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- Genre: Masters Thesis
Description
American Primitive is a composition written for wind ensemble with an instrumentation of flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, trumpet, horn, trombone, euphonium, tuba, piano, and percussion. The piece is approximately twelve minutes in duration and was written September - December 2013. American Primitive is absolute music (i.e. it does not follow a specific narrative) comprising blocks of distinct, contrasting gestures which bookend a central region of delicate textural layering and minimal gestural contrast. Though three gestures (a descending interval followed by a smaller ascending interval, a dynamic swell, and a chordal "chop") were consciously employed throughout, it is the first gesture of the three that creates a sense of unification and overall coherence to the work. Additionally, the work challenges listeners' expectations of traditional wind ensemble music by featuring the trumpet as a quasi-soloist whose material is predominately inspired by transcriptions of jazz solos. This jazz-inspired material is at times mimicked and further developed by the ensemble, also often in a soloistic manner while the trumpet maintains its role throughout. This interplay of dialogue between the "soloists" and the "ensemble" further skews listeners' conceptions of traditional wind ensemble music by featuring almost every instrument in the ensemble. Though the term "American Primitive" is usually associated with the "naïve art" movement, it bears no association to the music presented in this work. Instead, the term refers to the author's own compositional attitudes, education, and aesthetic interests.
ContributorsJandreau, Joshua (Composer) / Rockmaker, Jody D (Thesis advisor) / Rogers, Rodney I (Committee member) / Demars, James R (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Phantom Sun is a ten-minute piece in three sections, and is composed for flute, clarinet in b-flat, violin, cello, and percussion. The three-part structure for this work is a representation of the atmospheric phenomenon after which the composition is named. A phantom sun, also called a parhelion or sundog, is a weather-related phenomenon caused by the horizontal refraction of sunlight in the upper atmosphere. This refraction creates the illusion of three suns above the horizon, and is often accompanied by a bright halo called the circumzenithal arc. The halo is caused by light bending at 22° as it passes through hexagonal ice crystals. Consequently, the numbers six and 22 are important figures, and have been encoded into this piece in various ways.
The first section, marked “With concentrated intensity,” is characterized by the juxtaposition of tonal ambiguity and tonal affirmation, as well as the use of polymetric counterpoint (often 7/8 against 4/4 or 7/8 against 3/4). The middle section, marked “Crystalline,” provides contrast in its use of unmetered sections and independent tempos. The refraction of light is represented in this movement by a 22-note row based on a hexachord (B-flat, F, C, G, A, E) introduced in measure 164 of the first section. The third section, marked “With frenetic energy,” begins without pause on an arresting entrance of the drums playing an additive rhythmic pattern. This pattern (5+7+9+1) amounts to 22 eighth-note pulses and informs much of the motivic and structural considerations for the remainder of the piece.
The first section, marked “With concentrated intensity,” is characterized by the juxtaposition of tonal ambiguity and tonal affirmation, as well as the use of polymetric counterpoint (often 7/8 against 4/4 or 7/8 against 3/4). The middle section, marked “Crystalline,” provides contrast in its use of unmetered sections and independent tempos. The refraction of light is represented in this movement by a 22-note row based on a hexachord (B-flat, F, C, G, A, E) introduced in measure 164 of the first section. The third section, marked “With frenetic energy,” begins without pause on an arresting entrance of the drums playing an additive rhythmic pattern. This pattern (5+7+9+1) amounts to 22 eighth-note pulses and informs much of the motivic and structural considerations for the remainder of the piece.
ContributorsMitton, Stephen LeRoy (Author) / DeMars, James (Thesis advisor) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Rogers, Rodney (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
The information era has brought about many technological advancements in the past
few decades, and that has led to an exponential increase in the creation of digital images and
videos. Constantly, all digital images go through some image processing algorithm for
various reasons like compression, transmission, storage, etc. There is data loss during this
process which leaves us with a degraded image. Hence, to ensure minimal degradation of
images, the requirement for quality assessment has become mandatory. Image Quality
Assessment (IQA) has been researched and developed over the last several decades to
predict the quality score in a manner that agrees with human judgments of quality. Modern
image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms are quite effective at prediction accuracy, and
their development has not focused on improving computational performance. The existing
serial implementation requires a relatively large run-time on the order of seconds for a single
frame. Hardware acceleration using Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) provides
reconfigurable computing fabric that can be tailored for a broad range of applications.
Usually, programming FPGAs has required expertise in hardware descriptive languages
(HDLs) or high-level synthesis (HLS) tool. OpenCL is an open standard for cross-platform,
parallel programming of heterogeneous systems along with Altera OpenCL SDK, enabling
developers to use FPGA's potential without extensive hardware knowledge. Hence, this
thesis focuses on accelerating the computationally intensive part of the most apparent
distortion (MAD) algorithm on FPGA using OpenCL. The results are compared with CPU
implementation to evaluate performance and efficiency gains.
few decades, and that has led to an exponential increase in the creation of digital images and
videos. Constantly, all digital images go through some image processing algorithm for
various reasons like compression, transmission, storage, etc. There is data loss during this
process which leaves us with a degraded image. Hence, to ensure minimal degradation of
images, the requirement for quality assessment has become mandatory. Image Quality
Assessment (IQA) has been researched and developed over the last several decades to
predict the quality score in a manner that agrees with human judgments of quality. Modern
image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms are quite effective at prediction accuracy, and
their development has not focused on improving computational performance. The existing
serial implementation requires a relatively large run-time on the order of seconds for a single
frame. Hardware acceleration using Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) provides
reconfigurable computing fabric that can be tailored for a broad range of applications.
Usually, programming FPGAs has required expertise in hardware descriptive languages
(HDLs) or high-level synthesis (HLS) tool. OpenCL is an open standard for cross-platform,
parallel programming of heterogeneous systems along with Altera OpenCL SDK, enabling
developers to use FPGA's potential without extensive hardware knowledge. Hence, this
thesis focuses on accelerating the computationally intensive part of the most apparent
distortion (MAD) algorithm on FPGA using OpenCL. The results are compared with CPU
implementation to evaluate performance and efficiency gains.
ContributorsGunavelu Mohan, Aswin (Author) / Sohoni, Sohum (Thesis advisor) / Ren, Fengbo (Thesis advisor) / Seo, Jae-Sun (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
A New Home is a multi-movement musical composition written for a chamber orchestra of flute, oboe, clarinet in B-flat, bassoon, horn in F, trumpet in C, trombone, bass trombone, percussion (1), pianoforte, and strings. The duration of the entire piece is approximately fourteen minutes (movement 1: four minutes; mvt. 2: four minutes and thirty seconds; mvt. 3: five minutes and thirty seconds). As an exercise in compositional experimentation, some of the musical techniques explored throughout the piece are harmonic planing or parallelism, ostinati, modality, chromatic dissonance, thematic transformation, mixed meter, and syncopation, as well as issues of orchestral blend, balance, and color.
The first movement, ironically titled “Don’t Panic,” highlights my initial anxieties on experimentation by creating hectic textures. The movement is structured around two main alternating sections of chromatic, chordal dissonance with more modal, melodic syncopation in addition to a developmental section, but a sense of rhythmic groove is prominent throughout. The second movement, “Still Here,” is a darker, more sensitive music as it explores various settings of its main thematic material interspersed with march-like episodes and a related secondary theme. The themes are organized around a diatonic scale that omits one pitch to comprise a six-note scale. The third movement, “Change of State,” recalls the modality and rhythmic liveliness of the first movement, and it bears a thematic relationship to the second movement. Much of the material also revolves around scales and mediant relationships to comprise an opening theme, a groove section, and an ethereal, glassy texture which ends the movement. Essentially, the piece closes with a calmer music in contrast to the brute force that opened the piece.
The first movement, ironically titled “Don’t Panic,” highlights my initial anxieties on experimentation by creating hectic textures. The movement is structured around two main alternating sections of chromatic, chordal dissonance with more modal, melodic syncopation in addition to a developmental section, but a sense of rhythmic groove is prominent throughout. The second movement, “Still Here,” is a darker, more sensitive music as it explores various settings of its main thematic material interspersed with march-like episodes and a related secondary theme. The themes are organized around a diatonic scale that omits one pitch to comprise a six-note scale. The third movement, “Change of State,” recalls the modality and rhythmic liveliness of the first movement, and it bears a thematic relationship to the second movement. Much of the material also revolves around scales and mediant relationships to comprise an opening theme, a groove section, and an ethereal, glassy texture which ends the movement. Essentially, the piece closes with a calmer music in contrast to the brute force that opened the piece.
ContributorsJones, Zachary William (Author) / Rogers, Rodney (Thesis advisor) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Rockmaker, Jody (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has achieved state-of-the-art performance in numerous applications like computer vision, natural language processing, robotics etc. The advancement of High-Performance Computing systems equipped with dedicated hardware accelerators has also paved the way towards the success of compute intensive CNNs. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), with massive processing capability, have been of general interest for the acceleration of CNNs. Recently, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been promising in CNN acceleration since they offer high performance while also being re-configurable to support the evolution of CNNs. This work focuses on a design methodology to accelerate CNNs on FPGA with low inference latency and high-throughput which are crucial for scenarios like self-driving cars, video surveillance etc. It also includes optimizations which reduce the resource utilization by a large margin with a small degradation in performance thus making the design suitable for low-end FPGA devices as well.
FPGA accelerators often suffer due to the limited main memory bandwidth. Also, highly parallel designs with large resource utilization often end up achieving low operating frequency due to poor routing. This work employs data fetch and buffer mechanisms, designed specifically for the memory access pattern of CNNs, that overlap computation with memory access. This work proposes a novel arrangement of the systolic processing element array to achieve high frequency and consume less resources than the existing works. Also, support has been extended to more complicated CNNs to do video processing. On Intel Arria 10 GX1150, the design operates at a frequency as high as 258MHz and performs single inference of VGG-16 and C3D in 23.5ms and 45.6ms respectively. For VGG-16 and C3D the design offers a throughput of 66.1 and 23.98 inferences/s respectively. This design can outperform other FPGA 2D CNN accelerators by up to 9.7 times and 3D CNN accelerators by up to 2.7 times.
FPGA accelerators often suffer due to the limited main memory bandwidth. Also, highly parallel designs with large resource utilization often end up achieving low operating frequency due to poor routing. This work employs data fetch and buffer mechanisms, designed specifically for the memory access pattern of CNNs, that overlap computation with memory access. This work proposes a novel arrangement of the systolic processing element array to achieve high frequency and consume less resources than the existing works. Also, support has been extended to more complicated CNNs to do video processing. On Intel Arria 10 GX1150, the design operates at a frequency as high as 258MHz and performs single inference of VGG-16 and C3D in 23.5ms and 45.6ms respectively. For VGG-16 and C3D the design offers a throughput of 66.1 and 23.98 inferences/s respectively. This design can outperform other FPGA 2D CNN accelerators by up to 9.7 times and 3D CNN accelerators by up to 2.7 times.
ContributorsRavi, Pravin Kumar (Author) / Zhao, Ming (Thesis advisor) / Li, Baoxin (Committee member) / Ren, Fengbo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020