Information Systems and Technology Center

/ Tetsuhiko Ikegami / Vice President
/ Leo Nagamatsu / Associate Professor
/Akira Fujitsu /Assistant Professor
/ Tongjun Huang / Research Associate

ISTC consists of the Information Processing Center and the University Library. ISTC's main purpose is to provide information services through computer facilities and library services.

1. Besides providing regular services, IPC staff provided the following supports during FY 2000.
   • Replacement of workstations in Computer Exercise Room 5 through 6, Hard ware Workshop 1 through 4, and replacement of workstations for graduate students use.
   • Setting up a gateway to reinforce our network security.
   • Discussion on how to replace the MUSE system with a new library system and a new administration system.
2. Concerning Library services, 402 volumes Japanese Books, 781 volumes Foreign Books, 159 Japanese Magazines, and 566 foreign Magazines were purchased with 2000 regular budget.

Refereed Journal Papers

1. Leo Nagamatsu and Naoki Wakamatsu., Performance Evaluation of File Server for Classroom Computers -- A Method of Simultaneous Execution with High Resolution Synchronization. Trans. on Information System Environment for Universities, Research Group on Center Information Systems of National/Public Universities, vol. 4, pp. 28--37, March 2001.

   The performance of the classroom computer facilities is evaluated. On class periods when students use computers connected to the network, it is possible to access to one server from many computers simultaneously. For evaluating the peak traffic behavior of the whole system including 100Mbps network environment and file servers, we proposed a method to generate loads by executing processes with finely synchronized on many client computers. From the result of evaluation, we confirmed the effectiveness of this method, and discussed to verify the scalability of current facilities by file transfer rate.

Refereed Proceeding Papers

1. Leo Nagamatsu., A Bulk Scanning Method for Uncared-for Processes on Classroom UNIX Workstations. Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems(ICPADS-2000) Workshops on Industrial Applications on Network Computing (INDAP2000), pp. 409--414, July 2000.

   In the University of Aizu, quite many UNIX workstations for student classroom facility are provided. Students -- some of them are very beginners, often logged out a host with unintentionally left processes. And some of these processes may waste processor resources. In high load averaged hosts, such aimless running processes are often found. We developed a tool for periodical search for such processes. It is to obtain basic information for management and for taking an action to keep hosts well. In our university, user files are placed in the central file server and on-demand mounted when a user starts to use a client host. With this configuration, it takes seconds for starting up a user environment. This may be a reason of long response time of remote command invocation. We designed the tool with a pipelined parallel processing, and it can collect process information of each host with high throughput. Achieved average processing time for a host is less than one second, while scanning more than 400 workstations. Also the property of abnormal processes found by this tool is discussed.

2. Leo Nagamatsu., On-line Software Reorganization. The Proc. of 2000 International Conference on Information Society in the 21 st Century (IS2000) Emerging Technologies and New Challenges in Information Society, pp. 231--236, Nov. 2000.

   With the increased complexity of software and requirement to non-stop feature of services, it's important to establish an effective method for on-line or runtime program updating. While in the domain of hardware, the in-operation replacement of parts -- known as ``hot swap'' -- is common. To establish such ``hot swap'' method for the software system, as well as the way to divide whole system into basic modules / to re-organize them are discussed. On facilities available in traditional UNIX type operating system, such as dynamic linking or process management, prototype routines are prepared. The feasibility of a testbed which employs a version manager included in a simple example application is shown.

3. Leo Nagamatsu., Runtime Software Reorganization by Traditional OS Features. In Proc. of International Symposium on Principle of Software Evolution (ISPSE2000) editor: T.Katayama, T.Tamai and N.Yonezaki, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 311--315, Nov. 2000.

   With the increased complexity of software and requirement to non-stop feature of services, it's important to establish an effective method for on-line or runtime program updating. In this paper, the possibility of runtime / on-line modification of a working program under some restrictive assumptions are shown. Even with such limitations, the basic idea is effective, we demonstrated it by constructing examples on a simple user application -- replace a sub-function by dynamic linking / unlinking, and process divide and merge procedure while keeping outside interfaces or connected channels.

4. A. He, Z. Cheng, T. Huang, R. Nakatani, Y. Amadatsu, A. Koyama, Y. Zhao, and S. Noguchi. Design of Real-Time Interactive Tele-exercise Classroom for Computer Exercises over a Gigabit Network. ICOIN'01, pp. 757-763, 2001.

5. Z. Cheng, A. He, T. Huang, A. Koyama, S. Noguchi, N. Honda, Y. Shibata, and N. Shiratori., An Overview of an Interactive and Personalized Multimedia Tele-Education Environment over a Gigabit Network. IS2000, pp. 567-571, 2000.

6. Z. Cheng, Y. Wada, S. Hashimoto, A. He, and T. Huang., A New Method for Constructing Efficient Local Coteries. ICOIN'01, pp. 512-517, 2001.

7. Aiguo He, Zixue Cheng, Tongjun Huang, Ryohei Nakatani, Yuichi Amadatsu, Akio Koyama, Yue Zhao, and Shoichi Noguchi., Design of a Tele-Exercises Classroom for Computer Exercises over the Gigabit Network. IS2000, pp. 572-575, 2000.

8. Aiguo He, Zixue Cheng, Tongjun Huang, Ryohei Nakatani, Yuichi Amadatsu, Akio Koyama, Yue Zhao, and Shoichi Noguchi., Design of Distance Education System for Computer Exercises over a Gigabit Network. The 8th workshop on Multimedia Communication and Distributed Processing, pp. 13-18, 2000.

Unrefereed Papers

1. Leo Nagamatsu and Takeshi Hoshino., Measuring Behavior of Program Execution Time effected by Installed Cache Size and Accessed Memory Range --- Speedup by Dynamic Code Rewriting and High-resolution Timing Measurement. Proc. of 8th Workshop on High Performance Computing and Arch itecture Evaluation at Hokkaido (HOKKE-2001), vol. ARC-142 / HPC-85, pp. 97--102, SIG on Computer Architecture / SIG on High Performance Computing / SIG on System Evaluation, Information Society of Japan, March 2001.

   On estimating system configuration parameters such as cache size, from program execution time, it is known to use scalability behavior of program executions on various access ranges of the memory. In this paper, we propose a method to reduce cycle of such measuring by dynamic code rewriting and high (nano-second) resolution timing measurement. By this scheme, the measurement speed becomes about 90 times faster than previous one, and reduces the fluctuation of experiment results caused by other system activities.

Academic Activities

1. Leo Nagamatsu., Research Group on Center Information Systems of National/Public Universities. Member of Editorial Board for Trans. on Information System Environment for Universities, 2000.

2. Leo Nagamatsu., Research Group on Center Information Systems of National/Public Universities. Local Chair of KANTO Region Meetings, 2000.

3. Leo Nagamatsu., Information Society of Japan, SIG on Distributed System and Internet Administration. Member of Administrative Committee, 2000.

Others

1. Hideo Tashiro., Graduation Thesis: Simulation Study of Dialup IP Ports Usage for Balanced Resource Management. Univ. of Aizu, July 2000. Thesis Advisor: L. Nagamatsu.

2. Yukinori Nakata., Graduation Thesis: A Method to Replace Part of Executing Program using Dynamic Linking. Univ. of Aizu, July 2000. Thesis Advisor: L. Nagamatsu.

3. Jun'ya Koizumi., Graduation Thesis: A Performance Evaluation Method of Classroom NFS with Finely Synchronized Access Burst. Univ. of Aizu, Feb. 2001. Thesis Advisor: L. Nagamatsu.

4. Seikou Oohashi., Graduation Thesis: A Method to Increase Request Acceptable Periods of Dialup IP Ports by Disconnecting Inactive Sessions. Univ. of Aizu, Feb. 2001. Thesis Advisor: L. Nagamatsu.

5. Mitsuhiko Takasaka., Graduation Thesis: Estimation of Request Occurrence for Dialup IP Port Connection in Peak Time. Univ. of Aizu, Feb. 2001. Thesis Advisor: L. Nagamatsu.