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Publications

Publications by Fernando Silva

1994

Scheduling Algorithms Performance with the pSystem Parallel Programming Environment

Authors
Lopes, LMB; Silva, FMA;

Publication
PARLE '94: Parallel Architectures and Languages Europe, 6th International PARLE Conference, Athens, Greece, July 4-8, 1994, Proceedings

Abstract
The efficiency of scheduling algorithms is essential in order to attain optimal performances from parallel programming systems. In this paper we use a portable parallel programming environment we have implemented, the pSystem, to evaluate and compare the performance of various scheduling algorithms on shared memory parallel machines. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1994.

2011

A Parallel Algorithm for Counting Subgraphs in Complex Networks

Authors
Ribeiro, P; Silva, F; Lopes, L;

Publication
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract
Many natural and artificial structures can be represented as complex networks. Computing the frequency of all subgraphs of a certain size can give a very comprehensive structural characterization of these networks. This is known as the subgraph census problem, and it is also important as an intermediate step in the computation of other features of the network, such as network motifs. The subgraph census problem is computationally hard and most associated algorithms for it are sequential. Here we present several increasingly efficient parallel strategies for, culminating in a scalable and adaptive parallel algorithm. We applied our strategies to a representative set of biological networks and achieved almost linear speedups up to 128 processors, paving the way for making it possible to compute the census for bigger networks and larger subgraph sizes.

2012

Comparison of co-authorship networks across scientific fields using motifs

Authors
Choobdar, S; Ribeiro, P; Bugla, S; Silva, F;

Publication
2012 IEEE/ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ADVANCES IN SOCIAL NETWORKS ANALYSIS AND MINING (ASONAM)

Abstract
Comparing scientific production across different fields of knowledge is commonly controversial and subject to disagreement. Such comparisons are often based on quantitative indicators, such as papers per researcher, and data normalization is very difficult to accomplish. Different approaches can provide new insight and in this paper we focus on the comparison of different scientific fields based on their research collaboration networks. We use co-authorship networks where nodes are researchers and the edges show the existing co-authorship relations between them. Our comparison methodology is based on network motifs, which are over represented patterns, or subgraphs. We derive motif fingerprints for 22 scientific fields based on 29 different small motifs found in the corresponding co-authorship networks. These fingerprints provide a metric for assessing similarity among scientific fields, and our analysis shows that the discrimination power of the 29 motif types is not identical. We use a co-authorship dataset built from over 15,361 publications inducing a co-authorship network with over 32,842 researchers. Our results also show that we can group different fields according to their fingerprints, supporting the notion that some fields present higher similarity and can be more easily compared.

2006

A pipelined data-parallel algorithm for ILP

Authors
Fonseca, NA; Silva, F; Costa, VS; Camacho, R;

Publication
2005 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLUSTER COMPUTING (CLUSTER)

Abstract
The amount of data collected and stored in databases is growing considerably for almost all areas of human activity. Processing this amount of data is very expensive, both humanly and computationally. This justifies the increased interest both on the automatic discovery of useful knowledge from databases, and on using parallel processing for this task. Multi Relational Data Mining (MRDM) techniques, such as Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), can learn rules from relational databases consisting of multiple tables. However current ILP systems are designed to run in main memory and can have long running times. We propose a pipelined data-parallel algorithm for ILP. The algorithm was implemented and evaluated on a commodity PC cluster with 8 processors. The results show that our algorithm yields excellent speedups, while preserving the quality of learning.

2010

PARALLEL CALCULATION OF SUBGRAPH CENSUS IN BIOLOGICAL NETWORKS

Authors
Ribeiro, P; Silva, F; Lopes, L;

Publication
BIONFORMATICS 2010: PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BIOINFORMATICS

Abstract
Mining meaningful data from complex biological networks is a critical task in many areas of research. One important example is calculating the frequency of all subgraphs of a certain size, also known as the sub graph census problem. This can provide a very comprehensive structural characterization of a network and is also used as an intermediate step in the computation of network motifs, an important basic building block of networks, that try to bridge the gap between structure and function. The subgraph census problem is com-putationally hard and here we present several parallel strategies to solve this problem. Our initial strategies were refined towards achieving an efficient and scalable adaptive parallel algorithm. This algorithm achieves almost linear speedups up to 128 cores when applied to a representative set of biological networks from different domains and makes the calculation of census for larger subgraph sizes feasible.

2012

A design and implementation of the Extended Andorra Model

Authors
Lopes, R; Costa, VS; Silva, F;

Publication
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF LOGIC PROGRAMMING

Abstract
Logic programming provides a high-level view of programming, giving implementers a vast latitude into what techniques to explore to achieve the best performance for logic programs. Towards obtaining maximum performance, one of the holy grails of logic programming has been to design computational models that could be executed efficiently and that would allow both for a reduction of the search space and for exploiting all the available parallelism in the application. These goals have motivated the design of the Extended Andorra Model (EAM), a model where goals that do not constrain nondeterministic goals can execute first. In this work, we present and evaluate the Basic design for EAM, a system that builds upon David H. D. Warren's original EAM with Implicit Control. We provide a complete description and implementation of the Basic design for EAM System as a set of rewrite and control rules. We present the major data structures and execution algorithms that are required for efficient execution, and evaluate system performance. A detailed performance study of our system is included. Our results show that the system achieves acceptable base performance and that a number of applications benefit from the advanced search inherent to the EAM.

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