A. H. Bell-Thomas | Searcharxiv

arXiv2020

Interprocess Communication in FreeBSD 11: Performance Analysis

Interprocess communication, IPC, is one of the most fundamental functions of a modern operating system, playing an essential role in the fabric of contemporary applications. This report conducts an investigation in FreeBSD of the real world performance considerations behind two of the most common IPC mechanisms; pipes and sockets. A simple benchmark provides a fair sense of effective bandwidth for each, and analysis using DTrace, hardware performance counters and the operating system's source code is presented. We note that pipes outperform sockets by 63% on average across all configurations, and further that the size of userspace transmission buffers has a profound effect on performance - larger buffers are beneficial up to a point (~32-64 KiB) after which performance collapses as a result of devastating cache exhaustion. A deep scrutiny of the probe effects at play is also presented, justifying the validity of conclusions drawn from these experiments.

cs.OS↗

arXiv2020

Exploring Variational Deep Q Networks

This study provides both analysis and a refined, research-ready implementation of Tang and Kucukelbir's Variational Deep Q Network, a novel approach to maximising the efficiency of exploration in complex learning environments using Variational Bayesian Inference. Alongside reference implementations of both Traditional and Double Deep Q Networks, a small novel contribution is presented - the Double Variational Deep Q Network, which incorporates improvements to increase the stability and robustness of inference-based learning. Finally, an evaluation and discussion of the effectiveness of these approaches is discussed in the wider context of Bayesian Deep Learning.

cs.LG↗