Nicola Mazzocca

FPGA-Based Implementation of a Serial RSA Processor

In this paper we present an hardware implementation of the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography. The RSA algorithm consists in the computation of modular exponentials on large integers, that can be reduced to repeated modular multiplications. We present a serial implementation of RSA, which is based upon an optimized version of the RSA algorithm originally proposed by P.L. Montgomery (1985). The proposed architecture is innovative, and it widely exploits specific capabilities of Xilinx programmable devices. As compared to other solutions in the literature, the proposed implementation of the RSA processor has smaller area occupation and comparable performance. The final performance level is a function of the serialization factor We provide a thorough discussion of design tradeoffs, in terms of area requirements vs performance, for different values of the key length and of the serialization factor.

Automatic Analysis of Control Flow inWeb Services Composition Processes

Composition of Web services is of great interest to support business-to-business collaboration and provide value added services with desired properties or capabilities. Nevertheless, the standard languages used to create business processes from composite Web services lack of formal definition of their semantics and tools to support the analysis of a business process. In this paper we provide a practical approach to formal verification of BPEL4WS executable processes. A syntax-driven operational semantics for BPEL4WS is introduced and an automatic verifier is presented in order to perform a semantic analysis of the flow constructs used in the definition of BPEL4WS processes

Terminal-aware grid resource and service discovery and access based on agents technology

Mobile agents can provide a suitable framework for supporting resource and service discovery in grid platforms, and can support optimal access and interaction with the user through heterogeneous terminals, differing in terms of memory capacity, computational resources, display characteristics, allowed connection mode, etc. We deal with the utilization of Web services technology to discover and optimally access mobile grid resources and services, within a mobile agent based grid architecture (MAGDA) we have designed and have been implementing. Web services paradigm and SIP and UDDI technologies are utilized to implement a resource discovery service that allow users and mobile agents to look for and access distributed resources and applications, through heterogeneous terminals, by dynamically configuring the interaction session and service functionalities based on characteristic of the terminal and QoS of the interconnection.

A tamper resistant hardware accelerator for RSA cryptographic applications

This paper presents an hardware accelerator which can effectively improve the security and the performance of virtually any RSA cryptographic application. The accelerator integrates two crucial security- and performanceenhancing facilities: an RSA processor and an RSA key-store. An RSA processor is a dedicated hardware block which executes the RSA algorithm. An RSA key-store is a dedicated device for securely storing RSA key-pairs. We chose RSA since it is by far the most widely adopted standard in public key cryptography. We describe the main functional blocks of the hardware accelerator and their interactions, and comment architectural solutions we adopted for maximizing security and performance while minimizing the cost in terms of hardware resources. We then present an FPGA-based implementation of the proposed architecture, which relies on a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) programmable hardware board. Finally, we evaluate the system in terms of performance and chip area occupation, and comment the design trade-offs resulting from different levels of parallelism.

Web Services Composition and Delivery Using a Mobile Agents Based Infrastructure

The integration of Web services and software agents brings new opportunities and helps in defining new kinds of services too. A very interesting approach comes from the adoption of mobile agents to design and develop a service oriented architecture that supports the access to distributed services by heterogeneous handheld devices. This paper describes the functional model and the architecture design of a platform for services composition and delivery. Mobile agents are able to access and compose services accessing them by standard interfaces. User authentication, service discovery and publication, personalization are other provided facilities. Technological interoperability is provided by Web services technology. Code mobility is exploited to reconfigure the server platform moving agents to the available nodes, or to reconfigure the user devices providing it with the needed client software

MAGDA: a software environment for mobile agent based distributed applications

The mobile agents model has the potential to provide a flexible framework to face the challenges of high performance computing, especially when targeted towards heterogeneous distributed architectures. We developed a framework for supporting programming and execution of mobile agent based distributed applications, the MAGDA (Mobile Agents Distributed Applications) toolset. It supplements mobile agent technology with a set of features for supporting parallel programming on a dynamic heterogeneous distributed environment.

A Service-Based Architecture for the Interoperability of Heterogeneous Sensor data: A Case Study on Early Warning

One of the main open issues in the development of applications for sensor network management is the definition of interoperability mechanisms among the several monitoring systems and heterogeneous data. Interesting researches related to integration techniques have taken place; they are primary based on the adoption of sharing data mechanisms; furthermore in the last years, the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach has become predominant in many sensor networks projects as it enables the cooperation and interoperability of different sensor platforms at a higher abstraction level.

A skeleton based programming paradigm for mobile multi-agents on distributed systems and its realization within the MAGDA Mobile Agents platform

Parallel programming effort can be reduced by using high level constructs such as algorithmic skeletons. Within the MAGDA toolset, supporting programming and execution of mobile agent based distributed applications, we provide a skeleton-based parallel programming environment, based on specialization of Algorithmic Skeleton Java interfaces and classes. Their implementation include mobile agent features for execution on heterogeneous systems, such as clusters of WSs and PCs, and support reliability and dynamic workload balancing. The user can thus develop a parallel, mobile agent based application by simply specialising a given set of classes and methods and using a set of added functionalities.

A resource discovery service for a mobile agents based Grid infrastructure

Mobile agents can provide a suitable framework for supporting resource and service discovery in computational grids. In this paper we deal with the utilization of Web services technology to discover Mobile Grid resources and services, within a Mobile Agent based GriD Architecture (MAGDA) we have designed and have been implementing. Web services paradigm and SIP and UDDI technologies are utilized to realize a resource discovery service that allow users and mobile agents to look for and access distributed resources and applications.

Performance modeling of scientific applications: scalability analysis of LAPW0

This paper presents a high-level approach for assessing the performance behavior of complex scientific applications running on a high-performance system through simulation. The proposed methodology relies on high-level descriptions of both application and system. The application is described in MetaPL, an XML-based description language, and the system is modeled and simulated by using HeSSE, an extensible distributed heterogeneous system (DHS) simulator. This modeling technique is applied to the performance analysis of a real-world scientific application (LAPWO), running on a cluster of SMP nodes. Extendibility features of both MetaPL and HeSSE were largely used, developing extensions for the MetaPL language and new components for the simulator. The paper closes with the validation of the performance model, obtained through the comparison of the predicted performance results with measurements on test runs of the application on the real system.