Browsing by Author "Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, publisher"

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Open Access
Terrestrial and extraterrestrial altruism
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, author; Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, publisher
How Earthbound are values and ethics? We humans enjoy a surprising transcendence of localized body and place. We are always situated somewhere, but it does not follow that all our knowledge is situational. True, science is a human enterprise. True, ethics is a human activity - even biologically-based. But can we expect to share some of our science and ethics with extraterrestrials? Perhaps in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the question to ask is not about the value of pi, or the atomic number of carbon. A more revealing test might be to ask whether one should tell the truth, keep promises, or be just. The Golden Rule may be as universally true as is the theory of relativity.
Open Access
The robustness of resource allocations in parallel and distributed computing systems
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2006) Shestak, Vladimir, author; Maciejewski, Anthony A., author; Siegel, Howard Jay, author; Ali, Shoukat, author; Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, publisher
This corresponds to the material in the invited keynote presentation by H. J. Siegel, summarizing the research in [2, 23]. Resource allocation decisions in heterogeneous parallel and distributed computer systems and associated performance prediction are often based on estimated values of application and system parameters, whose actual values are uncertain and may be differ from the estimates. We have designed a model for deriving the degree of robustness of a resource allocation--the maximum amount of collective uncertainty in parameters within which a user-specified level of system performance can be guaranteed. The model will be presented, and we will demonstrate its ability to select the most robust resource allocation from among those that otherwise perform similarly (based on the primary performance criterion). We will show how the model can be used in off-line allocation heuristics to maximize the robustness of makespan against inaccuracies in estimates of application execution times in a cluster.