some of the Multi-Agent system features to get a good awareness of Cloud Datacenter resources and also provide an efficient allocation decision for the requested VMs. Specifically, (a) The Multi-Agent concept is used as a part of the placement policy (b) A Contract Net Protocol is devised to establish good awareness and (c) A verification process is developed to fully dimensional VM specifications during allocation. These new results show a reduction in response time of VM allocation and the usage improvement of occupied resources. The proposed Agent-based policy was implemented using the CloudSim toolkit and consequently was compared, based on a series of typical numerical experiments, with the toolkit’s default policy. The comparative study was carried out in terms of the time duration of VM allocation and other aspects such as the number of available VM types and the amount of occupied resources. Moreover, a two-stage comparative study was introduced through this thesis. Firstly, the proposed policy is compared with four state of the art algorithms, namely the Random algorithm and three one-dimensional Bin-Packing algorithms. Secondly, the three Bin-Packing algorithms were enhanced to have a two-dimensional verification structure and were compared against the proposed new algorithm of the Agent-based policy. Following a rigorous comparative study, it was shown that, through the typical numerical experiments of all stages, the proposed new Agent-based policy had superior performance in terms of the allocation times. Finally, avenues arising from this thesis are included.

Selecting the correct inter-process communication method isan important aspect of ensuring effective inter-vm and inter-container process communication. We will conduct a study ofIPC methods which might be useful and fits the Qemu/KVMvirtual machine and Docker container environments, and se-lect those that fit our criteria. After implementing our chosenmethods we will benchmark them in a test suite to find theones with highest performance in terms of speed. Our resultsshow that, at the most common message sizes, Unix DomainSockets work best for containers and Transparent Inter Pro-cess Communication has the best performance between vir-tual machines out of the chosen methods.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-29T15:33:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 tese_9278_Ata 337º.pdf: 642020 bytes, checksum: 75b1ea9fbbced5ea1bee7a6056858c98 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-10-13 / Este trabalho busca melhorar o processo migratório de máquinas virtuais implementando um escalonador de migrações baseado em dados provenientes de uma caracterização da carga de trabalho em uma nuvem privada. As migrações são necessárias para balanceamento de carga entre os hosts, contudo podem impactar negativamente no desempenho dos serviços. Por meio da caracterização empírica da nuvem estudada, foi observado uma grande desproporção entre o tempo de uma migração simples (menor tempo) e uma simultânea (maior tempo). Com base nesses dados, foi proposto um algoritmo para realizar o escalonamento das migrações, de forma serial (removendo a simultaneidade) e fundamentado no Shortest Job First. Os resultados do escalonador mostraram-se melhores em quase sua totalidade quando comparados ao arcabouço tecnológico base deste trabalho e o VMware. Foi possível reduzir o tempo médio e a quantidade de migrações ocorridas. / This work seeks to improve the virtual machines migration process implementing a migration scheduler based on data from a workload characterization in a private cloud. The migrations are necessary to load balancing among hosts, nevertheless they can negatively impact the performance of services. By empirical characterization of the studied cloud, it was observed a large disproportion between the time of a simple migration (shorter time) and a simultaneous one (longer time). Based on these data, it was proposed an algorithm to do the migrations scheduling, in a serial way (removing the simultaneity) and grounded on Shortest Job First. The results of the scheduler showed up better almost in its entirety compared to the VMware, it was possible to decrease 33% in the average time in 93% of the occurred migrations (total of 765 migrations).

Virtualization is a technique that allows several virtual machines (VMs) to run on a single physical machine (PM) by adding a virtualization layer above the physical host&apos;s hardware. Many virtualization products allow a VM be migrated from one PM to other PM without interrupting the services running on the VM. This is called live migration and offers many potential advantages like server consolidation, reduced energy consumption, disaster recovery, reliability, and efficient workflows such as &quot;Follow-the-Sun&apos;&apos;. At present, the advantages of VM live migration are limited to Local Area Networks (LANs) as migrations over Wide Area Networks (WAN) offer lower performance due to IP address changes in the migrating VMs and also due to large network latency. For scenarios which require migrations, shared storage solutions like iSCSI (block storage) and NFS (file storage) are used to store the VM&apos;s disk to avoid the high latencies associated with disk state migration when private storage is used. When using iSCSI or NFS, all the disk I/O operations generated by the VM are encapsulated and carried to the shared storage over the IP network. The underlying latency in WAN will effect the performance of application requesting the disk I/O from the VM. In this thesis our objective was to determine the performance of shared and private storage when VMs are live migrated in networks with high latency, with WANs as the typical case. To achieve this objective, we used Iometer, a disk benchmarking tool, to investigate the I/O performance of iSCSI and NFS when used as shared storage for live migrating Xen VMs over emulated WANs. In addition, we have configured the Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD) system to provide private storage for our VMs through incremental disk replication. Then, we have studied the I/O performance of the private storage solution in the context of live disk migration and compared it to the performance of shared storage based on iSCSI and NFS. The results from our testbed indicate that the DRBD-based solution should be preferred over the considered shared storage solutions because DRBD consumed less network bandwidth and has a lower maximum I/O response time.