Design of performance-aware resilient wireless NoC architectures

Opoku Agyeman, M., Wen, Z., Kanakis, T., Tong, K.-F. and Mak, T. (2016) Towards the practical design of performance-aware resilient wireless NoC architectures. In: 7th International Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering. USA: IEEE. 


Abstract
Recently, an improved surface wave-enabled communication fabric has been proposed to solve the reliability issues of emerging hybrid wired-wireless Network-on-Chip (WiNoC) architectures. Thus, providing a promising solution to the performance and scalability demands of the fast-paced technological growth towards exascale and Big-Data processing on future System-on-Chip (SoC) design. However, WiNoCs trade-off optimized performance for cost by restricting the number of area and power hungry wireless nodes. Consequently, in this paper, we propose a low-latency adaptive router with a low-complexity single-cycle bypassing mechanism to alleviate the performance degradation due to the slow wired routers in such emerging hyhbrid NoCs. The proposed router is able to redistribute traffic in the network to alleviate average packet latency at both low and high traffic conditions. As a second contribution the paper presents an experimental evaluation of a practically implemented surface wave communication fabric. By reducing the latency between the wired nodes and wireless nodes the proposed router can improve performance efficiency in terms of average packet delay by an average of 50% in WiNoCs.


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

6th Form students working with professional scientists - University of Northampton

Taken from: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/sixth-form-students-spend-their-summer-holidays-working-with-professional-scientists-at-the-university-of-northampton

Sixth Form students spend their summer holidays working with professional scientists at the University of Northampton

• Thursday 22nd August 2013
  Sixth Form students have had the opportunity to work alongside professional scientists at the University of Northampton on a research project as part of the Nuffield Research Placements programme.  
  
  
  The six students were from schools across the county and spent six weeks at the University’s School of Science and Technology, gaining hands-on experience and a valuable insight into a professional research environment. The University has been actively involved with this programme for several years and it is part of the School of Science and Technology’s larger commitment to outreach.
  
  
  The participants included Sheldon Kawonga from Kettering Science Academy, Emmanuel Hlouverakis and Hafiz Alaraf both from The Duston School, Agota Geciauskaite from Malcolm Arnold Academy, James Adams from The Northampton Academy and Phillipa Hawkley from Brooke Weston Academy. All were invited to give presentations on their individual projects, which varied from building a mobile device app to investigating the sensitivity of magnetic particle inspection technique.
  
  
  Nuffield Research Placements provides 1,000 students each year with the opportunity to work alongside professionals in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) sector. The programme is open to students on the first year of a post-16 STEM course and placements are available across the UK in universities, commercial companies, voluntary organisations and research institutions.
  
  
  One of the students, Phillipa Hawkley, said:  “I found this experience to be really good as we got to use facilities that we don’t have at school and the chance to use this software puts us above others our age and will really help with university applications.”
  
  
  James Adams said: “It’s been a good experience, especially from a software developer’s point of view, as I’ve never had the experience of developing something based on someone else’s specifications.”
  
  
  Dr Abdeldjalil Bennecer, Senior Lecturer in Engineering at the University of Northampton commented: “The sixth form students are about to enter the second year of their A-levels and have spent six weeks over the summer with us working on individual projects.
  
  
  We held interviews with each student and the ones we offered places to were the brightest in their class and expressed an interest in STEM subjects at university level. We tailored the project briefs to suit their interests.
  
  
  It's been a beneficial few weeks for these students and we have thoroughly enjoyed working with them and giving them the ultimate experience of working with professional scientists."
  
  
  Related links:
  
  

  Nuffield Bursary student 1 - Web sustainability

  Junkbots - Nuffield Bursary Placement: Day 16 - Modelling and tying up loose ends!

  Junkbots - Nuffield Bursary Placement: Day 15 - Designing the Programming Project

  Robots, junk and 3D 

  
  
  
  

HEA STEM Conference: Junkbots Poster

ABSTRACT: The School of Science and Technology at the University of Northampton have been working with local schools to create robots made from junk and also to use robots programmed by the students to perform simple rubbish clearing exercises. This is an initiative by the University to introduce environmental sustainability, engineering and computing to students in schools.

China and Europe coming to Milan

9th China-Europe International Symposium on 

Software Engineering Education. 

The conference will be held in Milan, Italy 

13th and 14th May 2013

Theme: Software Engineering Education for Global 

E-Service Economy

The conference website is http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/

The deadline is currently March 10 2013
Call for papers: http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/web/guest/topics-call-for-paper

Background to the conference: http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/web/guest/background-objectives

Provisional schedule.

• May 13 - Morning:  Opening ceremony and  Keynote Speech
• May 13 – Afternoon: Parallel sessions
• May 13 – Evening:  Banquet and Social Event
• May 14- Morning:  Industry Track, Software Engineering for the Industry
  • University and Industry cooperation in a global world 
  • Field education of Software Engineer and Enterprise Architects: internships, stages and post-graduate education; 
  • Panel Session Education on Software Engineering and Services Science for Global E-Service
•  May 14- Afternoon (optional): Visit Politecnico di Milano or University of Milano Bicocca

Further information is on the website:http://camellia.unipv.it:15000/

MEng Computing

The School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton is getting ready to run Master of Engineering (MEng) extensions to two Computing courses in Computer Networks Engineering and Computer Systems Engineering. 






The purpose of the MEng is to add both breadth and depth in  principles and applications to complement BEng programmes, which is uncharacteristic of many MSc programmes.

For MEng Computer Networks Engineering (120 credits):

• Visual Objects Software (20)
• Computer Networks (20)
• Mobile Device Software Development (20)
• Group Industry Project (60)

For  MEng  Computer Systems Engineering (120 credits) from:

• Distributed Systems (20)
• Visual Objects Software (20)
• Modern Computer Architecture (20)
• Group Industry Project (60)

The Group Project module gives students the opportunity to apply and develop  knowledge in the execution of a group project and individual report.  By completing the module students will gain experience of researching the necessary technical information, of solving cross-disciplinary technical problems, of sourcing and obtaining parts and components, working to a deadline and presenting a concept to an industry.

Computing Courses

BSc and HND Computing Provision (click on the links below for more details of the courses)

• BEng/MEng Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• BEng/MEng Computing (Computer Systems Engineering) 

• BSc (Hons) Computing (also available part-time)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Mobile Computing)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Software Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing - One Year Top-Up 
• BSc  Computer Games Development
• HND Computing (Compute​r Net​works Engineering)
• HND Computing (Computer Systems Engineering)
• HND Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• HND Computing (Internet Tech​nolog​y and Security)
• HND Computing (Mobile Computing)
• HND Computing (Software Engine​ering) 
• HND Com​puting

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

The contents are the opinion of the author(s) and not necessarily the view of the University of Northampton.

BCS Northampton student awards

The Northampton branch of the BCS awards several prizes to promising and high preforming students at the University of Northampton from both the School of Science and Technology and the Northampton Business School.

The 2012 Students Prize winners are:
Northampton Business School - Park Campus: 
Best Student:
Sabah Dada - BSc Business Computing Systems
Most promising Student:
Timothy Bradley - BSc Business Computing Systems

School of Science and Technology - Avenue Campus: 
Best Final Year Student
John Marsh BSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering).
Most promising Student:
Gaurav Ravindra - BSc Computing (Software Engineering).


More information about the Northampton Branch can be found at:
http://northampton.bcs.org/
Events information can be found at: Events

junkbots continues

The funding may have unfortunately stopped but the activities continue. On 30th March the Junkbots activities return to Brooke Weston School.

It was never the intention that all the tasks were achieved in the time, but the student's tried out their own groups ideas with little input from the tutors.

Some very innovative results were produced.

Thank you to Mr Nigel Barratt for inviting me back and supporting the activities.

Teacher Mr Barrett said: ‘The students just got on with it and devised the models themselves. They experimented all the way through. It was three and a half lessons of having a go, coming across problems and then solving them themselves. If they got stuck we gave them a little push in the right direction. They have all learned a great deal and they were all fully engaged with the project, giving it their maximum effort.’ (Freeman, 2011)

For more details and comments made from the school follow this link.

Details can be found at the project site including some example exercises.

For further details please contact: Scott.turner@northampton.ac.uk or +44 1604 893028

Freeman C (2011) "Junkbots Project 2011" [online] URL: http://www.brookeweston.org/News/NewsItem.aspx?Id=809 accessed on: 7th April 2011.