Abstract: "Speculative execution of code is becoming a key technique for enhancing the performance of pipeline processors. In this work we study schemes that predict the execution path of a program based on the history of branch executions. Building on previous work, we present a model for analyzing the effective speedup from pipelining using various schemes for speculative execution. We follow this with stochastic analyses of various speculative execution schemes. Finally, we conclude with simulations covering several of the settings we study."

Abstract: "For a video-on-demand computer system we propose a scheme which balances the load on the disks, thereby helping to solve a performance problem crucial to achieving maximal video throughput. Our laod balancing scheme consists of two stages. The static stage determines good assignments of videos to groups of striped disks. The dynamic phase uses these assignments, and features a DASD dancing algorithm which performs real-time disk scheduling in an effective manner. Our scheme works synergistically with disk striping. We examine the performance of the DASD dancing algorithm via simulation experiments."