The purpose of this project is to explore the GPU for general purpose computing. The GPU is a massively parallel computing device that has a high-throughput, exhibits high arithmetic intensity, has a large market presence, and with the increasing computation power being added to it each year through innovations, the GPU is a perfect candidate to complement the CPU in performing computations. The GPU follows the single instruction multiple data (SIMD) model for applying operations on its data. This model allows the GPU to be very useful for assisting the CPU in performing computations on data that is highly parallel in nature. The compute unified device architecture (CUDA) is a parallel computing and programming platform for NVIDIA GPUs. The main focus of this project is to show the power, speed, and performance of a CUDA-enabled GPU for digital video watermark insertion in the H.264 video compression domain. Digital video watermarking in general is a highly computationally intensive process that is strongly dependent on the video compression format in place. The H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression format has high compression efficiency at the expense of having high computational complexity and leaving little room for an imperceptible watermark to be inserted. Employing a …

Security is a primary concern in this era of pervasive computing. Hardware based security mechanisms facilitate the construction of trustworthy secure systems; however, existing hardware security approaches require modifications to the micro-architecture of the processor and such changes are extremely time consuming and expensive to test and implement. Additionally, they incorporate cryptographic security mechanisms that are computationally intensive and account for excessive energy consumption, which significantly degrades the performance of the system. In this dissertation, I explore the domain of hardware based security approaches with an objective to overcome the issues that impede their usability. I have proposed viable solutions to successfully test and implement hardware security mechanisms in real world computing systems. Moreover, with an emphasis on cryptographic memory integrity verification technique and embedded systems as the target application, I have presented energy efficient architectures that considerably reduce the energy consumption of the security mechanisms, thereby improving the performance of the system. The detailed simulation results show that the average energy savings are in the range of 36% to 99% during the memory integrity verification phase, whereas the total power savings of the entire embedded processor are approximately 57%.

Epidemiologists engage in the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in human populations. Eventually, they will apply that study to prevent and control problems and contingencies associated with the health of the population. Due to the spread of new pathogens and the emergence of new bio-terrorism threats, it has become imperative to develop new and expand existing techniques to equip public health providers with robust tools to predict and control health-related crises. In this dissertation, I explore the effects caused in the disease dynamics by the differences in individuals’ physiology and social/behavioral characteristics. Multiple computational and mathematical models were developed to quantify the effect of those factors on spatial and temporal variations of the disease epidemics. I developed statistical methods to measure the effects caused in the outbreak dynamics by the incorporation of heterogeneous demographics and social interactions to the individuals of the population. Specifically, I studied the relationship between demographics and the physiological characteristics of an individual when preparing for an infectious disease epidemic.

Video game players demand a volume of content far in excess of the ability of game designers to create it. For example, a single quest might take a week to develop and test, which means that companies such as Blizzard are spending millions of dollars each month on new content for their games. As a result, both players and developers are frustrated with the inability to meet the demand for new content. By generating content on-demand, it is possible to create custom content for each player based on player preferences. It is also possible to make use of the current world state during generation, something which cannot be done with current techniques. Using developers to create rules and assets for a content generator instead of creating content directly will lower development costs as well as reduce the development time for new game content to seconds rather than days. This work is part of the field of computational creativity, and involves the use of computers to create aesthetically pleasing game content, such as terrain, characters, and quests. I demonstrate agent-based terrain generation, and economic modeling of game spaces. I also demonstrate the autonomous generation of quests for online role playing games, …

Mitigation response plans must be created to protect affected populations during biological emergencies resulting from the release of harmful biochemical substances. Medical countermeasures have been stockpiled by the federal government for such emergencies. However, it is the responsibility of local governments to maintain solid, functional plans to apply these countermeasures to the entire target population within short, mandated time frames. Further, vulnerabilities in the population may serve as barriers preventing certain individuals from participating in mitigation activities. Therefore, functional response plans must be capable of reaching vulnerable populations.Transportation vulnerability results from lack of access to transportation. Transportation vulnerable populations located too far from mitigation resources are at-risk of not being able to participate in mitigation activities. Quantification of these populations requires the development of computational methods to integrate spatial demographic data and transportation resource data from disparate sources into the context of planned mitigation efforts. Research described in this dissertation focuses on quantifying transportation vulnerable populations and maximizing participation in response efforts. Algorithms developed as part of this research are integrated into a computational framework to promote a transition from research and development to deployment and use by biological emergency planners.