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The article deals with the problem of a distributed system operation reliability. The system core is an open integration platform that provides interaction of varied software for modeling gas transportation. Some of them provide an access through thin clients on the cloud technology “software as a service”. Mathematical models of operation, transmission and computing are to ensure the operation of an automated dispatching system for oil and gas transportation. The paper presents a system solution based on the theory of Markov random processes and considers the stable operation stage. The stationary operation mode of the Markov chain with continuous time and discrete states is described by a system of Chapman–Kolmogorov equations with respect to the average numbers (mathematical expectations) of the objects in certain states. The objects of research are both system elements that are present in a large number – thin clients and computing modules, and individual ones – a server, a network manager (message broker). Together, they are interacting Markov random processes. The interaction is determined by the fact that the transition probabilities in one group of elements depend on the average numbers of other elements groups.

The authors propose a multi-criteria dispersion model of risk assessment for such systems (both in the broad and narrow sense, in accordance with the IEC standard). The risk is the standard deviation of estimated object parameter from its average value. The dispersion risk model makes possible to define optimality criteria and whole system functioning risks. In particular, for a thin client, the following is calculated: the loss profit risk, the total risk of losses due to non-productive element states, and the total risk of all system states losses.

Finally the paper proposes compromise schemes for solving the multi-criteria problem of choosing the optimal operation strategy based on the selected set of compromise criteria.

Cloud technologies are already wide spread among IT industry and start to gain popularity in academic field. There are several fundamental cloud models: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). The article describes the cloud infrastructure deployed at the Laboratory of Information Technologies of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (LIT JINR). It explains the goals of the cloud infrastructure creation, specifics of the implementation, its utilization, current work and plans for development.

This work analyzes the problem of traffic signs recognition in intelligent transport systems. The basic concepts of computer vision and image recognition tasks are considered. The most effective approach for solving the problem of analyzing and recognizing images now is the neural network method. Among all kinds of neural networks, the convolutional neural network has proven itself best. Activation functions such as Relu and SoftMax are used to solve the classification problem when recognizing traffic signs. This article proposes a technology for recognizing traffic signs. The choice of an approach for solving the problem based on a convolutional neural network due to the ability to effectively solve the problem of identifying essential features and classification. The initial data for the neural network model were prepared and a training sample was formed. The Google Colaboratory cloud service with the external libraries for deep learning TensorFlow and Keras was used as a platform for the intelligent system development. The convolutional part of the network is designed to highlight characteristic features in the image. The first layer includes 512 neurons with the Relu activation function. Then there is the Dropout layer, which is used to reduce the effect of overfitting the network. The output fully connected layer includes four neurons, which corresponds to the problem of recognizing four types of traffic signs. An intelligent traffic sign recognition system has been developed and tested. The used convolutional neural network included four stages of convolution and subsampling. Evaluation of the efficiency of the traffic sign recognition system using the three-block cross-validation method showed that the error of the neural network model is minimal, therefore, in most cases, new images will be recognized correctly. In addition, the model has no errors of the first kind, and the error of the second kind has a low value and only when the input image is very noisy.

One of the important direction of cloud technologies development nowadays is a creation of methods for integration of various cloud infrastructures. An actuality of such direction in academic field is caused by a frequent lack of own computing resources and a necessity to attract additional ones. This article is dedicated to existing approaches to cloud infrastructures integration with each other: federations and so called ‘cloud bursting’. A ‘federation’ in terms of OpenNebula cloud platform is built on a ‘one master zone and several slave ones’ schema. A term ‘zone’ means a separate cloud infrastructure in the federation. All zones in such kind of integration have a common database of users and the whole federation is managed via master zone only. Such approach is most suitable for a case when cloud infrastructures of geographically distributed branches of a single organization need to be integrated. But due to its high centralization it's not appropriate when one needs to join cloud infrastructures of different organizations. Moreover it's not acceptable at all in case of clouds based on different software platforms. A model of federative integration implemented in EGI Federated Cloud allows to connect clouds based on different software platforms but it requires a deployment of sufficient amount of additional services which are specific for EGI Federated Cloud only. It makes such approach is one-purpose and uncommon one. A ‘cloud bursting’ model has no limitations listed above but in case of OpenNebula platform what the Laboratory of Information Technologies of Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (LIT JINR) cloud infrastructure is based on such model was implemented for an integration with a certain set of commercial cloud resources providers. Taking into account an article authors’ experience in joining clouds of organizations they represent as well as with EGI Federation Cloud a ‘cloud bursting’ driver was developed by LIT JINR cloud team for OpenNebula-based clouds integration with each other as well as with OpenStack-based ones. The driver's architecture, technologies and protocols it relies on and an experience of its usage are described in the article.

Now days the main research activity in the field of nanotechnology is aimed at the creation, study and application of new materials and new structures. Recently, much attention has been attracted by the possibility of controlling magnetic properties using a superconducting current, as well as the influence of magnetic dynamics on the current–voltage characteristics of hybrid superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) nanostructures. In particular, such structures include the S/F/S Josephson junction or molecular nanomagnets coupled to the Josephson junctions. Theoretical studies of the dynamics of such structures need processes of a large number of coupled nonlinear equations. Numerical modeling of hybrid superconductor/magnet nanostructures implies the calculation of both magnetic dynamics and the dynamics of the superconducting phase, which strongly increases their complexity and scale, so it is advisable to use heterogeneous computing systems.

In the course of studying the physical properties of these objects, it becomes necessary to numerically solve complex systems of nonlinear differential equations, which requires significant time and computational resources.

The currently existing micromagnetic algorithms and frameworks are based on the finite difference or finite element method and are extremely useful for modeling the dynamics of magnetization on a wide time scale. However, the functionality of existing packages does not allow to fully implement the desired computation scheme.

The aim of the research is to develop a unified environment for modeling hybrid superconductor/magnet nanostructures, providing access to solvers and developed algorithms, and based on a heterogeneous computing paradigm that allows research of superconducting elements in nanoscale structures with magnets and hybrid quantum materials. In this paper, we investigate resonant phenomena in the nanomagnet system associated with the Josephson junction. Such a system has rich resonant physics. To study the possibility of magnetic reversal depending on the model parameters, it is necessary to solve numerically the Cauchy problem for a system of nonlinear equations. For numerical simulation of hybrid superconductor/magnet nanostructures, a computing environment based on the heterogeneous HybriLIT computing platform is implemented. During the calculations, all the calculation times obtained were averaged over three launches. The results obtained here are of great practical importance and provide the necessary information for evaluating the physical parameters in superconductor/magnet hybrid nanostructures.

The use of service-oriented approach in scientific domains can increase research productivity by enabling sharing, publication and reuse of computing applications, as well as automation of scientific workflows. Everest is a cloud platform that enables researchers with minimal skills to publish and use scientific applications as services. In contrast to existing solutions, Everest executes applications on external resources attached by users, implements flexible binding of resources to applications and supports programmatic access to the platform's functionality. The paper presents current state of the platform, recent developments and remaining challenges.

Parameter sweep applications are a very important class of applications, which are typically defined as a set of computational experiments over a set of input parameters, each of which is executed with its own parameter combination. These computations arise in many scientific contexts. This article introduces the Parameter Sweep web service that runs such applications in distributed computing environment. Also discussed is the Everest cloud platform, on which this service is built.