Performance & Scalability Experiments

1. Performance & Scalability Experiments Dr. Ray Huetter, CTO SensorConnect Reid Phillips, University of Arkansas © 2007 SensorConnect Inc.

2. Overview • Data collection and modeling of large sensor networks (EPCIS level) • A key to Return on Investment (ROI) is performance & scalability • SensorConnect builds systems to maximize success thru ROI • University of Arkansas is helping verify these systems • Today we present • Background on SensorConnect technology • Test results from University of Arkansas www.sensorconnect.com

3. Authors • Joe Hoag • PhD Candidate University of Arkansas • Reid Phillips • PhD Candidate University of Arkansas • Dr. Craig Thompson • Professor and Database Chair University of Arkansas • Dr. Ray Huetter • CTO SensorConnect • John Veizades • VP Product Management SensorConnect www.sensorconnect.com

4. Our View of RFID • RFID & sensors augment the physical world • Goal: assist people and machines to make better use of physical objects • plan & observe use, identify misuse, predict service • analyze systemic cause and effect • Succeed when ROI is demonstrated • coincides with maximal assistance • reduction in time, space, matter & energy of processes • This is common across many domains • Supply chain, ePedigree, health care, MRO, logistics, … www.sensorconnect.com

5. Potential of RFID • RFID will make many contributions • Economic, environmental, social (health) • Effectiveness & ROI will be substantial • Physical optimization (more for less) • Correct distribution, location and usage • Safety and correctness • Prevents harm (food safety) • Reduction in resources, waste and errors • Physical process improvements • Lead to new opportunities… www.sensorconnect.com

6. Best ROI Results • Successful pilot projects are showing 5 to 10 times ROI when end-to-end visibility occurs • Single, accurate timely view • Across physical & logical boundaries • By multiple parties • Why? • Able to see what happened and when • Able to reason about it, as and when it happens • Discover cause and effect • Use it to ones advantage or correct it • Optimize: time, space, energy & matter www.sensorconnect.com

7. Control-Feedback Loop Holistic View www.sensorconnect.com

8. Maximizing ROI • Maximal ROI occurs when optimization takes into account • As much fine-grained detail as possible • Of as many physical objects as possible • Across as many boundaries as possible • In as short a time-frame as possible • For the least price possible • Conversely, ROI will be limited by • coarse-grained, filtered / summarized, isolated, untimely or expensive systems www.sensorconnect.com

9. Not Possible Today • Most contemporary systems substantially constrain effectiveness & ROI • Are expensive (relative to the cost of tags) • Are isolated “stove-pipes” • Are not real-time • Do not support continuous operation • Do not scale with hardware • Do not cope with volume • Will be suboptimal • There is a missing link here… www.sensorconnect.com

10. SensorConnect Technology • Build systems & expertise to maximize ROI • Collect sensor based-data (notably RFID) of arbitrarily large physical systems in real-time • Use that data to create fine-grained models of in real-time • Enable new & existing applications / systems to securely • observe, reason & optimize physical systems • by querying the current state and history of the model • adjust the physical system continuously in real-time • Do this by supporting • Real-time write back to tags • Apply rules to produce actionable alerts in real-time • Pushing changes to applications as they happen • Applications querying history (prior state) as required • Replay history of events as they occurred www.sensorconnect.com

11. Holistic View of Physical Systems www.sensorconnect.com

12. SensorConnect System Qualities • High performance • > 50,000 events per second per 64-bit CPU • < 100 millisecond response time per event, including write-back • Balance queries with ingestion • maintain detailed history; replay event history • Indefinitely scalable • Support models with billions .. trillions of physical objects • Widely compatible • Devices & systems • Standards compliant • EPCIS (repository) • Highly reliable • Continuous operation via hot failover • Secure • Access & authorization controls www.sensorconnect.com

13. University of Arkansas • University of Arkansas invited to test SensorConnect core • Run tests indicative of loads of an entire supply chain • Motivations: • Interested in scalable grid technology with application to sensor networks and identity • Have skills and technology to do synthetic data generation • Longer term collaboration with RFID technology www.sensorconnect.com

14. Proof of Concept Experiments • Purpose • Test configuration • Synthetic Data Generation (SDG) • Descriptions, results, and analysis www.sensorconnect.com

15. Purpose • Measure performance of the SensorConnect system while accepting data from an independent, outside source • Ingestion (insertion) • Balanced (concurrent ingestion and queries) www.sensorconnect.com

16. Test Configuration • ACE four node grid (provided by NSF grant #0410966) • 64-bit dual processor AMD Opterons 1.6 GHz • 2 GB RAM • 60 GB Hard Drive • 1Gbps Ethernet • Rocks 4.2, Linux Kernel 2.6.9 • Part of the Open Science Grid www.sensorconnect.com

17. Synthetic Data Generation (SDG) • Written in Java • Accepts Synthetic Data Description Language (SDDL) file as input • Capable of generating data sequentially or in parallel • Partitioning algorithms assure that the resulting data set will be consistent regardless of the degree of parallelism used during generation • Capable of direct-to-database generation, but generating to intermediate text file is more common, and faster www.sensorconnect.com

18. Synthetic Data Description Language (SDDL) • SDDL Constraint Types • Min/Max/Step • Probabilistic Distribution • Pool Reference: basically a parameterized dictionary lookup. Users can define their own dictionaries • Formula: field value based on mathematical formulas involving constants and other fields • Iteration: iterate through a set of values. The value set could be a sequence of integers, a record set from a query, or a set of dictionary values • Data types supported: integer, real, string, date, time, timestamp, boolean www.sensorconnect.com

19. Synthetic Data Generation • SDG Operation • Parallel processes all reference the same SDDL file • Each parallel process generates a single text output file, containing a portion of the generated table • Database then imports the text files as data • Lack of inter-process dependencies make linear speedup a real possibility • Speed of SDG is only limited by number and speed of processors • Output is identical regardless of the number of generation processes utilized www.sensorconnect.com

20. Application:Simple RFID Supply Chain Data • Problem: Generate synthetic RFID events (“arrive” and “depart”) for 10 million unique objects traversing 100 read points (total = 2 billion events) • Row: TagID, ReaderNum, BizEvt, Timestamp • Total data generated: 86 GB (2B rows) Reader 1 Reader 2 Reader 3 . . . Reader 100 www.sensorconnect.com

21. Experiments Run • Peak ingestion • Event replay • Query item • Query history • Query location description www.sensorconnect.com

22. Peak Ingestion Test • Not a balanced test (no queries) • Used to determine the sustained insertion rate of the SensorConnect system • All available data was ingested into the system • First test terminated prematurely due to a configuration problem • Second test ran to completion in approximately 01:24:00 www.sensorconnect.com

23. Peak Ingestion Test www.sensorconnect.com

24. Event Replay Test • This balanced test replays the events logged by the system during a specified time interval in the order the events were received • Replay rate must be greater than or equal to the ingestion rate • Models a store-and-forward supply chain • Three runs replaying 10, 20, and 20 minutes respectively www.sensorconnect.com

25. Event Replay Test www.sensorconnect.com

26. Query Item Test • A balanced test that returns a tag’s current, or most recent, location www.sensorconnect.com

27. Query History Test • This balanced query returned the event history of a tag, or all records recording an “enter” or “leave” event for a given tag www.sensorconnect.com

28. Query Location Description Test • A balanced test that returns all tags at a given location, or position, within a supply chain www.sensorconnect.com

29. Experiment Conclusions • SensorConnect is designed for multi-core, multi-cpu • System allows for an unbalanced 400,000 events/second peak ingestion rate • Balanced tests were able to query data at a rate greater than ingestion • Deployment of the SensorConnect system in a foreign environment was accomplished with relative ease • Ultimately the test results far exceeded expectations indicating great promise for the system www.sensorconnect.com

30. Summary • Goal of RFID is to assist people and machines to make better use of physical objects • Successful projects demonstrate ROI • ROI coincides with maximal assistance • SensorConnect is a high-volume real-time EPCIS system which models the real-world • Tests by University of Arkansas show peak performance >400,000 events per sec www.sensorconnect.com