Clusters of Symmetric Multiprocessors (CSMP) are becoming an increasingly popular high-performance computing platform due to the commodity availability of multiprocessor nodes, mature SMP operating systems, low-latency, highbandwidth data networks, and superior price-performance ratio. Fast synchronization is crucial to making efficient use of SMP clusters. In this paper, we focus on one kind o...

Although barrier synchronization has long been considered a useful construct for parallel programming, it has generally been either layered on top of a communication system or used as a completely independent mechanism. Instead, we propose that all communication be made a side-effect of barrier synchronization. This is done by extending the barrier synchronization unit to collect a datum from e...

Subject of the paper is a particular configuration of overhead line, in which noise barrier structure is used as supports of the catenary instead of standard poles. This configuration is foreseen in case the noise barrier position is in conflict with the poles location. If the catenary is supported by the noise barrier, the motion that the latter undergo due to wave pressure associated to train...

The potential energy profile of an ideal binary switch is a symmetric double well. Switching between the wells without energy dissipation requires time-modulating the height of the potential barrier separating the wells and tilting the profile towards the desired well at the precise juncture when the barrier disappears. This, however, demands perfect timing synchronization and is therefore faul...

An efficient barrier implementation is desirable on parallel systems to obtain good parallel speedup and to support finer-grained computation. Some modern Network Interface Cards (NICs) have programmable processors which can be used to provide support for collective communications such as barrier. In this paper, we utilize such a programmable NIC to provide an efficient barrier synchronization ...