RISC-V is a computer architecture that has recently attracted considerable attention due to its advantageous qualities: it is an open instruction set, based on reduced and simple instructions. For ...this reason it has become an appealing choice for a wide range of computing applications and has positioned it as a disruptive force in a wide variety of fields, including those that involve the development of safety-critical software, as in the space sector. The ability to evaluate the activities performed within a processor is of paramount importance in this type of systems to ensure the fulfillment of the requirements during space missions. The monitoring of these events inside the processor is managed by an instrument called Hardware Performance Monitor (HPM). This work shows the implementation of the Sscofpmf extension of the HPM compliant to the RISC-V privileged specification. The paper details the redesign of the existing performance counters from a RISC-V baseline version previously implemented. A comparison between the two versions of both resource utilization data and power consumption is also provided. As expected, the Sscofpmf extension version has a higher resource utilization. Nevertheless, the paper shows that the additional functionalities included in the system have been validated without any changes in the processor clock frequency, so the extension does not introduce any performance overhead.
Sustainable development as a concept that aims to enhance the quality of life without affecting environment has been in focus in European policies since the last decade of 20th century. The ...objectives of EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS) are grouped into ten thematic areas, where almost each theme has at least one headline and several operational sustainable development indicators (SDIs). A large number of SDIs is needed to evaluate all EU SDS goals, which imposes the use of multivariate data mining techniques. This paper presents an empirical study carried out to assess the sustainability performance of European countries using the differential multi criteria analysis (DMCA) technique. The PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization MeTHod for Enrichment Evaluations) was applied on 38 headline and operational SDIs defined under the EU SDS. This DMCA was applied to 30 European countries over a 10-year period (2004–2014) with the aim to determine the theme specific, as well as, overall sustainability progress. The DMCA reveals that the majority of European countries have made progress in sustainability in the studied period, where Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Sweden, have enhanced their sustainability performance concerning all themes. There are only two countries, namely Greece and Ireland, which have not made overall progress in this period. Also, above the average progress has been made concerning social inclusion, sustainable transport, and climate change and energy, while in all other themes additional efforts should be made in order to ensure sustainable performance progress in future years. Although the progress in reducing uneven development between EU members has been made, after 2009 a positive trend can be observed only in a limited number of SDS themes.
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•An empirical study is carried out to assess the sustainability performance.•Differential multi criteria analysis (DMCA) technique is proposed.•The SDS theme specific and overall sustainability progress is determined.•Only Greece and Ireland, have not made overall progress in the studied period.
The role of road markings is fundamental for traffic safety, as it represents an essential optical driving instrument both for effective drivers and autonomous vehicles. This research aims to ...evaluate the effects of the decay of road marking visibility along curves, specifically the variability in lateral acceleration. Traditionally, issues related to the correct interpretation of a road alignment were studied by means of trajectory analyses. However, they involved information about the vehicle’s geometrical position without any indication on dynamics. To explore this aspect further, an experiment in a simulated environment involving 21 drivers was performed. They drove along a test road in a standardized scenario considering only three variables: the curve direction (right or left), the deviation angle (70° or 30°), and the road marking visibility percentage (100%, 50%, 10%, and 0%). The results, in differences between theoretical (depending on design speed and curve radius) and effective lateral accelerations, provide further evidence of the strategic role of the markings. However, when markings deteriorate, drivers activate some balancing mechanisms to mitigate the dynamic effects along curves and, in turn, to improve comfort and safety. The proposed procedure is not only of direct practical interest, but it is also fully generalizable to other contexts and issues, involving several other elements that may influence the phenomenon, such as road geometry, visibility conditions, and traffic flow speed.
The proposed paper is focused on measurement and evaluation of supply chain performance in order to its sustainable improvement. The main goal is to suggest categorization of metrics and examine each ...category in order to verify whether companies exploit the full potential of measurement. The presented outcomes are based on preliminary questionnaire survey conducted among Czech companies.
Recently, the National Police Agency of Taiwan has begun to measure performance levels for police forces across the entire island. The performance benchmarks resulting from this strategy have become ...the basis for allocation of government funding and other scarce resources. In this work, data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to construct a scalar measure of efficiency for all police precincts. Further analyses on the effect of degree of urbanization and possible weight restrictions on the outputs upon the efficiency scores of each decision making unit (DMU) were conducted. In addition, a three-stage DEA model was applied to explicitly incorporate environmental factors into the DEA model. The results show that the external environmental factors specified in this study may have some effects on the efficiency scores of each district, albeit not statistically significant. Most decision making units are technically efficient; the average technical efficiency of all DMUs was as high as 98.46% when external environmental factors were accounted for.
Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) enable vehicle-to-vehicle communications to share relevant road information with various applications. Road safety is one of the main objectives of VANETs that has ...attracted great interest from researchers. Other so-called comfort applications have also been studied which can improve driving experience and passenger safety. In all these applications, sharing of warning messages can help drivers minimize accidents and congestions, and plan better itinerary during the congestion situations or the anticipation of potential and highly hazardous events. In this paper, we present an efficient broadcast protocol (EBP) for broadcasting warning messages in VANETs. As an improved strategy for alert data dissemination, EBP can be applied in whatever the nature of the risk, with a particular focus on mobile dangers. We first conduct an in-depth analysis and evaluation, under different conditions, of the existing approaches and mechanisms used for information dissemination in VANETs. Then, we point out their drawbacks and design the EBP to avoid these drawbacks. As a result, the EBP is an improved, well-justified and more effective protocol. We validate it by simulation experiments under various scenarios.ACM CCS (2012) Classification: Networks right arrow Network type right arrow Adhoc networks Networks right arrow Network performance evaluation right arrow Network simulationsKeywords: VANET, mobile risk, data dissemination, simulation, performance measuring
The present article proposes a mathematical decision support system model to measure the performance of incubated technology-based firms (TBFs) suppliers. The research was conducted based on three ...steps: (1) a literature review, in order to parameterise the research in relation to the theme; (2) the construction of a measuring system, based on the presumptions permeated by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP); and (3) the application of the system at three companies. The findings demonstrated the mathematical modelling developed is capable of providing satisfactory results to the reality of the sector studied, presenting the situation of the suppliers evaluated, independent of the nature of the indicated critical success factors (CSFs). Also, this tool supports companies by providing a strong foundation to organise the information regarding the service level delivered by each supplier, according to previous research on the theme.
Reliability monitoring and performance measuring of a failure process are important issues for complex products or repairable systems. Since traditional methods of reliability monitoring and ...measuring for a highly reliable process have become unsatisfactory and inapplicable, a new two-stage controlling procedure for the exponential failure process with high reliability is proposed in this paper. A t-chart is used as a first controlling stage to monitor an exponential failure process. A process is considered stable when special causes for unpredictable variations have been removed from the process and all of the measurements on the t-chart fall within the control limits. An in-control process can produce bad or out of specification products. To account for the specification limit specified by the customer for measuring performance of the exponential failure process, a lifetime capability index L
tp
is proposed. By taking past in-control sample data of the t-chart from the first controlling stage with no additional sampling efforts, we develop a second controlling stage where the sampling error of estimated L
tp
is considered. We obtain the lower confidence bound (LCB) of estimated L
tp
to assess and make a decision on how well the lifetime performance of the exponential failure process meets the specification. The advantage of this second-stage controlling procedure can motivate the manufacturer to develop the reliability requirement for the process, establish an adequate reliability programme, and perform appropriate analyses and tasks to ensure the process will meet its requirements.
Los ingenieros que ocupan posiciones gerenciales en maquilas tienen personal a su cargo y son evaluados en su desempeño en la administración de éstos, sin embargo se conoce poco en relación a los ...atributos que les son evaluados. Este artículo reporta los resultados de un análisis factorial exploratorio (AFE) y un análisis factorial confirmatorio (AFC), realizados a partir de un cuestionario aplicado a 271 ingenieros-gerentes que contiene 16 atributos. Se encontró que cinco factores explican 67.98 por ciento de la variabilidad de todos los atributos, los cuales se relacionan con su capacidad para comunicarse y ejecutar planes de trabajo, organizar y realizar trabajo en equipo, ejercer liderazgo e integrar y negociar planes.
Abstract Care of the critically ill is both time consuming and expensive. Poor quality critical care may harm patients and increase resource utilization, morbidity and mortality. It is widely ...accepted that simple comparisons of the results of critical care units with differing admission profiles and demographic groups yields limited information. Combining measures of pre-morbid state, severity of illness and resource utilization with clinical, social and psychological outcomes allows more meaningful comparisons. This article discusses measures of outcome and performance in intensive care medicine.
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