Research Group “High Performance and Dependable Computing Systems”

Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica

Via Ariosto 25

I-00185 Roma, Italy

Research Group

The Research Group "High Performance and Dependable Computing Systems (HPDCS)", Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Spaienza Universita’ di Roma , was founded and is being led by Bruno Ciciani and by Prof. Francesco Quaglia, both founders of IRIANC. The research activities of the group are in the areas of

- Parallel and Distributed Computing Platforms

- Multi-tier Architectures

- Transactional Systems

- Virtualization and Cloud Computing

- Performability Models

The HPDCS research group is focused o differentiated aspects of computing and service oriented applications and  platforms, spanning from theory to modeling, design and implementation. In such contexts, relevant results have been achieved in the definition of frameworks and protocols for dependability in large scale infrastructures,  with particular attention to application contexts entailing manipulation of data within (atomic) distributed transactions, in the design and  implementation of high performace computing platforms, with particular interest to  simulation platforms conforming to both proprietary and standardized  protocol stacks, in the definition and validation of accurate performance and dependability models for components/sub-systems forming the core of the aforementioned differentiated computing environments.

Research Projects

The HPDCS group actively participates in several international and national research projects, ranging from basic research to application-oriented projects and direct cooperation with industry.

Examples of research projects the group currently participates in are:

- ARISTOS (Autonomic ReplicatIon of Software TransactiOnal memories), Bilateral Project (PTDC), INESC-ID (Lisbona, Portugal) - DIS (Roma, Italy)

- INSYEME (INtegrates SYstem for EMErgencies) Funded by MIUR-FIRB

- Transparent Optimistic Synchronization for HLA-Compliant Distributed Applications, Funded by Sapienza UNIVERSITA'

- Reliability Protocols for Transactional Applications in Large Scale Infrastructures, funded by Sapienza ATENEO.

Group Co-Leader

Francesco Quaglia received the Laurea degree (MS level) in Electronic Engineering in 1995 and the PhD degree in Computer Engineering in 1999 from the University of Rome "La Sapienza". From summer 1999 to summer 2000 he held an appointment as a Researcher at the Italian National Research Council (CNR), working on a project on advanced synchronization techniques for high performance parallel/distributed simulation systems. Since January 2005 he works as an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering of the University of Rome ``La Sapienza", where he has previously worked as an Assistant Professor since September 2000 to December 2004. His research interests span from theoretical to practical aspects concerning distributed systems and applications, distributed protocols, middleware platforms, parallel discrete event simulation, federated simulation systems, parallel computing applications, fault-tolerant programming, transactional systems, Web-based systems and performance evaluation of software/hardware systems. Within these areas he has published more than 80 papers in prestigious Journals and Conferences. He is an active member in the international research community, serving as a referee for several international conferences and journals. He regularly serves as Program Committee Member for well known international conferences, such as the Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS), the Symposium on Distributed imulation and Real-Time Applications (DS-RT), the Annual Simulation Symposium (ANSS), and the Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA). He has also served as Program Co-Chair of ACM PADS 2002 and ACM PADS 2010, as Program Co-Chair of IEEE NCA 2007, and as General Chair ACM PADS 2008. Since 2004, he is an Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling (IJSPM). For this same journal he has served as Guest Editor of a special issue devoted to parallel and distributed simulation.

Selected Recent Publications

 Paolo Romano and F. Quaglia,
Providing e-Transaction Guarantees in Asynchronous Systems with no Assumptions on the Accuracy of Failure Detection
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, to appear.

 F. Quaglia,
On the Construction of Committed Consistent Global States in Optimistic Simulation,
International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling (Position Paper), to appear.

 P. Romano, B. Ciciani, A. Santoro and F. Quaglia,
Accuracy vs Efficiency of Hyper-exponential Approximations of the Response Time Distribution of MMPP/M/1 Queues,
International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems, vol.24, issue 2, pp.107-125, 2009.

 F. Quaglia,
Software Diversity-Based Active Replication as an Approach for Enhancing the Performance of Advanced Simulation Systems,
International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, vol.18, no.3, pp.495-515, 2007.

 A. Santoro and F. Quaglia,
Multiprogrammed Non-blocking Checkpoints in Support of Optimistic Simulation on Myrinet Clusters,
Journal of Systems Architecture, vol.53, no.9, pp.659-676, 2007.

 F. Quaglia and P. Romano,
Ensuring e-Transaction with Asynchronous and Uncoordinated Application Server Replicas,
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol.18, no.3, pp.364-378, 2007.

 M. Pedicini and F. Quaglia,
PELCR: Parallel Environment for Optimal Lambda-Calculus Reduction,
ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, vol.8., no.3, Article 14 (pp.1-36), 2007.

 A.Santoro and F.Quaglia,
Transparent State Management for Optimistic Synchronization in the High Level Architecture (extended version),
SIMULATION: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International (Special Issue on Selected Papers from PADS 2005), vol.82, no.1, pp.5-20, 2006.

 A. Santoro and F. Quaglia,
Software Supports for Event Preemptive Rollback in Optimistic Parallel Simulation on Myrinet Clusters,
Journal of Interconnection Networks, vol.6, no.4, pp.435-458, 2005.

 P. Romano, F. Quaglia and B. Ciciani,
A Lightweight and Scalable e-Transaction Protocol for Three-Tier Systems with Centralized Back-End Database,
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol.17, no.11, pp.1578-1583, 2005.