Computer and Systems Architecture Commons^™

Addressing Challenges In Utilizing Gpus For Accelerating Privacy-Preserving Computation, Ardhi Wiratama Baskara Yudha

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

Cloud computing increasingly handles confidential data, like private inference and query databases. Two strategies are used for secure computation: (1) employing CPU Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) like AMD SEV, Intel SGX, or ARM TrustZone, and (2) utilizing emerging cryptographic methods like Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) with libraries such as HElib, Microsoft SEAL, and PALISADE. To enhance computation, GPUs are often employed. However, using GPUs to accelerate secure computation introduces challenges addressed in three works.

In the first work, we tackle GPU acceleration for secure computation with CPU TEEs. While TEEs perform computations on confidential data, extending their capabilities to GPUs …

Towards Performance Guarantee For Federated Computing, Stoddard A. Rosenkrantz

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

In federated computing environments, where multiple independent devices collaborate without centralized resource control, ensuring reliable and predictable performance is crucial for meeting Service Level Objectives (SLOs). This dissertation presents a novel framework for achieving SLOs by utilizing measured subtask response times, which are obtained and processed locally on the client devices. Each device generates a performance curve based on its subtask response times, and only the essential parameters of this curve are transmitted to a centralized client selector. The client selector then uses these parameters to determine which devices are best suited to meet predefined SLOs for specific tasks, ensuring …

A Few-Shot Multi-Modality Traversability Segmentation Framework For Indoor Robotic Navigation, Qiyuan An

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Traversability in autonomous robotic navigation refers to the ability of an autonomous agent to safely navigate over a given terrain. It plays a critical role in enabling robots to navigate over unseen or unknown terrains. Traversability segmentation aims to find an arbitrary-shaped mask covering the traversable regions (termed free-space). Current research for traversability segmentation can be divided into two scenarios: outdoor and indoor environments. Compared to the outdoor environments mainly consists of paved roads, indoor environments present unique challenges for traversability segmentation, because of diverse lighting conditions, glass doors, various floor colors and textures, arbitrary shaped appliances and furniture, presence …

Adaptive Load-Aware Elastic Data Reduction And Re-Computation For Adaptive Mesh Refinement, Mengxiao Wang

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

The increasing performance gap between computation and I/O creates huge data management challenges for simulation-based scientific discovery. Data reduction, among others, is deemed to be a promising technique to bridge the gap through reducing the amount of data migrated to persistent storage. However, the reduction performance is still far from what is being demanded from production applications. To this end, we propose a new methodology that aggressively reduces data despite the substantial loss of information, and re-computes the original accuracy on-demand. As a result, our scheme creates an illusion of a fast and large storage medium with the availability of …

Bringing "Virtual" To "Reality": Enhancing Security And Usability On Vr System And Applications, Huadi Zhu

Computer Science and Engineering Dissertations - Archive

With the rapid advancements in computer science, electronics, optics, and related fields, virtual reality (VR) gradually penetrates into our daily lives, and is predicted to become a core technology in the near future. Despite its potentials, however, existing designs and solutions for VR applications remain at the infant stage, introducing limited usability and efficiency for real-world users. Besides, the increasing prevalence of VR presents new security and privacy threats due to the vast amount of information stored in or accessible through VR devices. To bridge this gap, we exploit and combine techniques from computer science and human biology, as well …

Undergraduate Research On 5g Propagation Analysis In Naval Ship Environment, Otilia Popescu, Dimitrie Popescu, Murat Kuzlu

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Wireless communication systems have experienced rapid advancements over the last decade, with 5G systems becoming the regular standards and 6G systems being under development. However, the naval ship environment still requires more study due to the special indoor characteristics of the spaces below the deck, where the metal structures strongly impact the propagation characteristics, being prone to signal degradation, dead spots, and unreliable connectivity. This paper presents the research work conducted by a team of undergraduate students from Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) majors. The work was a partnership between Old Dominion University engineering programs …

Streamlining Public Engagement In Transportation Projects Using Text Analytics, Alireza Shamshiri

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Infrastructure projects impact a broad range of stakeholders, particularly local communities, whose engagement is critical for successful outcomes. Despite the importance of public engagement in these projects, traditional methods of capturing and analyzing public opinion often fail to fully represent the diverse, genuine perspectives involved. This has led to conflicts between community members and project sponsors. On the other hand, despite advancements in text analytics, including natural language processing (NLP) and its subfields such as topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and neural networks, their functionalities and effectiveness in analyzing public opinion in the domain of infrastructure projects have not been fully …

Specification And Implementation Of Arm Isa Using Adl, Jonathan A. Rabideau

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this project, we implement a specification of ARM ISA using the ADL system. Current progress includes 79% of planned instructions, 79% of which are complete for our purposes, and also includes components such as a proxy kernel and a temporary preprocessor. Simple programs compiled directly from gcc can already be properly assembled and simulated using the tools generated by ADL. Once the specification is complete, we can integrate it with other components for testing ideas and theories. This report covers our progress and future plans regarding this project, including some background material and problem solutions.

Enhancing Iot Security: Optimizing Anomaly Detection Through Machine Learning, Maria Balega, Waleed Farag, Xin-Wen Wu, Soundarararjan Ezekiel, Zaryn Good

Computer Science Articles

As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to evolve, securing IoT networks and devices remains a continuing challenge. Anomaly detection is a crucial procedure in protecting the IoT. A promising way to perform anomaly detection in the IoT is through the use of machine learning (ML) algorithms. There is a lack of studies in the literature identifying optimal (with regard to both effectiveness and efficiency) anomaly detection models for the IoT. To fill the gap, this work thoroughly investigated the effectiveness and efficiency of IoT anomaly detection enabled by several representative machine learning models, namely Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Support …

Reinventing Integrated Photonic Devices And Circuits For High Performance Communication And Computing Applications, Venkata Sai Praneeth Karempudi

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The long-standing technological pillars for computing systems evolution, namely Moore's law and Von Neumann architecture, are breaking down under the pressure of meeting the capacity and energy efficiency demands of computing and communication architectures that are designed to process modern data-centric applications related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, and Internet-of-Things (IoT). In response, both industry and academia have turned to 'more-than-Moore' technologies for realizing hardware architectures for communication and computing. Fortunately, Silicon Photonics (SiPh) has emerged as one highly promising ‘more-than-Moore’ technology. Recent progress has enabled SiPh-based interconnects to outperform traditional electrical interconnects, offering advantages like high bandwidth density, …

Cybersecurity Awareness And Risks Among Students, Staff & Faculty At The University Of North Alabama, Jerry Lwamba

Theses

As individuals and organizations become significantly connected to the internet, cybercriminals find an increasing number of ways to exploit their targets (Broadhurst, 2018). This study explores the world of cybersecurity awareness of risks associated with online activities within the University of North Alabama (UNA). This research aims to assess the level of cybersecurity awareness of risks university stakeholders face, and to also understand behaviors that expose them to cybercrime and emphasize the urge for comprehensive cybersecurity best practices. When cybercriminals employ tactics such as spam, phishing, or spear phishing in their attempts to break into network systems, distribute malware, or …

Fake News Detection In Online Platforms, Elena Shushkevich

Doctoral

This thesis presents research conducted during a Ph.D. program at Technological University Dublin from 2020 to 2024. The objective of this research is to develop and evaluate effective methods for detecting and classifying fake news in social media and press, addressing the critical issue of misinformation in the digital age. The relevance of this study is underscored by the increasing prevalence of fake news and its potential societal impact, emphasizing the importance of advanced tools for identifying and mitigating misinformation.

Statically Controlled Synchronized Lane Architectures, Scott K. Pomerville

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Modern superscalar processors dominate the field of computing. While dynamic execution allows for versatility in code, these processors are complex. Statically scheduled code has historically enabled simpler processor designs, but static scheduling cannot account for variables that are unknown at compile time. Furthermore, static scheduling has many inefficiencies, such as the need to insert a large number of nops for code in traditional Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processors. In this dissertation, we explore a novel architectural approach for statically scheduled code by breaking the code into several synchronous instruction streams. By representing code in a fundamentally new way, we …

A New Cache Replacement Policy In Named Data Network Based On Fib Table Information, Mehran Hosseinzadeh, Neda Moghim, Samira Taheri, Nasrin Gholami

VMASC Publications

Named Data Network (NDN) is proposed for the Internet as an information-centric architecture. Content storing in the router’s cache plays a significant role in NDN. When a router’s cache becomes full, a cache replacement policy determines which content should be discarded for the new content storage. This paper proposes a new cache replacement policy called Discard of Fast Retrievable Content (DFRC). In DFRC, the retrieval time of the content is evaluated using the FIB table information, and the content with less retrieval time receives more discard priority. An impact weight is also used to involve both the grade of retrieval …

Adaptive Neh With Constrained Nearest Neighbor Subtours For The Electric Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows, Andrew Struthers

All Master's Theses

The development of electric vehicles is currently considered one of the most innovative areas in manufacturing. Largely driven by the desire to reduce greenhouse emissions, electric vehicles are seen as a viable alternative to internal combustion engine cars. Starting from consumer cars, a dedicated effort is being made to translate this into commercial vehicles for freight and delivery. This research introduces a novel adaptive Nawaz, Enscore, Ham (NEH) algorithm with constrained nearest neighbor subtour (NEH-NN). This algorithm is tested on the standard benchmark problems in literature and used as a seed solution for the Genetic Algorithm (GA). The performance and …

Unity Two Dimensional C# Game, Nick Zajac

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My project is a 2-dimensional game that is being developed in the unity engine. This project includes animating objects, having them interact with each other, and having a goal the player will want to complete in the game. It will be a game that involves the player character moving around, attacking enemies, and dodging enemies. There will also be some challenges that involve maneuvering between platforms and enemies to progress in the game. At the end of the level, the player will encounter a stronger boss character. This character will have movement and attack patterns similar to the other minor …

Efficient Connectivity Management And Path Planning For Iot And Uav Networks, Amirahmad Chapnevis

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how to better manage resources in mobile networks, especially for enhancing the performance of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-supported IoT networks. We explored ways to set up a flexible communication architecture that can handle large IoT deployments by making good use of mobile core network resources like bearers and data paths. We developed strategies that meet the needs of IoT networks and enhance network performance. We also developed and tested a system that combines traffic from several mobile devices that use the same user identity and network resources within the core mobile network. We used everyday smartphones, SIM …

Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback For Ethically Robust Ai Decision-Making, Marco M. Plasencia

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The emergence of reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has made great strides toward giving AI decision-making the ability to learn from external human advice. In general, this machine learning technique is concerned with producing agents that learn to work toward optimizing and achieving some goal, advanced by interactions with the environment and feedback given in terms of a quantifiable reward. In the scope of this project, we seek to merge the intricate realms of AI robustness, ethical decision-making, and RLHF. With no way to truly quantify human values, human feedback is an essential bridge in the learning process, allowing …

Cross-Layer Design Of Highly Scalable And Energy-Efficient Ai Accelerator Systems Using Photonic Integrated Circuits, Sairam Sri Vatsavai

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has experienced remarkable success in recent years, solving complex computational problems across various domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, and pattern recognition. Much of this success can be attributed to the advancements in deep learning algorithms and models, particularly Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). In recent times, deep ANNs have achieved unprecedented levels of accuracy, surpassing human capabilities in some cases. However, these deep ANN models come at a significant computational cost, with billions to trillions of parameters. Recent trends indicate that the number of parameters per ANN model will continue to grow exponentially in the foreseeable …

A Novel Processor Architecture Implementing The Stacked Error Diffusion Algorithm And Its Zynq-Based Realization, Qishi Hu

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Digital halftoning reproduces continuous-tone images using patterns of black and white dots, while multitoning extends this concept by incorporating inks with intermediate intensities. These techniques are extensively utilized in the printing industry to accommodate the limited range of inks available in printers. Stacked error diffusion is a high-quality multitoning algorithm that adheres to the blue-noise dithering standard. This thesis research studies the potential parallelism inherent in the algorithm and introduces the design of a novel processor architecture optimized for efficient execution. The architecture is realized on an FPGA development board featuring a Zynq SoC. Additionally, the hardware prototype can also …