With the development of IoT devices and sensors, edge computing is leading towards new services like autonomous cars and smart cities. Low-latency data access is an essential requirement for such services, and a large-capacity cache server is needed on the edge side. However, it is not realistic to build a large capacity cache server using only DRAM because DRAM is expensive and consumes substantially large power. A hybrid main memory system is promising to address this issue, in which main memory consists of DRAM and non-volatile memory. It achieves a large capacity of main memory within the power supply capabilities of current servers. In this paper, we propose Fogcached, that is, the extension of a widely-used KVS (Key-Value Store) server program (i.e., Memcached) to exploit both DRAM and non-volatile main memory (NVMM). We used Intel Optane DCPM as NVMM for its prototype. Fogcached implements a Dual-LRU (Least Recently Used) mechanism that seamlessly extends the memory management of Memcached to hybrid main memory. Fogcached reuses the segmented LRU of Memcached to manage cached objects in DRAM, adds another segmented LRU for those in DCPM and bridges the LRUs by a mechanism to automatically replace cached objects between DRAM and DCPM. Cached objects are autonomously moved between the two memory devices according to their access frequencies. Through experiments, we confirmed that Fogcached improved the peak value of a latency distribution by about 40% compared to Memcached.

In this paper, we demonstrate that a formal approach is effective for improving reliability of cooperative robot designs, where the control logics are expressed in concurrent FSMs (Finite State Machines), especially in accordance with the standard FSM4RTC (FSM for Robotic Technology Components), by a case study of cooperative transport robots. In the case study, FSMs are modeled in the formal specification language CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) and checked by the model-checking tool FDR, where we show techniques for modeling and verification of cooperative robots implemented with the help of the RTM (Robotic Technology Middleware).

Non-volatile memory (NVM) is a promising technology for low-energy and high-capacity main memory of computers. The characteristics of NVM devices, however, tend to be fundamentally different from those of DRAM (i.e., the memory device currently used for main memory), because of differences in principles of memory cells. Typically, the write latency of an NVM device such as PCM and ReRAM is much higher than its read latency. The asymmetry in read/write latencies likely affects the performance of applications significantly. For analyzing behavior of applications running on NVM-based main memory, most researchers use software-based emulation tools due to the limited number of commercial NVM products. However, these existing emulation tools are too slow to emulate a large-scale, realistic workload or too simplistic to investigate the details of application behavior on NVM with asymmetric read/write latencies. This paper therefore proposes a new NVM emulation mechanism that is not only light-weight but also aware of a read/write latency gap in NVM-based main memory. We implemented the prototype of the proposed mechanism for the Intel CPU processors of the Haswell architecture. We also evaluated its accuracy and performed case studies for practical benchmarks. The results showed that our prototype accurately emulated write-latencies of NVM-based main memory: it emulated the NVM write latencies in a range from 200 ns to 1000 ns with negligible errors from 0.2% to 1.1%. We confirmed that the use of our emulator enabled us to successfully estimate performance of practical workloads for NVM-based main memory, while an existing light-weight emulation model misestimated.

In recent years, dramatic improvements have been made to computer hardware. In particular, the number of cores on a chip has been growing exponentially, enabling an ever-increasing number of processes to be executed in parallel. Having been originally developed for single-core processors, database (DB) management systems (DBMSs) running on multicore processors suffer from cache conflicts as the number of concurrently executing DB processes (DBPs) increases. Therefore, a cache-efficient solution for arranging the execution of concurrent DBPs on multicore platforms would be highly attractive for DBMSs. In this paper, we propose CARIC-DA, middleware for achieving higher performance in DBMSs on multicore processors, by reducing cache misses with a new cache-conscious dispatcher for concurrent queries. CARIC-DA logically range-partitions the dataset into multiple subsets. This enables different processor cores to access different subsets by ensuring that different DBPs are pinned to different cores and by dispatching queries to DBPs according to the data-partitioning information. In this way, CARIC-DA is expected to achieve better performance via a higher cache hit rate for the private cache of each core. It can also balance the loads between cores by changing the range of each subset. Note that CARIC-DA is pure middleware, meaning that it avoids any modification to existing operating systems (OSs) and DBMSs, thereby making it more practical. This is important because the source code for existing DBMSs is large and complex, making it very expensive to modify. We implemented a prototype that uses unmodified existing Linux and PostgreSQL environments, and evaluated the effectiveness of our proposal on three different multicore platforms. The performance evaluation against benchmarks revealed that CARIC-DA achieved improved cache hit rates and higher performance.

Interoperability is one of the fundamental functions of a home network because such networks must support many different types of devices and services. Interoperability can be realized by converting messages among different middleware with rules. However, it is very difficult to define common rules to accommodate all differences among various middleware. In addition, most interoperability approaches only address the conversion of the message format and schema, and occasionally these are not enough for a semantic conversion. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to solve the interoperability problem. For this, we classify three interoperability types, i.e., schema, profile, and procedure, and define the rules for each type. We called this interoperability scheme the Multiple stage Approach for Home network Interoperability (MAHI). In this paper, we present the design and implementation of MAHI for a three-stage conversion process. Finally, we illustrate some experimental and quantitative results. In the experiments, MAHI can provide efficient interoperability among different middleware and MAHI will be a method to deal with a complex home network interoperability.

We present a novel RFID middleware architecture, Otedama, which makes use of a unique property of RFID information to improve performance. RFID tags are bound to items. New information related to an RFID tag is generated at the site where the ID exists, and the entity most interested in the history and the item itself is in close proximity to the RFID tag. To exploit this property, we propose a scheme which bundles information related to a specific ID into one object and moves that bundle to a nearby server as the RFID tag moves from place to place. By using this scheme, information is always accessible by querying a system near the physical location of the tag, providing better query performance. Additionally, the volume of records that must be kept by a repository manager is reduced, because the relocation naturally migrates data away as physical objects move. We show the effectiveness of this architecture by analyzing data from a major retailer, finding that information retrieval performance will be six times better, and the cost of search is possibly several times cheaper.

In this paper, we have shown a major element occupying the large portion of software communications architecture (SCA)-based software defined radio (SDR) handheld embedded system and an important feature for implementing a high speed broadband radio to an SCA waveform through a couple of experiments. First, this paper identifies the main items possessing the large portion of SCA-based SDR handheld embedded system by the experiment on the target platform which is similar to a commercial mobile handheld system. Both the world interoperabillity for microwave access (WiMAX) and high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) waveform software packages are used as an SCA waveform application. This paper also presents the results of the relative binary size distribution of SCA software resources for looking for the major elements making an SCA-based SDR handheld embedded system heavier. As a result, when focusing on the relative weight portion of SCA core framework (CF), the SCA CF takes 16% up and others have 84% out of the whole binary size distribution of SCA software resources. The results of the experiment give us notice that the weight portion of SCA CF is minor and compatible with the overall software binary size needs of an SCA-based SDR handheld embedded system, on the other hand, the practical problem on the lightweight is in a common object request broker architecture (CORBA) and extensible markup language (XML) parser resources. Second, this paper describes an important feature for implementing a high speed broadband radio to an SCA waveform and presents the performance evaluation results of the SCA port communication on both power PC (PPC) 405 and x86 processor platforms. The PPC 405 platform, which is similar to a commercial mobile handset, takes the value of average round trip time (RTT) with a maximum of thirty six millisecond. The x86 platform, however, which is analogous to a server platform, maintains stable micro-second resolution. From our experiments, we observe that rapid SCA port communication, sufficiently less than the frame length of high-speed broadband radios, should be provided for serving those radio services in a commercial handheld system based on the SCA.

RFID event filtering is an important issue of RFID data management. Tag read events from readers have some problems like unreliability, redundancy, and disordering of tag readings. Duplicated events lead to performance degradation of RFID systems with a flood of similar tag information. Therefore, this paper proposes a fuzzy logic-based quantized event filter. In order to reduce duplicated tag readings and solve disordering of tag readings, the filter applies a fuzzy logic system to control a filtering threshold by the change in circumstances of readers. Continuous tag readings are converted into discrete values for event generation by the filtering threshold. And, the filter generates as many events as the discrete values at a point of event generation time. Experimental results comparing the proposed filter with existing RFID event filters, such as the primitive event filter and the smoothing event filter, verify effectiveness and efficiency of the fuzzy logic-based quantized event filter.

In the age of pervasive computing, ubiquitous collaboration has become an every-day life paradigm. Without an ideal computing infrastructure, issues with ubiquitous collaboration, such as network unreliability, platform heterogeneity, and client's resource constraints, are inevitable. The traditional replication scheme copes with network unreliability by replicating all the objects of a shared application together at once. This is, however, suitable for neither cooperative applications nor mobile computing devices. These problems can be naturally addressed by using a fine-grained replication scheme that enables a portion of the application objects to be replicated. This paper presents an object-oriented middleware that is capable of dynamically and transparently replicating remotely shared Java applications in a partially and on-demand incremental manner. It is also able to maintain various consistency semantics and enables the coexistence of fine-grained replications and conventional remote method invocations. Empirical results indicate several practical benefits of the middleware.

Mobile applications require software reconfiguration to improve resource usage and availability. We propose a power-aware reconfiguration scheme that (1) moves energy-demanding applications to proxy servers, and (2) adjusts the fidelity of mobile applications as resources diminish. We formulate a cooperative reconfiguration plan which determines when, where, and which components should be deployed and have their fidelity controlled, so as to minimize the power consumption of mobile devices and to utilize the system resources of servers efficiently. We then construct a graph-theoretic model of the cost of migrating components to one proxy server or to a cluster of servers. In this model, changes to the residual energy of mobile devices, available server resources, and the wireless network bandwidth can all accelerate or decelerate the migration and fidelity control of applications. We suggest an approximation algorithm that achieves a near-optimal solution in terms of energy consumption. Our proposal will support mobile applications which require large amount of computation and need to maintain their services for an extended time such as video conferencing, multimedia e-mail, and real-time navigation. Simulation-based experiments verify that our scheme is an efficient way to extend the battery life of mobile devices and to improve the response time of mobile applications.

Real-time applications are indispensable for conducting research and business in government, industry, and academic organizations. Recently, real-time applications with security requirements increasingly emerged in large-scale distributed systems such as Grids. However, the complexities and specialties of diverse security mechanisms dissuade users from employing existing security services for their applications. To effectively tackle this problem, in this paper we propose a security middleware (SMW) model from which security-sensitive real-time applications are enabled to exploit a variety of security services to enhance the trustworthy executions of the applications. A quality of security control manager (QSCM), a centerpiece of the SMW model, has been designed and implemented to achieve a flexible trade-off between overheads caused by security services and system performance, especially under situations where available resources are dynamically changing and insufficient. A security-aware scheduling mechanism, which plays an important role in QSCM, is capable of maximizing quality of security for real-time applications running in distributed systems as large-scale as Grids. Our empirical studies based on real world traces from a supercomputing center demonstratively show that the proposed model can significantly improve the performance of Grids in terms of both security and schedulability.

Application-level multicast (ALM) is a novel technology for multipoint applications, such as large scale file distribution, video and audio streaming, and video conferencing. Although many ALM mechanisms or algorithms have been proposed, all the multicast functions have been independently developed and integrated into individual applications. In such a situation, the development of ALM applications includes a lot of redundancy. Our goal is to improve the efficiency of developing ALM applications by reducing the development redundancy and to provide application developers with a middleware on which various ALM applications can be efficiently developed with minimum efforts. To this end, we develop a functional unit oriented ALM middleware, namely RelayCast. RelayCast provides a minimum but fundamental set of functionality as a functional unit, and constructs the basis on which additional and specific functions (i.e. codec, video capture, etc.) for each application are implemented. Some functional units contain several components with different algorithms, and RelayCast meets the requirements of various applications by choosing the appropriate component. In this paper, we propose RelayCast architecture, and present the implementation and experiments of a prototype.

High performance scientific and engineering applications running on clusters have different communication requirements. Current cluster configurations typically provide multiple network interfaces per node and multiple interconnections among nodes. However, transport protocols such as TCP do not utilize existing multiple network interfaces to enhance communication performance. This paper introduces a new configurable communication model utilizing multiple interconnections. The model adds mechanisms to manage and enhance the overall communication performance of clusters. These configurations include the use of parallel message transfers, the separation of the transfer channels between small messages and large messages, and load balancing among the channels. The main advantages of the model are: (1) providing a flexible, enhanced network infrastructure, (2) hiding the technical details of the heterogeneous network resources from the applications, and (3) providing an easy and flexible way to extend the network capacities for specific nodes. To illustrate the advantages and performance enhancements of the model, a prototype was implemented to experimentally evaluate the cluster network performance, which showed considerable gains.

Various network resources, including wireless access services and multimedia appliances (device) are expected to be available in ubiquitous computing environments. Since resource availability can change when a user migrates from one place to another, functions to monitor the availability of resources in use and, if necessary, switch from obsolete resources to new ones are necessary for continuous service provision. This paper proposes adaptive terminal middleware called AMID that performs policy-based dynamic resource selection and host-based session management to ease network administrative tasks, and hide session failures and resource changes from applications and a user. AMID supports two kinds of mobility; session maintenance on vertical handoff and device handoff (service mobility). By AMID, a mobile host keeps entire handoff control and session state to eliminate the need for network-layer or intermediate-node mobility support, and mitigate responsibility of devices for session management. AMID realizes a Reliable Virtual Socket (RVS), on top of real sockets, which employs a seamless session handoff mechanism for resource changes, and a reliable session resume mechanism against unplanned disconnection of a wireless link. It achieves seamless session handoff through a proactive soft handoff method; to conceal setup and signaling latency, it initiates setup procedures with neighbor resources in advance of actual handoff and utilizes multiple wireless interfaces and devices redundantly. We implemented AMID and a follow-me audio application on top of it to evaluate the performance. Redirection of audio streams from built-in speakers to external ones, and handoff between 802.11b and Cellular are autonomously performed when a user migrates in the house. We confirmed that AMID achieved reliable session maintenance against wireless link failure, concealed latency of handoff management, and prevented packet loss during handoff.

This paper describes distributed communications based on a new paradigm of middleware platform called the typed bus (TB) platform. While traditional middleware platforms provide the same type of communication paths between distributed objects, the TB platform provides typed buses, which are communication paths differentiated according to application's communication characteristics. Each typed bus represents unique communication type and controls communications between distributed objects according to its type as a hardware system bus constrains communication between hardware components. Distributed communications are achieved via typed buses, which check if the communications are compliant with their types. In this paper we propose the architecture of the TB platform, introduce TB Type Definition Language used to specify a typed bus's type, and describe an implementation of our platform.

In forthcoming home network environment, computation capability will be embedded invisibly in home appliances, sensors, walls, ceilings, and floors. People will conduct various tasks using multiple devices simultaneously without consciousness of using computers. In this paper, first, we propose an application model named Virtual Network Appliance (VNA) model which simplify and expand device utilization. In the model, each device has VNA runtime system and function objects, called VNA components, running on it. A user task is defined in an application called VNA which is a logical appliance consisting of abstract function requirements and a message graph among them. Second, we propose Virtual Plug&Play mechanism which is a dynamic service integration mechanism in VNA model implementation. When a user conducts a task, he/she makes a VNA runtime system on a user-side terminal load a VNA definition appropriate for the task. Virtual Plug&Play dynamically discovers required VNA components and establishes the message graph as defined. Since XML documents are used to describe a VNA, users can share and customize it easily. We call the device integration done by Virtual Plug&Play top-down integration, which existing middleware do not aim at. Finally, we show that Virtual Plug&Play affords practical performance for top-down integration by performance evaluation.

There is increasing demand for corporate information systems that have a simple human interface and are easy to access via WWW browsers. This paper proposes WebBASE, which integrates the WWW and relational databases. Experimental evaluation shows that WebBASE offers superior performance compared to existing products. Field studies of actual WebBASE applications show that it can improve the productivity of software developers for intranet application development.