Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Study Of Parallel Programming Models On Computer Clusters With Accelerators, Chenggang Lai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to reach exascale computing capability, accelerators have become a crucial part in developing supercomputers. This work examines the potential of two latest acceleration technologies, Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) Architecture and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). This thesis applies three benchmarks under 3 different configurations, MPI+CPU, MPI+GPU, and MPI+MIC. The benchmarks include intensely communicating application, loosely communicating application, and embarrassingly parallel application. This thesis also carries out a detailed study on the scalability and performance of MIC processors under two programming models, i.e., offload model and native model, on the Beacon computer cluster.

According to different benchmarks, the results …

A Deep Search Architecture For Capturing Product Ontologies, Tejeshwar Sangameswaran

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes a method to populate very large product ontologies quickly. We discuss a deep search architecture to text-mine online e-commerce market places and build a taxonomy of products and their corresponding descriptions and parent categories. The goal is to automatically construct an open database of products, which are aggregated from different online retailers. The database contains extensive metadata on each object, which can be queried and analyzed. Such a public database currently does not exist; instead the information currently resides siloed within various organizations. In this thesis, we describe the tools, data structures and software architectures that allowed …

Software Porting Of A 3d Reconstruction Algorithm To Razorcam Embedded System On Chip, Kevin Curtis Gunn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A method is presented to calculate depth information for a UAV navigation system from Keypoints in two consecutive image frames using a monocular camera sensor as input and the OpenCV library. This method was first implemented in software and run on a general-purpose Intel CPU, then ported to the RazorCam Embedded Smart-Camera System and run on an ARM CPU onboard the Xilinx Zynq-7000. The results of performance and accuracy testing of the software implementation are then shown and analyzed, demonstrating a successful port of the software to the RazorCam embedded system on chip that could potentially be used onboard a …

Overcoming Roadblocks In Introducing Virtual World Technology To High Schools, Casey Dylan Bailey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The EAST (Environmental And Spatial Technology) Initiative is a non-profit educational organization that provides students in over two hundred schools in eight states with access to advanced computing technologies for the purpose of enabling students to develop technical skills early and to produce solutions to local community problems. Although many high-end technologies are available through EAST, they are desktop solutions that individual students use and there are none that enable students within a school or between schools to collaborate.

This thesis is a saga that documents the identification and removal of many roadblocks to introducing a 3D multi-user virtual simulation …

Efficient Ray Tracing For Mobile Devices, Rafael De Melo Aroxa

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The demand for mobile devices with higher graphics performance has increased substantially in the past few years. Most mobile applications that demand 3D graphics use commonly available frameworks, such as Unity and Unreal Engine. In mobile devices, these frameworks are built on top of OpenGL ES and use a graphics technique called rasterization, a simple concept that yields good performance without sacrificing graphic quality. However, rasterization cannot easily handle some physical phenomena of light (i.e. reflection and refraction). In order to support such effects, the graphics framework has to emulate them, thereby leading to suboptimal results in term of quality. …

A Framework For Constructing Serious Games, Taylor Glen Yust

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Communicating ideas and knowledge through serious games is a trend that is currently gaining in popularity. However, at present, there is a distinct lack of a game development methodology that takes a critical approach to transforming information into gameplay. This thesis presents a framework that can be followed to construct compelling serious games that are effective at transferring knowledge to the player. This is accomplished through an analysis of atomic knowledge items and their relationships to one another, followed by a meaningful and synergetic implementation of these ideas at a foundational mechanics level.

This thesis also describes the development of …

Mobile Banking Security Using Gps And Ldpc Codes, Matthew Francis Moccaro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mobile Banking is becoming a major part of our world's financial system. Being able to manage one's finances on a mobile device can provide services that can make users more productive. It can also serve as a means of financial freedom to those who are unable to access physical banking facilities due to distance, or other problems. However, with such freedom also comes the need for security. A person's financial information is one of the most targeted groups of information by attackers. To secure these mobile freedoms, this paper presents a system to secure mobile banking procedures using global positioning …