Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “execution architecture”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 415 records · Page 23

Project: Corbomite - Product: ConsoleWorks REACT

TDi Technologies presents ConsoleWorks REACT, an advanced platform designed to tackle the complexities of cyber and operational risk assessment. This comprehensive solution goes beyond asset-focused approaches by considering the impact of both assets and people have on the security and operation of critical infrastructure, specifically targeting preventing gird mis-operation by evaluating real-time human interaction or commands with critical assets. The hypothesis suggests that by integrating the assessment of user commands into the overall risk assessment process, organizations can make more informed decisions, prioritize resources effectively, and respond promptly to potential threats. This hypothesis forms the basis for the development of a proactive and holistic risk management approach that is more comprehensive and context aware than traditional models which only look at assets, patch levels, configuration and threat intel by collecting that information off the network vs directly from the asset, human, and human interaction all in real-time. ConsoleWorks' unique man-in-the-middle architecture is a key feature that sets it apart in the cybersecurity landscape. This architecture enables the real-time observation, enforcement, and commands or interaction risk transparency of user interaction with critical infrastructure to be risk mitigated and audited as they are aggregated with device and human risk factors for a more comprehensive risk threat score across a device or group of devices. This architecture allows ConsoleWorks to act as a secure intermediary between users and critical assets, monitoring all interactions and ensuring that only authorized commands are sent to the asset to be executed. This not only enhances security but also provides a comprehensive audit trail of all user activities, contributing to compliance efforts and facilitating incident investigation and risk management. By integrating this unique architecture with our comprehensive risk assessment methodology, ConsoleWorks REACT provides a powerful solution for managing cyber and operational risks, enabling organizations to maintain a robust security posture and effectively mitigate potential threats. To that end, the primary objective of this project was to research and develop a robust solution that enables the energy industry to mitigate the risks associated with human actions that can compromise the security or operations of assets critical to energy delivery, generation, transmission and operation. ConsoleWorks REACT plays a pivotal role in achieving this goal by leveraging its unique capabilities to monitor and track all user activity. Through its Zero Trust approach, which emphasizes continuous verification, the platform ensures secure access to assets and serves as the centralized human response and notification platform for addressing cyber and operational issues.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

ECP ST Capability Assessment Report (CAR) for VTK-m (FY20)

The ECP/VTK-m project is providing the core capabilities to perform scientific visualization on Exascale architectures. The ECP/VTK-m project fills the critical feature gap of performing visualization and analysis on processors like graphics-based processors. The results of this project will be delivered in tools like ParaView, Vislt, and Ascent as well as in stand-alone form. Moreover, these projects are depending on this ECP effort to be able to make effective use of ECP architectures. One of the biggest recent changes in high-performance computing is the increasing use of accelerators. Accelerators contain processing cores that independently are inferior to a core in a typical CPU, but these cores are replicated and grouped such that their aggregate execution provides a very high computation rate at a much lower power. Current and future CPU processors also require much more explicit parallelism. Each successive version of the hardware packs more cores into each processor, and technologies like hyper threading and vector operations require even more parallel processing to leverage each core's full potential. VTK-m is a toolkit of scientific visualization algorithms for emerging processor architectures. VTK-m supports the fine-grained concurrency for data analysis and visualization algorithms required to drive extreme scale computing by providing abstract models for data and execution that can be applied to a variety of algorithms across many different processor architectures. The ECP/VTK-m project is building up the VTK-m codebase with the necessary visualization algorithm implementations that run across the varied hardware platforms to be leveraged at the Exascale. We will be working with other ECP projects, such as ALPINE, to integrate the new VTK-m code into production software to enable visualization on our HPC systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Historic Significance and Current Condition Assessment of Building 06-CP-170, the Yucca Flat Weather Station, Area 6, Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada

This report was produced in partial fulfillment of the mitigation of adverse effects to Building 06-CP-170, the Yucca Flat Weather Station on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), and is intended to comply with the 2021 Memorandum of Agreement DE-GM58-21NA25543 Between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer Regarding Demolition of Fourteen Buildings and Structures in Area 6 of the Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada (hereafter referred to as the MOA). This MOA was executed to resolve adverse effects from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plan to demolish 14 architectural resources at the Control Point and in the vicinity in Area 6 of the NNSS. The management and operations contractor for the NNSS identified these 14 architectural resources as environmental hazards unsafe for human occupation due to deterioration and rodent infestation. Building 06-CP-170 is scheduled for demolition as part of this undertaking. Building 06-CP-170 was originally recorded in 2018 during a Section 106 cultural resources inventory for a proposed installation of a 138-kilovolt transmission line on the NNSS. The building was determined individually eligible by the DOE, in consultation with the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office, for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places under the Secretary of the Interior’s Significance Criterion A because of its association with nuclear testing. Pursuant to Stipulation III.D.3 of the MOA, this report provides a summary of the historic significance of Building 06-CP-170 and a description of its current condition and accessory resources. In addition, an updated Architectural Resource Assessment (ARA) form with new information and photographs is included in the appendix in fulfillment of Stipulation III.D.2.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Historic Significance and Current Condition Assessment of Building 06-CP-10, Device Assembly Building, Area 6, Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada

This report was produced in partial fulfillment of the mitigation of adverse effects to Building 06-CP-10, the first device assembly building on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), and is intended to comply with the 2021 Memorandum of Agreement DE-GM58-21NA25543 Between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer Regarding Demolition of Fourteen Buildings and Structures in Area 6 of the Nevada National Security Site, Nye County (hereafter referred to as the MOA). This MOA was executed to resolve adverse effects from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plan to demolish 14 architectural resources at the Control Point and in the vicinity in Area 6 of the NNSS. The management and operations contractor for the NNSS identified these 14 architectural resources as environmental hazards unsafe for human occupation due to deterioration and rodent infestation. Building 06-CP-10 and two small magazine bunkers (06-CP-10A and 06-CP-805) associated with Building 06-CP-10 are scheduled for demolition as part of this undertaking. Building 06-CP-10 was originally recorded in 2003 during a historical evaluation of four buildings in Area 6. In consultation with the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office, the building was determined individually eligible for inclusion in the NRHP under the Secretary of the Interior’s Significance Criterion A because of its association with nuclear testing and under Significance Criterion C as a distinct type of construction associated with the nuclear industry. Building 06-CP-10A, a munitions magazine, and 06- CP-805, a cap-and-fuse bunker, have been recorded as contributing accessory resources to 06-CP-10. Pursuant to Stipulation III.C.3 of the MOA, this report provides a summary of the historic significance of Building 06-CP-10 and a description of its current condition and accessory resources. In addition, an updated Architectural Resource Assessment (ARA) form with new information and photographs is included in the appendix in fulfillment of Stipulation III.C.2.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Energy-Efficient Neuromorphic Architectures for Nuclear Radiation Detection Applications

A comprehensive analysis and simulation of two memristor-based neuromorphic architectures for nuclear radiation detection is presented. Both scalable architectures retrofit a locally competitive algorithm to solve overcomplete sparse approximation problems by harnessing memristor crossbar execution of vector–matrix multiplications. The proposed systems demonstrate excellent accuracy and throughput while consuming minimal energy for radionuclide detection. To ensure that the simulation results of our proposed hardware are realistic, the memristor parameters are chosen from our own fabricated memristor devices. Based on these results, we conclude that memristor-based computing is the preeminent technology for a radiation detection platform.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

An intelligent allocation algorithm for parallel processing

The problem of allocating nodes of a program graph to processors in a parallel processing architecture is considered. The algorithm is based on critical path analysis, some allocation heuristics, and the execution granularity of nodes in a program graph. These factors, and the structure of interprocessor communication network, influence the allocation. To achieve realistic estimations of the executive durations of allocations, the algorithm considers the fact that nodes in a program graph have to communicate through varying numbers of tokens. Coarse and fine granularities have been implemented, with interprocessor token-communication duration, varying from zero up to values comparable to the execution durations of individual nodes. The effect on allocation of communication network structures is demonstrated by performing allocations for crossbar (non-blocking) and star (blocking) networks. The algorithm assumes the availability of as many processors as it needs for the optimal allocation of any program graph. Hence, the focus of allocation has been on varying token-communication durations rather than varying the number of processors. The algorithm always utilizes as many processors as necessary for the optimal allocation of any program graph, depending upon granularity and characteristics of the interprocessor communication network.

Carroll, Chester C.↗

Transforming AdaPT to Ada

This paper describes how the main features of the proposed Ada language extensions intended to support distribution, and offered as possible solutions for Ada9X can be implemented by transformation into standard Ada83. We start by summarizing the features proposed in a paper (Gargaro et al, 1990) which constitutes the definition of the extensions. For convenience we have called the language in its modified form AdaPT which might be interpreted as Ada with partitions. These features were carefully chosen to provide support for the construction of executable modules for execution in nodes of a network of loosely coupled computers, but flexibly configurable for different network architectures and for recovery following failure, or adapting to mode changes. The intention in their design was to provide extensions which would not impact adversely on the normal use of Ada, and would fit well in style and feel with the existing standard. We begin by summarizing the features introduced in AdaPT.

Goldsack, Stephen J.↗

An Adaptive Flow Solver for Air-Borne Vehicles Undergoing Time-Dependent Motions/Deformations

This report describes a concurrent Euler flow solver for flows around complex 3-D bodies. The solver is based on a cell-centered finite volume methodology on 3-D unstructured tetrahedral grids. In this algorithm, spatial discretization for the inviscid convective term is accomplished using an upwind scheme. A localized reconstruction is done for flow variables which is second order accurate. Evolution in time is accomplished using an explicit three-stage Runge-Kutta method which has second order temporal accuracy. This is adapted for concurrent execution using another proven methodology based on concurrent graph abstraction. This solver operates on heterogeneous network architectures. These architectures may include a broad variety of UNIX workstations and PCs running Windows NT, symmetric multiprocessors and distributed-memory multi-computers. The unstructured grid is generated using commercial grid generation tools. The grid is automatically partitioned using a concurrent algorithm based on heat diffusion. This results in memory requirements that are inversely proportional to the number of processors. The solver uses automatic granularity control and resource management techniques both to balance load and communication requirements, and deal with differing memory constraints. These ideas are again based on heat diffusion. Results are subsequently combined for visualization and analysis using commercial CFD tools. Flow simulation results are demonstrated for a constant section wing at subsonic, transonic, and a supersonic case. These results are compared with experimental data and numerical results of other researchers. Performance results are under way for a variety of network topologies.

Singh, Jatinder↗

Small Business Innovations

The purpose of QASE RT is to enable system analysts and software engineers to evaluate performance and reliability implications of design alternatives. The program resulted from two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects. After receiving a description of the system architecture and workload from the user, QASE RT translates the system description into simulation models and executes them. Simulation provides detailed performance evaluation. The results of the evaluations are service and response times, offered load and device utilizations and functional availability.

Source record↗

Exploration of Planetary Terrains with a Legged Robot as a Scout Adjunct to a Rover

The Scorpion robot is an innovative, biologically inspired 8-legged walking robot. It currently runs a novel approach to control which utilizes a central pattern generator (CPG) and local reflex action for each leg. From this starting point we are proposing to both extend the system's individual capabilities and its capacity to function as a "scout", cooperating with a larger wheeled rover. For this purpose we propose to develop a distributed system architecture that extends the system's capabilities both in the direction of high level planning and execution in collaboration with a rover, and in the direction of force-feedback based low level behaviors that will greatly enhance its ability to walk and climb in rough varied terrains. The final test of this improved ability will be a rappelling experiment where the Scorpion explores a steep cliff side in cooperation with a rover that serves as both anchor and planner/executive.

Colombano, Silvano↗

Optimal Padding for the Two-Dimensional Fast Fourier Transform

One-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) operations work fastest on grids whose size is divisible by a power of two. Because of this, padding grids (that are not already sized to a power of two) so that their size is the next highest power of two can speed up operations. While this works well for one-dimensional grids, it does not work well for two-dimensional grids. For a two-dimensional grid, there are certain pad sizes that work better than others. Therefore, the need exists to generalize a strategy for determining optimal pad sizes. There are three steps in the FFT algorithm. The first is to perform a one-dimensional transform on each row in the grid. The second step is to transpose the resulting matrix. The third step is to perform a one-dimensional transform on each row in the resulting grid. Steps one and three both benefit from padding the row to the next highest power of two, but the second step needs a novel approach. An algorithm was developed that struck a balance between optimizing the grid pad size with prime factors that are small (which are optimal for one-dimensional operations), and with prime factors that are large (which are optimal for two-dimensional operations). This algorithm optimizes based on average run times, and is not fine-tuned for any specific application. It increases the amount of times that processor-requested data is found in the set-associative processor cache. Cache retrievals are 4-10 times faster than conventional memory retrievals. The tested implementation of the algorithm resulted in faster execution times on all platforms tested, but with varying sized grids. This is because various computer architectures process commands differently. The test grid was 512 512. Using a 540 540 grid on a Pentium V processor, the code ran 30 percent faster. On a PowerPC, a 256x256 grid worked best. A Core2Duo computer preferred either a 1040x1040 (15 percent faster) or a 1008x1008 (30 percent faster) grid. There are many industries that can benefit from this algorithm, including optics, image-processing, signal-processing, and engineering applications.

Dean, Bruce H.↗

Characterization of How CO2 Level May Impact Crew Performance Related to the HSIA Risk

Safety and mission critical anomalies are inevitable on NASA exploration missions. Delays and interruptions in communication with Earth-experts drives the requirement that crew resolve these anomalies on their own. The Human Factors and Behavioral Performance (HFBP) element of the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) recently stood-up the Human-System Integration Architecture (HSIA) risk. The specific risk statement is: “Given decreasing real-time ground support for execution of complex operations during future exploration missions, there is a possibility of adverse performance outcomes including that crew are unable to adequately respond to unanticipated critical malfunctions or detect safety critical procedural errors.” Reliable, on-board capabilities will need to support the crew - not only to resolve anomalies, but also to promote situation awareness (SA) and to reduce workload. Unfortunately, the present level of technological advancement limits the range of achievable intelligent support (Wu & Vera, 2019). The Human Capabilities Assessment for Autonomous Missions (HCAAM) projects were devised to identify how technology may benefit crew situation awareness and enhance crew trust in the intelligent systems. A suite of time-critical and complex exploration tasks have been identified (Holden et al., 2019) that may advance human-integration Concept of Operations (ConOps) development. This ConOps (a future HFBP directed task) along with standards and guidelines (Holden et al., 2019) may be used as the foundation for human-system requirements for a self-reliant crew. Spaceflight CO2 levels are elevated relative to terrestrial levels. Above 2.5 mmHg there is an increase in the incidence of crew headaches (Law et al., 2014) and Mission Control reports of mood and performance changes in the crew. The concern is that elevated CO2 effects may exacerbate the HSIA risk. Unfortunately, effects of higher concentrations of CO2 on performance decrements are not well established. The main goal of the current report is to identify how elevated CO2 impacts the HSIA risk. The approach taken is to trace the relationship between cognitive and motor abilities required for anomaly response with critical mission tasks and the level of technological advancement to support anomaly resolution to identify how elevated CO2 may impact the HSIA risk. The conclusion is that elevated CO2 could exacerbate the HSIA risk. Several research gaps are identified.

cognition↗

Adding GPU Support to the Markov Chain Monte Carlo Code Catmip

In geophysics, we are confronted with many under-determined inverse problems. For example, all of our observations of earthquakes are made at the Earth’s surface. So, when we try to infer how slip during an earthquake evolves in space and time, we find that there are many potential slip histories that are consistent with our limited observations and our understanding of earthquake physics. One way to approach these problems is with Bayesian analysis which allows us to infer the ensemble of all potential slip models that satisfy the observations and our prior knowledge of earthquake physics. In Bayesian analysis, our prior knowledge is known as the prior probability density function or prior PDF, the fit to the data is known as the data likelihood, and the target PDF that satisfies both the prior PDF and data likelihood is known as the posterior PDF. However, simulating the posterior PDF typically requires using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to draw tens of billions of random realizations of earthquake slip models, which may not be computationally feasible. To make this and similar geophysical inversions computationally tractable, we developed the Cascading Adaptive Transitional Metropolis In Parallel (CATMIP) algorithm. CATMIP is an efficient parallel Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler that is used for model fitting and uncertainty quantification in geophysics. Example use cases are earthquake rupture modeling, determining mineral composition on Mars, reconstructing the history of ocean salinity, and historical earthquake relocation. CATMIP employs many parallel instances of the Metropolis algorithm for sampling in a transitioning framework. Transitioning is a process in which a set of random samples at equilibrium with a known probability density function (PDF) are used as seeds for the Markov chains to sample successive target PDFs that incrementally move the distribution from the starting seeds to the final desired PDF that describes the relative plausibility of potential values for the model parameters. The algorithm is implemented as a Master-Worker model employing MPI for communication. The worker processes are loosely coupled with global parameters periodically optimized by the master process. This provides a very high amount of parallelism with little communication between updates. During the presentation we will discuss the history of the algorithm and elaborate the earthquake rupture modeling use case for the CATMIP package. Our first step toward GPU optimization was to optimize the code for the CPU. CPU profiling revealed that most of the compute time is spent in calls to level 2 BLAS routines and calls to GSL random number generators. We revised the algorithm to employ level 3 BLAS routines instead. In our presentation we will describe how this was accomplished. Adding GPU support to CATMIP consisted mostly of replacing the calls to GSL with calls to GPU vendor-provided library routines. A small number of loops were directly implemented in CUDA. In the presentation will provide implementation details. Finally, we will discuss methods for profiling and opportunities for further optimizing GPU execution. By creating a code with the flexibility to run on either a CPU or GPU architecture, CATMIP can be used on systems ranging from large CPU-based HPC environments to single servers with GPU acceleration and everything in between.

HECC↗

HabSim: A Modular Coupled Virtual Testbed for Simulating ExtraTerrestrial Habitat Systems

Extraterrestrial habitats involve a tightly coupled combination of hardware, software, and humans while operating in an unforgiving environment that poses many risks, both anticipated and unanticipated. Traditional approaches with such systems of systems focus on reliability, robustness, and redundancy. These approaches seek to avoid failure rather than reduce overall risk. However, faults are inevitable, and understanding and managing the complex and emergent behavior and cascading events of such a complex system is critical. This study describes the development of HabSim, a computational simulation environment intended to support research to establish the know-how to design and operate resilient and autonomous SmartHabs. HabSim is a modular virtual testbed composed of many of the coupled dynamic systems expected in a typical SmartHab. A heterogeneous set of interconnected physics-based and phenomenological models is used to represent the essential functions of a SmartHab. HabSim further considers disruptions and models damage and repair of certain components. This paper discusses a) system and subsystem requirements of the deep space habitat included in the HabSim platform; b) architectural choices made in response to the requirements; c) technical considerations for developing, verifying, configuring, and executing HabSim; and d) illustrative sample results from a simulation of a representative disruption scenario.

Mohsen Azimi↗

Terrain-Adaptive Navigation Architecture

A navigation system designed for a Mars rover has been designed to deal with rough terrain and/or potential slip when evaluating and executing paths. The system also can be used for any off-road, autonomous vehicles. The system enables vehicles to autonomously navigate different terrain challenges including dry river channel systems, putative shorelines, and gullies emanating from canyon walls. Several of the technologies within this innovation increase the navigation system s capabilities compared to earlier rover navigation algorithms.

Helmick, Daniel M.↗

Prioritizing local and remote memory access in a non-uniform memory access architecture

A miss in a cache by a thread in a wavefront is detected. The wavefront includes a plurality of threads that are executing a memory access request concurrently on a corresponding plurality of processor cores. A priority is assigned to the thread based on whether the memory access request is addressed to a local memory or a remote memory. The memory access request for the thread is performed based on the priority. In some cases, the cache is selectively bypassed depending on whether the memory access request is addressed to the local or remote memory. A cache block is requested in response to the miss. The cache block is biased towards a least recently used position in response to requesting the cache block from the local memory and towards a most recently used position in response to requesting the cache block from the remote memory.

Boyer, Michael W.↗

Architecture Study on Telemetry Coverage for Immediate Post-Separation Phase

This document is the viewgraphs that accompanies a paper that presents the preliminary results of an architecture study that provides continuous telemetry coverage for NASA missions for immediate post-separation phase. After launch when the spacecraft separated from the upper stage, the spacecraft typically executes a number of mission-critical operations prior to the deployment of solar panels and the activation of the primary communication subsystem. JPL, GSFC, and APL have similar design principle statements that require continuous coverage of mission-critical telemetry during the immediate post-separation phase. To conform to these design principles, an architecture that consists of a separate spacecraft transmitter and a robust communication network capable of tracking the spacecraft signals is needed. The main results of this study are as follows: 1) At low altitude (< 10000 km) when most post-separation critical operations are executed, Earth-based network (e.g. Deep Space Network (DSN)) can only provide limited coverage, whereas space-based network (e.g. Space Network (SN)) can provide continuous coverage. 2) Commercial-off-the-shelf SN compatible transmitters are available for small satellite applications. In this paper we present the detailed coverage analysis of Earth-based and Space-based networks. We identify the key functional and performance requirements of the architecture, and describe the proposed selection criteria of the spacecraft transmitter. We conclude the paper with a proposed forward plan.

architecture↗