Autonomic microcell assignment in massively distributed online virtual environments

Distributed virtual environments and massively multiplayer online games in particular have been on the rise for several years now. They offer huge digital environments characterized by tens of thousands of users interacting with each other. Efficiently managing these online worlds requires scalable architectures to distribute the load over multiple servers and maintain a high Quality of Experience (QoE). This need will only increase as online virtual worlds become more and more popular. A traditional approach to improve the scalability of this type of system is to statically partition the virtual world in smaller segments called cells, each assigned to a dedicated server.In this paper a novel approach of dividing the virtual world into even smaller parts called microcells is introduced. Critical in this approach are the algorithms that manage the microcell allocation over the available servers. These algorithms must face a number of challenges and have as a central goal to keep the load experienced by the servers below a given threshold. On one hand, clustering interacting microcells on one server allows to limit the overall load by minimizing the communication overhead. On the other hand, locating too many microcells on one server may cause the load to violate the threshold value, resulting in an overload situation. In this paper we present a number of algorithms that determine the microcell allocation and runtime adaptations of the microcell allocation to optimize the deployment. We evaluate the microcell approach by studying the impact of the microcell size and the number of servers. The efficiency of the algorithms in terms of their ability to decrease the maximum server load and their capability to maintain an ideal deployment in dynamic environments is also studied.     

Developing a distributed scalable Java component server

We present here approaches for a distributed scalable Java component server. The first one uses a resource broker model, whereby the system is composed of one or several entry point servers, a resource broker and a set of participating servers. The resource broker gives the system its dynamic scalability and load balancing capability by notifying participants and providing information to the entry point servers. An experimental version of the server has been developed. Two other approaches based on Jini and JavaSpace are proposed. An experimental version of the latter one is also compared with the resource broker model.     

Improvement on the accuracy of the polynomial form extrapolation model in distributed virtual environment

In this paper, we studied the relationship between the accuracy of the extrapolating data and the update interval in a distributed virtual environment (DVE). Based on the properties of the polynomial models, we proposed the new method to extrapolate the attribute data which arrives at a discrete time period. Theoretical models were formulated and showed that the average error of the proposed method is less than that of current methods. Finally, we confirmed that the proposed method can improve the accuracy in comparison with current methods by conducting experiments with the motion of a pen for a series of letters written by a human.     

低成本可扩展的分布式VoD系统体系结构研究*

考虑视频点播（VoD）系统的成本代价要求,给出了一种基于普通PC机的、高性价比的分布式VoD系统方案,论述了系统的体系结构、动态扩展及其负载平衡机制。实验数据表明,系统能有效地解决传统集中式VoD系统的瓶颈问题,具有良好的可扩展性,能够满足大规模VoD应用的要求。     

Service-oriented middleware for distributed data mining on the grid

Distribution of data and computation allows for solving larger problems and executing applications that are distributed in nature. The grid is a distributed computing infrastructure that enables coordinated resource sharing within dynamic organizations consisting of individuals, institutions, and resources. The grid extends the distributed and parallel computing paradigms allowing for resource negotiation and dynamical allocation, heterogeneity, open protocols, and services. Grid environments can be used both for compute-intensive tasks and data intensive applications by exploiting their resources, services, and data access mechanisms. Data mining algorithms and knowledge discovery processes are both compute and data intensive, therefore the grid can offer a computing and data management infrastructure for supporting decentralized and parallel data analysis. This paper discusses how grid computing can be used to support distributed data mining. Research activities in grid-based data mining and some challenges in this area are presented along with some promising future directions for developing grid-based distributed data mining.     

A scalable interest management scheme for distributed virtual environments

With the expansion of the internet and its bandwidth, distributed virtual environment (DVE) applications have become more prevalent. In DVE applications, users frequently crowd in a specific place, and a key aspect to consider is how to provide interactive performance for users. However, existing approaches using multicast require users to receive uninteresting messages. Even though recent works have addressed fine‐grained filtering, they still incur other drawbacks in terms of assigning lots of multicast addresses or handling overhead of multicast groups. This makes the system less scalable as the number of users increases. In this paper, we propose a new scalable filtering scheme that reduces not only the number of messages during interaction in a region and among neighboring regions, but also the number of multicast addresses without significant computational overhead. Interest management in a region dynamically creates groups of users with the same interests. While members communicate with each other with high fidelity, a representative sends information to non‐members with low frequency. For interaction among neighboring regions, we propose a sub‐region concept to select only a subset of users from the neighboring regions based on proximity, the distribution of the users' locations, and the viewing direction of a user. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A collaborative virtual geographic environment based on P2P and Grid technologies

Solving a geographic problem usually requires collaborative work among a group of people in different geographic locations. Collaborative virtual geographic environment (CVGE), an integrated technology, offers an intuitive, efficient, and interactive visualization environment through which geographically separated users can explore complicated spatial information and conduct collaborative work. In this paper, two new technologies, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Grid computing, are tightly coupled to develop a CVGE system. This paper evaluates the potential contributions of the P2P and Grid technology to CVGE systems. Using a Grid based system architecture efficiently integrates and shares geographically distributed resources as well as modeling procedures built on different platforms. To offer a shared and interactive virtual collaborative geographic environment for resolving geographic problems, we developed several P2P services including a terrain visualization collaboration service and a video collaboration service. Finally, a CVGE prototype system is implemented for collaboration on silt dam planning on the Loess plateau. The experimental results show that the scheme developed in this paper is efficient and feasible.     

Performance evaluation of compromised synchronization control mechanism for distributed virtual environment (DVE)

Synchronization in a distributed virtual environment (DVE) involves mechanisms to ensure a consistent view of a virtual world for all participants. Most applications in the DVE are related to collaborative activities that include non-contention and contention cases. Using transmission of update messages is suitable enough to support synchronization for only non-contention activity. The contention activity requires an additional mechanism to control accessing a common object for synchronization. In this paper, we present the compromised synchronization control mechanism to support both non-contention and contention activities. The mechanism employs frequent update event and multiple-lock checking to control the synchronization. Frequent update event is used to support a dynamic virtual world for non-contention activity. Multiple-lock checking is embedded to ensure consistency when accessing the common object is required simultaneously for the contention event. Performance measurement of the compromised synchronization is provided by simulation in terms of locking time, sampling event, number of logical processes, and traffic tolerance. Prototype application is also implemented to compare the result in a small scale level. Based on the simulation and experimental results, the compromised sychronization control mechanism is capable to support up to 100 participants for the non-contention activity. It provides a good performance of supporting the contention activity in a small scale. The mechanism is considered suitable for collaborative application where contention is considered a critical event.     

An architecture to support scalable online personalization on the Web

Online personalization is of great interest to e-companies. Virtually all personalization technologies are based on the idea of storing as much historical customer session data as possible, and then querying the data store as customers navigate through a web site. The holy grail of online personalization is an environment where fine-grained, detailed historical session data can be queried based on current online navigation patterns for use in formulating real-time responses. Unfortunately, as more consumers become e-shoppers, the user load and the amount of historical data continue to increase, causing scalability-related problems for almost all current personalization technologies. This paper chronicles the development of a real-time interaction management system through the integration of historical data and online visitation patterns of e-commerce site visitors. It describes the scientific underpinnings of the system as well as its architecture. Experimental evaluation of the system shows that the caching and storage techniques built into the system deliver performance that is orders of magnitude better than those derived from off-the-shelf database components. Received: 30 October 2000 / Accepted: 19 December 2000 Published online: 27 April 2001     

A Dynamic Load Balancing Mechanism for Distributed Systems

It is desirable in a distributed system to have the system load balanced evenly among the nodes so that the mean job response time is minimized.In this paper,we present a dynamic load balancing mechanism(DLB).It adopts a cntralized approach and is network topology independent.The DLB mechanism employs a set of threscholds which are automatically adjusted as the system load changes.It also provides a simple mechanism for the system to switch between periodic and instantaneous load balancing policies with ease.The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by intensive simulations for various parameters.Te simulation results show that the mean job response time in a system implementing DLB algorithm is significantly lower than the same system without load balancings.Furthermore,compared with a previously proposed algorithm,DLB algorithm demonstrates improved performance,especially when the system is heavily loaded and the load is unevenly distributed.     

Internet-based virtual computing environment(iVCE):Concepts and architecture

Resources over Internet have such intrinsic characteristics as growth, autonomy and diversity, which have brought many challenges to the efficient sharing and comprehensive utilization of these resources. This paper presents a novel approach for the construction of the Internet-based Virtual Computing Environment (iVCE), whose sig- nificant mechanisms are on-demand aggregation and autonomic collaboration. The iVCE is built on the open infrastructure of the Internet and provides harmonious, transparent and integrated services for end-users and applications. The concept of iVCE is presented and its architectural framework is described by introducing three core concepts, i.e., autonomic element, virtual commonwealth and virtual executor. Then the connotations, functions and related key technologies of each components of the architecture are deeply analyzed with a case study, iVCE for Memory.     

基于语义虚拟环境的虚拟人动画研究与实现*

现有虚拟环境建模（如VRML/X3D）主要集中在几何图形的描述,所显示的虚拟场景对于人是可理解的,但对于计算机是不可理解的,因而难以作有意义的自动处理。基于语义Web设计了一个语义虚拟环境（主要包括语义虚拟场景和语义虚拟人）,并设计了基于语义虚拟环境的虚拟人动画引擎。语义虚拟环境使得计算机能够理解和自动处理虚拟环境的语义信息,并且使得虚拟环境系统具有可重用性、可扩展性和可集成性。最后,在语义虚拟环境和虚拟人动画引擎的基础上开发了一个办公室场景中智能虚拟人行动推理的系统,取得了很好的效果。     

虚拟现实环境下的分布式服务器架构策略研究

虚拟现实环境下,数据实时性和系统稳定性的高要求对服务器架构的设计和优化提出了新的挑战。针对虚拟现实环境下海量数据存储效率的提升和系统性能的优化,提出了一种新的分布式服务器架构,该架构基于分布式协调框架ZooKeeper、分布式缓存架构Redis以及MongoDB分片机制,并改进一致性Hash算法来优化Redis缓存架构,同时优化MongoDB分片的负载均衡机制。经过相应的仿真验证,该架构在虚拟现实环境下具有有效性。     

基于虚拟环境和人在回路中的计算机应用

随着计算机技术的快发发展，计算机虚拟网络环境给人们所带来的巨大改变，越来越受到人们的追求和青睐，因此，本文就什么是虚拟环境和人在回路中计算机应用的几个主要领域进行了详细的探讨。     

An environment for integrated development and evaluation of real-time distributed database systems

Real-time database systems must maintain consistency while minimizing the number of transactions that miss the deadline. To satisfy both the consistency and real-time constraints, there is the need to integrate synchronization protocols with real-time priority scheduling protocols. One of the reasons for the difficulty in developing and evaluating database synchronization techniques is that it takes a long time to develop a system, and evaluation is complicated because it involves a large number of system parameters that may change dynamically. This paper describes an environment for investigating distributed real-time database systems. The environment is based on a concurrent programming kernel that supports the creation, blocking, and termination of processes, as well as scheduling and interprocess communication. The contribution of the paper is the introduction of a new approach to system development that utilizes a module library of reusable components to satisfy three major goals: modularity, flexibility, and extensibility. In addition, experiments for real-time concurrency control techniques are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the environment.This work was supported in part by ONR contract # NOOO14-88-K-0245, by DOE contract # DEFG05-88-ER25063, by CIT contract # CIT-INF-90-011, and by IBM Federal Systems Division.     

基于栅格法的虚拟人快速路径规划

在栅格中使用经典的Dijkstra算法进行路径规划有计算量大,规划时间长、进行扩展判断的节点个数多等缺点.栅格的组织结构决定了栅格中最短路径的特性--组成最短路径的各线段间的最小夹角为90°.根据栅格及最短路径的特性,提出了一种在栅格中使用Dijkstra算法规划路径时减少扩展节点的个数,进而缩短规划时间、降低计算代价的算法,并将其用于虚拟人的路径规划.实验验证了算法的可行性和有效性.     

The InstaGENI initiative: An architecture for distributed systems and advanced programmable networks

In this paper, we describe InstaGENI, a distributed cloud based on programmable networks designed for the GENI Mesoscale deployment and large-scale distributed research projects. The InstaGENI architecture closely integrates a lightweight cluster design with software-defined networking, Hardware-as-a-Service and Containers-as-a-Service, remote monitoring and management, and high-performance inter-site networking. The initial InstaGENI deployment will encompass 34 sites across the United States, interconnected through a specialized GENI backbone network deployed over national, regional and campus research and education networks, with international network extensions to sites across the world.     

基于Forth虚拟机的嵌入式多任务操作系统体系架构研究

面对越来越复杂的嵌入式应用需求以及当今嵌入式操作系统研究领域亟待解决的重构、移植、维护、可信、多核、众核等诸多难题,采用Forth虚拟机技术,对基于Forth虚拟机架构的嵌入式操作系统关键技术进行探索,提出一种具有良好扩展和移植特性、高效精简的基于Forth虚拟机的嵌入式多任务操作系统体系架构。该架构采用分类存储映射、Forth向量定义和用户变量分离,实现了代码共享和多任务管理。实验结果表明,基于Forth虚拟机架构的嵌入式操作系统在发挥Forth系统固有特性的同时,减少了资源占用,提高了系统的灵活性及运行效率。     

An architecture to integrate IEC 61131-3 systems in an IEC 61499 distributed solution

The IEC 61499 standard has been developed to allow the modeling and design of distributed control systems, providing advanced concepts of software engineering (such as abstraction and encapsulation) to the world of control engineering. The introduction of this standard in already existing control environments poses challenges, since programs written using the widespread IEC 61131-3 programming standard cannot be directly executed in a fully IEC 61499 environment without reengineering effort. In order to solve this problem, this paper presents an architecture to integrate modules of the two standards, allowing the exploitation of the benefits of both. The proposed architecture is based on the coexistence of control software of the two standards. Modules written in one standard interact with some particular interfaces that encapsulate functionalities and information to be exchanged with the other standard. In particular, the architecture permits to utilize available run-times without modification, it allows the reuse of software modules, and it utilizes existing features of the standards. A methodology to integrate IEC 61131-3 modules in an IEC 61499 distributed solution based on such architecture is also developed, and it is described via a case study to prove feasibility and benefits. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed solution does not add substantial load or delays to the system when compared to an IEC 61131-3 based solution. By acting on task period, it can achieve performances similar to an IEC 61499 solution.     

A collaborative and integrated platform to support distributed manufacturing system using a service-oriented approach based on cloud computing paradigm

Today's manufacturing enterprises struggle to adopt cost-effective manufacturing systems. Overview of the recent manufacturing enterprises shows that successful global manufacturing enterprises have distributed their manufacturing capabilities over the globe. The successes of global manufacturing enterprises depend upon the entire worldwide integration of their product development processes and manufacturing operations that are distributed over the globe. Distributed manufacturing agents' collaboration and manufacturing data integrity play a major role in global manufacturing enterprises' success. There are number of works, conducted to enable the distributed manufacturing agents to collaborate with each other. To achieve the manufacturing data integrity through manufacturing processes, numbers of solutions have been proposed which one of the successful solutions is to use ISO 10303 (STEP) standard. However, adopting this standard one can recognize antonym effects of integration and collaboration approaches that weaken both integration and collaboration capabilities of manufacturing agents. In our latest work, we had developed an integrated and collaborative manufacturing platform named LAYMOD. Albeit the platform in question was through enough to be applied in various collaborative and integrated CAx systems, its embedded structure hampers its application for collaboration in distributed manufacturing systems. To achieve an integrated and collaborative platform for distributed manufacturing agents, this paper proposes a service-oriented approach. This approach is originated from cloud computing paradigm known as one of the technologies which enables a major transformation in manufacturing industry. Also, to maintain the product data integration based on the STEP standard, a new service-oriented approach is proposed. This approach is in parallel to the new capability of the STEP standard for supporting XML data structures. The result is a new platform named XMLAYMOD. XMLAYMOD is able to support distributed manufacturing collaboration and data integration based on the STEP standard. The different aspects of this platform to fulfill the requirements of distributed collaboration and also to overcome the lacks of the STEP standard are discussed through a brief case study.