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False sharing is a major class of performance bugs in parallel applications. Detecting false sharing is difficult as it does not change the program semantics. We introduce an efficient and effective approach for detecting false sharing based on machine learning.We develop a set of mini-programs in which false sharing can be turned on and off. We then run the mini-programs both with and without false sharing, collect a set of hardware performance event counts and use the collected data to train a classifier. We can use the trained classifier to analyze data from arbitrary programs for detection of false sharing.Experiments with the PARSEC and Phoenix benchmarks show that our approach is indeed effective. We detect published false sharing regions in the benchmarks with zero false positives. Our performance penalty is less than 2%. Thus, we believe that this is an effective and practical method for detecting false sharing.

The objective of Internet of Things (IoT) is ubiquitous computing. As a result many computing enabled, connected devices are deployed in various environments, where these devices keep generating unbounded event streams related to the deployed environment. The common paradigm is to process these event streams at the cloud using the available Distributed Stream Processing (DSP) frameworks. However, with the emergence of Edge Computing, another convenient computing paradigm has been presented for executing such applications. Edge computing introduces the concept of using the underutilised potential of a large number of computing enabled connected devices such as IoT, located outside the cloud. In order to develop optimal strategies to utilise this vast number of potential resources, a realistic test bed is required. However, due to the overwhelming scale and heterogeneity of the edge computing device deployments, the amount of effort and investment required to set up such an environment is high. Therefore, a realistic simulation environment that can accurately predict the behaviour and performance of a large-scale, real deployment is extremely valuable. While the state-of-the-art simulation tools consider different aspects of executing applications on edge or cloud computing environments, we found that no simulator considers all the key characteristics to perform a realistic simulation of the execution of DSP applications on edge and cloud computing environments. To the best of our knowledge, the publicly available simulators lack being verified against real world experimental measurements, i.e. for calibration and to obtain accurate estimates of e.g. latency and power consumption. In this paper, we present our ECSNeT++ simulation toolkit which has been verified using real world experimental measurements for executing DSP applications on edge and cloud computing environments. ECSNeT++ models deployment and processing of DSP applications on edge-cloud environments and is built on top of OMNeT++/INET. By using multiple configurations of two real DSP applications, we show that ECSNeT++ is able to model a real deployment, with proper calibration. We believe that with the public availability of ECSNeT++ as an open source framework, and the verified accuracy of our results, ECSNeT++ can be used effectively for predicting the behaviour and performance of DSP applications running on large scale, heterogeneous edge and cloud computing device deployments.

PurposeProject-based learning is one of the most effective methods of transferring academic knowledge and skills to real-world situations in higher education. However, its effectiveness is not much investigated focusing on the students' narrative. This study aims at evaluating the students' experience and perspective on adopting project-based learning in master by research and doctoral programmes for proactive skills development.Design/methodology/approachThis study evaluates the self-reflection of 10 postgraduate students and their supervisor who have participated in developing a software tool for solar photovoltaics (PV) integrated building envelope design, management and the related education.FindingsFindings reveal that the students have effectively improved their knowledge on the subject via collaborating with the industry, self-learning/observation, peer learning, problem-solving and teamwork. Dividing the project into student-led tasks has improved the decision-making and leadership skills, risks identification, planning and time management skills. The overall experience has (1) built up confidence in students, (2) enhanced their creativity and critical thinking and (3) improved their proactive skills and context knowledge.Originality/valueA clear research gap can be seen in exploring the effectiveness of project-based learning for master by research and doctoral programmes, which mainly focus on extensive research. These programmes do not necessarily focus on developing students' proactive skills, which is the main requirement if they intend to work in the construction industry. This paper addresses the above research gap by demonstrating the effectiveness of project-based learning for developing the proactive skills in a research-intensive learning environment.