Since simulation became the third pillar of scientific research, several forms of computers have become available to drive computer aided simulations, and nowadays, clusters are the most popular type of computers supporting these tasks. For instance, cluster settings, such as the so-called supercomputers, cluster of workstations (COW), cluster of desktops (COD), and cluster of virtual machines (COV) have been considered in literature to embrace a variety of scientific applications. However, those scientific applications categorized as high-performance computing (HPC) are conceptually restricted to be addressed only by supercomputers. In this aspect, we introduce the notions of cluster overhead and cluster coupling to assess the capacity of non-HPC systems to handle HPC applications. We also compare the cluster overhead with an existing measure of overhead in computing systems, the total parallel overhead, to explain the correctness of our methodology. The evaluation of capacity considers the seven dwarfs of scientific computing, which are well-known, scientific computing building blocks considered in the development of HPC applications. The evaluation of these building blocks provides insights regarding the strengths and weaknesses of non-HPC systems to deal with future HPC applications developed with one or a combination of these algorithmic building blocks.
One of the main concerns of agricultural financing institutions is to make sure the loans they grant are used for the stated objective when the loan was requested. Specifically, when Banco Agrario de Colombia grants loans for crop farmers, it schedules verification visits to the cultivation sites to check if the crop stipulated in the loan agreement exists and assess its health. These visits are challenging to make due to the number of visits over vast areas that they need to schedule, lack of trained personnel, and difficulty of access. This article proposes a software tool, based on a machine learning model for processing free satellite imagery, to support the bank's identification of non-compliant crops with the investment plan before making field visits, minimizing the loss of investment by focusing on those areas to prioritize the visits. Sugarcane along the department of Boyacá, Colombia was chosen as the case of study. Free access satellite imagery through the Colombian Data Cube (CDCol) was used and machine learning models were applied on them to classify the land and predict the presence of the crop, a Random Forest model achieved an overall F1-score of 91% using Landsat-8 imagery and a K-nearest Neighbors model achieved an overall F1-score of 98% using Sentinel-2 imagery.
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