Profit based unit commitment: A parallel ABC approach using a workstation cluster

The interactive visual simulation is the integration of real-time computer graphics with multimodalities, such as acoustic display and force feedback, to create a realistic simulation scenario to the user. This paper presents a method to design an interactive visual simulation on a cluster of desktop computers for the mobile crane training. This mobile crane training simulation is a project sponsored by Employment and Vocational Training Administration, Council of Labor Affair, Executive Yuan, Taiwan, to build a low-cost yet effective vehicle for training and licensing. To achieve this goal, a set of locally networked PCs is employed to form a parallel computing environment for the mobile crane simulation.The most important issue of developing a high-fidelity interactive visual simulator is its integration system for communication and monitoring among functional modules. This paper presents a peer-to-peer architecture on a cluster of PCs to develop the required integration system for the mobile crane simulator. In addition, the developed integration system uses the push-and-pull model to seamlessly communicate the messages among distributed functional modules. This push-and-pull model effectively achieves the parallelism among the distributed functional modules of a mobile crane simulator. With the push-and-pull model on the peer-to-peer architecture, we can easily achieve the modularity and reusability of the functional modules of the simulating system. The presented push-and-pull model satisfies four essential attributes for the parallel computing, which are concurrency, scalability, locality and modularity. Our experience also successfully verifies the effectiveness of the presented simulator with the system response rate of 16 times per second which is larger than human acceptable perception rate as suggested by the human factors studies.

Modelling and designing a low-cost high-fidelity mobile crane simulator

This paper proposes security constrained economic power dispatch (SCED) of the generators using parallel artificial bee colony (PABC) algorithm for electricity markets. The proposed non-linear optimization problem considers simultaneous minimization of deviations from scheduled transactions and minimization of fuel cost of the generators. The problem is formulated as a constrained optimization problem in a way that insures a secure-economic system operation. Incorporation of economic load dispatch (ELD) with voltages and lineflow constraints significantly relieves the assumptions imposed on the optimized objective function. The proposed approach has been tested on two representative systems, i.e. IEEE 14 bus and IEEE 30 bus systems respectively. Here, the message passing interface based technique is used in the PABC algorithm in a shared memory model. The time complexity and the solution quality with respect to the number of processors in a cluster are thoroughly analyzed.

A parallel ABC for security constrained economic dispatch using shared memory model

The mobile crane simulator is a project sponsored by Employment and Vocational Training Administration, Council of Labor Affair, Executive Yuan, Taiwan, to build a safe device for training and licensing. This paper presents the principle and mechanism to build a high-fidelity interactive visual simulator on a cluster of PCs. The implemented mobile crane simulator uses the peer-to-peer architecture with the push and pull mechanism to achieve the parallelism among distributed tasks. A distributive simulation socket, called Communication Backbone(CB), is adopted to integrate the functional tasks of the mobile crane simulator in a PC clustering environment. With CB, tasks of the simulated mobile crane are executed as standalone applications and seamlessly communicate with each other through CB. Finally, the system response rate of the implemented mobile crane simulator achieves 16 times per second which is larger than human acceptable perception rate as suggested by the human factors studies.

A PC Cluster High-Fidelity Mobile Crane Simulator

The development of cost-effective highperformance parallel computing on multi-processor supercomputers makes it attractive to port excessively time consuming simulation software from personal computers (PC) to super computes. The power distribution system simulator (PDSS) takes a bottom-up approach and simulates load at the appliance level, where detailed thermal models for appliances are used. This approach works well for a small power distribution system consisting of a few thousand appliances. When the number of appliances increases, the simulation uses up the PC memory and its runtime increases to a point where the approach is no longer feasible to model a practical large power distribution system. This paper presents an effort made to port a PC-based power distribution system simulator to a 128-processor shared-memory supercomputer. The paper offers an overview of the parallel computing environment and a description of the modification made to the PDSS model. The performance of the PDSS running on a standalone PC and on the supercomputer is compared. Future research direction of utilizing parallel computing in the power distribution system simulation is also addressed.

Parallel Computing Environments and Methods for Power Distribution System Simulation

Recent advances in high-speed networks, rapid improvements in microprocessor design, and availability of highly performing clustering software implementations enables cost-effective high-performance parallel computing on clustered low cost workstations and PCs. Such clusters are very attractive because they rely on availability of the shelf hardware and software technologies. To simplify programming in network environments and to realise component-based software architectures, many models have emerged as possible standards, namely, RPC: Remote Procedure Call, DCE: Distributed Computing Environment, DCOM: Distributed Component Object Model, CORBA: Common Object Request Broker Architecture, PVM: Parallel Virtual Machine and MPI: Message Passing Interface. The MPI approach is considered one of the most mature methods currently used in parallel programming. MPI implementations an emerging cluster interconnects are an important requirement for useful parallel processing on cost-effective computer clusters. This paper offers art overview of different parallel computing environments and models. Functionality and performance of MPI running on homogeneous and heterogeneous workstation clusters are compared. The project goals, laboratory environment, performance measurements, future work, and a conclusion are presented.

G. Fadlallah

Papers

Parallel computing environments and methods