A finite-element program for the solution of the E-plane waveguide discontinuity is presented. The validity of the method is confirmed by comparing numerical results for the E-plane linear taper with the measured results of Matsumaru. The results obtained for the E-plane step-diaphragm junction discontinuity are compared with some computed results in the literature and our results agree well with the results of the conservation of complex power technique.

A numerical approach for the solution of the scattering by an inhomogeneous H-plane discontinuity of arbitrary shape in a rectangular waveguide is described. The approach is a combination of the finite-element method and the analytical method. The validity of the method is confirmed by comparing numerical results for a waveguide-type dielectric filter, a right-angle corner bend, an inductive strip-planar circuit mounted in a waveguide, a T-junction and an inhomogeneous waveguide junction with the earlier theoretical and experimental results.

The response times of solid state drives (SSDs) have decreased dramatically due to the growing use of non-volatile memory express (NVMe) devices. Such devices have response times of less than 100 micro seconds on average. The response times of all-flash-array systems have also decreased dramatically through the use of NVMe SSDs. However, there are applications, particularly virtual desktop infrastructure and in-memory database systems, that require storage systems with even shorter response times. Their workloads tend to contain many input-output (IO) concentrations, which are aggregations of IO accesses. They target narrow regions of the storage volume and can continue for up to an hour. These narrow regions occupy a few percent of the logical unit number capacity, are the target of most IO accesses, and appear at unpredictable logical block addresses. To drastically reduce the response times for such workloads, we developed an automated tiered storage system called “automated tiered storage with fast memory and slow flash storage” (ATSMF) in which the data in targeted regions are migrated between storage devices depending on the predicted remaining duration of the concentration. The assumed environment is a server with non-volatile memory and directly attached SSDs, with the user applications executed on the server as this reduces the average response time. Our system predicts the effect of migration by using the previously monitored values of the increase in response time during migration and the change in response time after migration. These values are consistent for each type of workload if the system is built using both non-volatile memory and SSDs. In particular, the system predicts the remaining duration of an IO concentration, calculates the expected response-time increase during migration and the expected response-time decrease after migration, and migrates the data in the targeted regions if the sum of response-time decrease after migration exceeds the sum of response-time increase during migration. Experimental results indicate that ATSMF is at least 20% faster than flash storage only and that its memory access ratio is more than 50%.