Comprehensive Comparison Network: a framework for locality-aware, routes-comparable and interpretable route recommendation

Route recommendation (RR) is a core task of route planning in the Amap app, with the goal of recommending the optimal route among candidate routes to users. Unlike traditional recommendation methods, insights into the local quality of routes and comparisons between candidate routes are crucial for enhancing recommendation performance but often overlooked in previous studies. To achieve these, we propose a novel model called Comprehensive Comparison Network (CCN). CCN not only uses query-level features (e.g. user features) and item-level features (e.g. route features, item embedding) that are common in traditional recommendations, but also introduces comparison-level features which describe the non-overlapping segments between different routes to capture the local quality of routes. The key component Comprehensive Comparison Block (CCB) in CCN is designed to enable comparisons between routes. CCB includes a Comprehensive Comparison Operator (CCO) and a multi-scenario MLP, which can update the representations of candidate routes based on a comprehensive comparison. By stacking multiple CCBs, CCN can determine the final scores of candidate routes and recommend the optimal one to the user. Additionally, since routes directly affect the costs and risks experienced by users, the RR model must be interpretable for online deployment. Therefore, we designed an interpretable pair scoring network to achieve interpretability. Both offline and online experiments demonstrate that CCN significantly improves RR performance and exhibits strong interpretability. CCN has been fully deployed in the Amap app for over a year, providing stable and optimal benefits for route recommendations.

Physiological-Model-Based Neural Network for Heart Rate Estimation during Daily Physical Activities

Heart failure (HF) poses a significant global health challenge, with early detection offering opportunities for improved outcomes. Abnormalities in heart rate (HR), particularly during daily activities, may serve as early indicators of HF risk. However, existing HR monitoring tools for HF detection are limited by their reliability on population-based averages. The estimation of individualized HR serves as a dynamic digital twin, enabling precise tracking of cardiac health biomarkers. Current HR estimation methods, categorized into physiologically-driven and purely data-driven models, struggle with efficiency and interpretability. This study introduces a novel physiological-model-based neural network (PMB-NN) framework for HR estimation based on oxygen uptake (VO2) data during daily physical activities. The framework was trained and tested on individual datasets from 12 participants engaged in activities including resting, cycling, and running. By embedding physiological constraints, which were derived from our proposed simplified human movement physiological model (PM), into the neural network training process, the PMB-NN model adheres to human physiological principles while achieving high estimation accuracy, with a median R$^2$ score of 0.8 and an RMSE of 8.3 bpm. Comparative statistical analysis demonstrates that the PMB-NN achieves performance on par with the benchmark neural network model while significantly outperforming traditional physiological model (p=0.002). In addition, our PMB-NN is adept at identifying personalized parameters of the PM, enabling the PM to generate reasonable HR estimation. The proposed framework with a precise VO2 estimation system derived from body movements enables the future possibilities of personalized and real-time cardiac monitoring during daily life physical activities.

QiMeng: Fully Automated Hardware and Software Design for Processor Chip

Processor chip design technology serves as a key frontier driving breakthroughs in computer science and related fields. With the rapid advancement of information technology, conventional design paradigms face three major challenges: the physical constraints of fabrication technologies, the escalating demands for design resources, and the increasing diversity of ecosystems. Automated processor chip design has emerged as a transformative solution to address these challenges. While recent breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) techniques, have opened new possibilities for fully automated processor chip design, substantial challenges remain in establishing domain-specific LLMs for processor chip design. In this paper, we propose QiMeng, a novel system for fully automated hardware and software design of processor chips. QiMeng comprises three hierarchical layers. In the bottom-layer, we construct a domain-specific Large Processor Chip Model (LPCM) that introduces novel designs in architecture, training, and inference, to address key challenges such as knowledge representation gap, data scarcity, correctness assurance, and enormous solution space. In the middle-layer, leveraging the LPCM's knowledge representation and inference capabilities, we develop the Hardware Design Agent and the Software Design Agent to automate the design of hardware and software for processor chips. Currently, several components of QiMeng have been completed and successfully applied in various top-layer applications, demonstrating significant advantages and providing a feasible solution for efficient, fully automated hardware/software design of processor chips. Future research will focus on integrating all components and performing iterative top-down and bottom-up design processes to establish a comprehensive QiMeng system.

FocusTrack: A Self-Adaptive Local Sampling Algorithm for Efficient Anti-UAV Tracking

Anti-UAV tracking poses significant challenges, including small target sizes, abrupt camera motion, and cluttered infrared backgrounds. Existing tracking paradigms can be broadly categorized into global- and local-based methods. Global-based trackers, such as SiamDT, achieve high accuracy by scanning the entire field of view but suffer from excessive computational overhead, limiting real-world deployment. In contrast, local-based methods, including OSTrack and ROMTrack, efficiently restrict the search region but struggle when targets undergo significant displacements due to abrupt camera motion. Through preliminary experiments, it is evident that a local tracker, when paired with adaptive search region adjustment, can significantly enhance tracking accuracy, narrowing the gap between local and global trackers. To address this challenge, we propose FocusTrack, a novel framework that dynamically refines the search region and strengthens feature representations, achieving an optimal balance between computational efficiency and tracking accuracy. Specifically, our Search Region Adjustment (SRA) strategy estimates the target presence probability and adaptively adjusts the field of view, ensuring the target remains within focus. Furthermore, to counteract feature degradation caused by varying search regions, the Attention-to-Mask (ATM) module is proposed. This module integrates hierarchical information, enriching the target representations with fine-grained details. Experimental results demonstrate that FocusTrack achieves state-of-the-art performance, obtaining 67.7% AUC on AntiUAV and 62.8% AUC on AntiUAV410, outperforming the baseline tracker by 8.5% and 9.1% AUC, respectively. In terms of efficiency, FocusTrack surpasses global-based trackers, requiring only 30G MACs and achieving 143 fps with FocusTrack (SRA) and 44 fps with the full version, both enabling real-time tracking.

Code Copycat Conundrum: Demystifying Repetition in LLM-based Code Generation

Despite recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) for code generation, the quality of LLM-generated code still faces significant challenges. One significant issue is code repetition, which refers to the model's tendency to generate structurally redundant code, resulting in inefficiencies and reduced readability. To address this, we conduct the first empirical study to investigate the prevalence and nature of repetition across 19 state-of-the-art code LLMs using three widely-used benchmarks. Our study includes both quantitative and qualitative analyses, revealing that repetition is pervasive and manifests at various granularities and extents, including character, statement, and block levels. We further summarize a taxonomy of 20 repetition patterns. Building on our findings, we propose DeRep, a rule-based technique designed to detect and mitigate repetition in generated code. We evaluate DeRep using both open-source benchmarks and in an industrial setting. Our results demonstrate that DeRep significantly outperforms baselines in reducing repetition (with an average improvements of 91.3%, 93.5%, and 79.9% in rep-3, rep-line, and sim-line metrics) and enhancing code quality (with a Pass@1 increase of 208.3% over greedy search). Furthermore, integrating DeRep improves the performance of existing repetition mitigation methods, with Pass@1 improvements ranging from 53.7% to 215.7%.

PAPI: Exploiting Dynamic Parallelism in Large Language Model Decoding with a Processing-In-Memory-Enabled Computing System

Large language models (LLMs) are widely used for natural language understanding and text generation. An LLM model relies on a time-consuming step called LLM decoding to generate output tokens. Several prior works focus on improving the performance of LLM decoding using parallelism techniques, such as batching and speculative decoding. State-of-the-art LLM decoding has both compute-bound and memory-bound kernels. Some prior works statically identify and map these different kernels to a heterogeneous architecture consisting of both processing-in-memory (PIM) units and computation-centric accelerators. We observe that characteristics of LLM decoding kernels (e.g., whether or not a kernel is memory-bound) can change dynamically due to parameter changes to meet user and/or system demands, making (1) static kernel mapping to PIM units and computation-centric accelerators suboptimal, and (2) one-size-fits-all approach of designing PIM units inefficient due to a large degree of heterogeneity even in memory-bound kernels. In this paper, we aim to accelerate LLM decoding while considering the dynamically changing characteristics of the kernels involved. We propose PAPI (PArallel Decoding with PIM), a PIM-enabled heterogeneous architecture that exploits dynamic scheduling of compute-bound or memory-bound kernels to suitable hardware units. PAPI has two key mechanisms: (1) online kernel characterization to dynamically schedule kernels to the most suitable hardware units at runtime and (2) a PIM-enabled heterogeneous computing system that harmoniously orchestrates both computation-centric processing units and hybrid PIM units with different computing capabilities. Our experimental results on three broadly-used LLMs show that PAPI achieves 1.8$\times$ and 11.1$\times$ speedups over a state-of-the-art heterogeneous LLM accelerator and a state-of-the-art PIM-only LLM accelerator, respectively.

Evaluating Multi-Sensor Placement and Neural Network Architectures for Physical Activity Level Classification

Accurate physical activity level (PAL) classification could be beneficial for osteoarthritis (OA) management. This study examines the impact of sensor placement and deep learning models on AL classification using the Metabolic Equivalent of Task values. The results show that the addition of anankle sensor (WA) significantly improves the classification of intensity activities compared to wrist-only configuration(53% to 86.2%). The CNN-LSTM model achieves the highest accuracy (95.09%). Statistical analysis confirms multi-sensor setups outperform single-sensor configurations (p < 0.05). The WA configuration offers a balance between usability and accuracy, making it a cost-effective solution for AL monitoring, particularly in OA management.

Variable-frame CNNLSTM for Breast Nodule Classification using Ultrasound Videos

The intersection of medical imaging and artificial intelligence has become an important research direction in intelligent medical treatment, particularly in the analysis of medical images using deep learning for clinical diagnosis. Despite the advances, existing keyframe classification methods lack extraction of time series features, while ultrasonic video classification based on three-dimensional convolution requires uniform frame numbers across patients, resulting in poor feature extraction efficiency and model classification performance. This study proposes a novel video classification method based on CNN and LSTM, introducing NLP's long and short sentence processing scheme into video classification for the first time. The method reduces CNN-extracted image features to 1x512 dimension, followed by sorting and compressing feature vectors for LSTM training. Specifically, feature vectors are sorted by patient video frame numbers and populated with padding value 0 to form variable batches, with invalid padding values compressed before LSTM training to conserve computing resources. Experimental results demonstrate that our variable-frame CNNLSTM method outperforms other approaches across all metrics, showing improvements of 3-6% in F1 score and 1.5% in specificity compared to keyframe methods. The variable-frame CNNLSTM also achieves better accuracy and precision than equal-frame CNNLSTM. These findings validate the effectiveness of our approach in classifying variable-frame ultrasound videos and suggest potential applications in other medical imaging modalities.

Non-Interchangeability between Heart Rate Variability and Pulse Rate Variability During Supine-to-Stand Tests

Heart rate variability (HRV) is widely recognized as a valuable biomarker for assessing autonomic cardiac regulation. Pulse rate variability (PRV) is a common surrogate of HRV given the wide usability of PPG in commercially available devices. However, there is no clear conclusion on whether PRV can replace HRV given their different physiological mechanisms. This study evaluates the interchangeability of young adults HRV and PRV during supine-to-stand (STS) tests which are known as common posture transitions in daily life monitoring. Fifteen features from time, frequency and nonlinear domains were extracted from both electrocardiography and PPG signals. Paired t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests examined the difference between the extracted HRV and PRV features during supine, transition and standing phases separately. One feature showed significant difference in the supine phase, and this discrepancy increased to four in the transition and standing phases. These findings suggested that PRV is different from HRV in the STS tests, despite the fact that both metrics can reflect the sympathetic activation triggered by the posture changes.

RTLMarker: Protecting LLM-Generated RTL Copyright via a Hardware Watermarking Framework

Recent advances of large language models in the field of Verilog generation have raised several ethical and security concerns, such as code copyright protection and dissemination of malicious code. Researchers have employed watermarking techniques to identify codes generated by large language models. However, the existing watermarking works fail to protect RTL code copyright due to the significant syntactic and semantic differences between RTL code and software code in languages such as Python. This paper proposes a hardware watermarking framework RTLMarker that embeds watermarks into RTL code and deeper into the synthesized netlist. We propose a set of rule-based Verilog code transformations , ensuring the watermarked RTL code's syntactic and semantic correctness. In addition, we consider an inherent tradeoff between watermark transparency and watermark effectiveness and jointly optimize them. The results demonstrate RTLMarker's superiority over the baseline in RTL code watermarking.