Blog

Real_time_and_Multimedia_3 PTS Your friend is a geologist who studies earthquakes and tsunamis. They have placed 1000 seismograph sensors all around the world. Each sensor produces a 1 kilobyte datapoint every second. They have also placed 50 cameras in coastal areas around the world that record at 60 frames per second. Each video frame is 1 MB.  Your friend wants to record this data and analyze it for two purposes:  To send urgent alerts when multiple sensors in a region report strong shaking in the same brief time window. To correlate timestamped video recordings with timestamped seismograph data in order to study what types of shaking cause tsunamis. Is PTS a good basis to build a system for analyzing this data? Justify your answer. 

Internet_Scale_Computing_4 CDN In principle, the Coral system’s key-based routing serves the same fundamental purpose as traditional DHT routing: enabling a source node to locate and communicate with the appropriate destination node. Given this, what specific problem does Coral’s key-based routing address that traditional DHT routing does not? 

Internet_Scale_Computing_1a Giant Scale Services You are deploying a large-scale machine learning model for inference in a cloud data center. The model is 960 GB in size and can be broken down into 8 GB chunks that must be executed in a pipelined manner. Each chunk takes 0.8 ms to process. The available machines each have 8 GB of RAM. You are required to serve 600,000 queries per second. Assume there is perfect compute and communication overlap, and no additional intermediate memory usage during execution. What is the minimum number of machines required to support this throughput? You are free to assume pipelined execution of chunks for this.

Consider the Modigliani and Miller (M&M) tradeoff theory of capital structure. Assume there are taxes and bankruptcy costs. Which of the following statements is / are correct? I. Firm value always increases as more debt is addedII. Firm value stays constant as more debt is addedIII. WACC always decreases as more debt is addedIV. WACC always increases as more debt is addedV. WACC stays constant as more debt is added

Los Pollos Hermanos is considering Projects S and L, whose cash flows are shown below. These projects are mutually exclusive, equally risky, and not repeatable.  Your boss, Gus Fring, asks you which project will have the higher NPV. What do you respond?   Year                           0                1                2                3                4     CFS                        -$1,100        $600          $500          $300         $100 CFL                        -$1,100        $100          $300          $500         $600

Simon Software Co. is trying to estimate its optimal capital structure.  Right now, Simon has a capital structure that consists of 0% debt and 100% equity, based on market values.  The risk-free rate is 6% and the market risk premium, RM – Rrf, is 5%.  Currently the company’s cost of equity, which is based on the CAPM, is 12% and its tax rate is 40%.  What would be Simon’s estimated cost of equity if it were to change its capital structure to 50% debt and 50% 

19.    Which of the following improve(s) the corporate governance of a firm? I. A larger fraction of independent directors on the boardII. Having the CEO serve as the chairman of the board of directorsIII. Block ownership by an active institutional investor who is trying to maximize shareholder wealth

The Francis Company is expected to pay a dividend of D1 = $1.25 per share at the end of the year, and that dividend is expected to grow at a constant rate of 6.00% per year in the future. The company’s beta is 1.15, the market risk premium is 5.50%, and the risk-free rate is 4.00%.  What is the company’s current stock price?

Langston Labs has an overall (composite) WACC of 10%, which reflects the cost of capital for its average asset. Its assets vary widely in risk, and Langston evaluates low-risk projects with a WACC of 8%, average-risk projects at 10%, and high-risk projects at 12%.  The company is considering the following projects:                                  Project                           Risk                   Expected Return                                    A                               High                            15%                                    B                            Average                         12%                                    C                               High                            11%                                    D                               Low                              9%                                    E                               Low                              6%   Which set of projects would maximize shareholder wealth?

Which of the following statements is CORRECT? (Assume that the projects being considered have conventional cash flows, with one outflow followed by a series of inflows.)