bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Behavioral synthesis of field programmable analog array circuits
Authors: Wang Haibo , Vrudhula Sarma B. K.
Published: May 2003

This article presents methods to translate a behavioral-level analog description into a Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) implementation. The methods consist of several steps that are referred to as function decomposition, macrocell synthesis, placement and routing, and postplacement simulation. The focus of this article is on the first three steps. The function decomposition step deals with decomposing a high-order system function into a set of lower-order functions. We present an efficient procedure for searching for an optimal solution. This procedure is based on first formally demonstrating the equivalence of two previously used optimization criteria. The objective of the macrocell synthesis step is to generate a hardware realization. A modified signal flow graph is introduced to represent FPAA circuits and graph transformations are used to identify the realizations that comply with the FPAA hardware constraints. The modified signal flow graph also allows scaling of capacitor values due to the limited set of allowable values in an FPAA. For the placement and routing step, an efficient method to estimate the circuit performance degradation due to parasitic effects is given. Using performance degradation as the cost function, an algorithm for finding an optimal FPAA placement and routing configuration is given. The efficacy of the methods developed is demonstrated by direct measurements on a set of filters.
Performance-driven placement for dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs
Authors: Wu Guang-Ming , Lin Jai-Ming , Chang Yao-Wen
Published: May 2003

In this article, we introduce a new placement problem motivated by the Dynamically Reconfigurable FPGA (DRFPGA) architectures. Unlike traditional placement, the problem for DRFPGAs must consider the precedence constraints among logic components. For the placement, we develop an effective metric that can consider wirelength, register requirement, and power consumption simultaneously. With the considerations of the new metric and the precedence constraints, we then present a three-stage scheme of partitioning, initial placement generation, and placement refinement to solve the new placement problem. Experimental results show that our placement scheme with the new metric achieves respective improvements of 17.2, 27.0, and 35.9% in wirelength, the number of registers, and power consumption requirements, compared with the list scheduling method.
Efficient circuit clustering for area and power reduction in FPGAs
Authors: Singh Amit , Parthasarathy Ganapathy , Marek-Sadowska Malgorzata
Published: May 2003

We utilize Rent's rule as an empirical measure for efficient clustering and placement of circuits in clustered Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). We show that careful matching of resource availability and design complexity during the clustering and placement processes can contribute to spatial uniformity in the placed design, leading to overall device decongestion after routing. We present experimental results to show that appropriate logic depopulation during clustering can have a positive impact on the overall FPGA device area. Our clustering and placement techniques can improve the overall device routing area by as much as 62%, 35% on average, for the same array size, when compared to state-of-the-art FPGA clustering, placement, and routing tools. Power dissipation simulations using a typical buffered pass-transistor-based FPGA interconnect model are also presented. They show that our clustering and placement techniques can reduce the overall device power dissipation by approximately 13%.
Enterprise integration with ERP and EAI
Authors: Lee Jinyoul , Siau Keng , Hong Soongoo
Published: May 2003

Comparing internal and external approaches to enterprise business integration.
A framework for using OO mapping methods to rapidly configure ERP systems
Authors: Arinze Bay , Anandarajan Murugan
Published: May 2003

The Enterprise Object Model captures and transforms user requirements into detailed configuration settings for ERP software, reducing ERP system configuration effort and maintenance costs.
Anticipating internet diffusion
Authors: Dutta Amitava , Roy Rahul
Published: May 2003

Understanding the sociotechnical aspects of Internet growth helps anticipate Internet diffusion, even in countries with vastly different socioeconomic conditions and telecommunication infrastructures.
Closing the user and provider service quality gap
Authors: Jiang James J. , Klein Gary , Tesch Debbie , Chen Hong-Gee
Published: May 2003

A method for measuring service quality that includes both the user and IS service provider perspectives.
Information flow parameters for managing organizational processes
Authors: Krovi Ravindra , Chandra Akhilesh , Rajagopalan Balaji
Published: May 2003

Developing a framework for enhancing the design of systems and improving management control of complex relationships.
Conspicuous in their silence
Authors: Meeks Brock N.
Published: May 2003

Where are the voices defending the very fought-after privacy rights now threatened in the name of Homeland Security?
The reorg cycle
Authors: Armour Phillip
Published: May 2003

A natural hierarchical management response to a rapidly changing environment.
Creating a knowledge-sharing community
Authors: Brazelton Jessica , Gorry G. Anthony
Published: May 2003

Technology may support a knowledge-sharing environment, but getting users to participate in effective ways is key.
Extracting guarantees from chaos
Authors: Kubiatowicz John
Published: May 2003

The P2P revolution promises freedom from boundaries, censorship, and centralized control. P2P proponents claim the vast untapped resource of personal computers owned by ordinary people can be combined together to build something greater and more reliable than the sum of its parts.
P2P and the promise of internet equality
Authors: Agre Philip E.
Published: May 2003

Technologies often come wrapped in stories about politics. These stories may not explain the motives of the technologists, but they do often explain the social energy that propels the technology into the larger world. In the case of P2P technologies, the official engineering story is that computational effort should be distributed to reflect the structure of the problem. But the engineering story does not explain the strong feelings P2P computing often evokes. The strong feelings derive from a political story, often heatedly disavowed by technologists but widespread in the culture: P2P delivers on the Internet's promise of decentralization. By minimizing the role of centralized computing elements, the story goes, P2P systems will be immune to censorship, monopoly, regulation, and other exercises of centralized authority.
Looking up data in P2P systems
Authors: Balakrishnan Hari , Kaashoek M. Frans , Karger David , Morris Robert , Stoica Ion
Published: May 2003

The main challenge in P2P computing is to design and implement a robust and scalable distributed system composed of inexpensive, individually unreliable computers in unrelated administrative domains. The participants in a typical P2P system might include computers at homes, schools, and businesses, and can grow to several million concurrent participants.
An end-user perspective on file-sharing systems
Authors: Lee Jintae
Published: May 2003

P2P file-sharing systems enable their users to share files directly among themselves without the need for a central file server. They form one of the most well-known categories of P2P systems, thanks largely to the Napster controversy and its appeal to the large potential user base. At its peak, Napster boasted a registered user base of 70 million [9] and 1.57 million simultaneous users. Now, after Napster's downfall, over 50 systems have taken its place. The files shared through these systems include not only music files but also videos, audio books, and pictures. P2P file-sharing applications account for five of the top 10 downloads from the download.com Web site, together representing over 4.5 million downloads in the last week of June 2002 alone. Also, as of June 2002, 19% of Americans over age 12 (about 40 million users) have downloaded music files from these systems, according to cyberatlas.internet.com. These systems are interesting in many ways. They blur the distinction between server, client, and router because individual computers fill these roles, communicating and sharing resources without dedicated servers [6]. They challenge the ability to enforce copyright. They form a backbone for other types of P2P applications, such as groupware and content distribution.
Toward ubiquitous acceptance of ubiquitous computing
Authors: Islam Nayeem , Fayad Mohamed
Published: May 2003

Its potential sounds so appealing, but there are several challenges to overcome before true ubiquitous computing will garner global acceptance.
Path delay fault testing using test points
Authors: Tragoudas S. , Denny N.
Published: May 2003

Inserting controllable/observable points in the test architecture has been shown to be a viable method for reducing the number of path delay faults that need to be tested in a circuit. In order to have a minimal impact on the operation clock and more accuracy in testing, it is proposed that test points should be inserted with the additional constraint that every path has a bounded number of test points. A polynomial time solvable integer linear programming (ILP) formulation serves as the basis for the presented test placement methodology. Due to the ILP's global optimization property we achieve results that are comparable to those by an existing greedy technique for the less constrained test point placement problem.
Analysis of FPGA/FPIC switch modules
Authors: Chang Yao-Wen , Zhu Kai , Wu Guang-Ming , Wong D. F. , Wong C. K.
Published: May 2003

Switch modules are the most important component of the routing resources in FPGAs/FPICs. Previous works have shown that switch modules with higher routability result in better area performance for practical applications. We consider in this paper an FPGA/FPIC switch-module analysis problem: the inputs consist of a switch-module description and the number of nets required to be routed through the switch module; the question is to determine if there exists a feasible routing for the routing requirements on the switch module. As a fundamental problem for the analysis of switch modules, this problem is applicable to the design and routability evaluation of FPGA/FPIC switch modules and FPGA/FPIC routing. We present a network-flow-based approximation algorithm for this problem. Based on mathematical analyses, we show that this algorithm has provably good performance with the bounds 5 and 5/4 away from the optima for two types of switch modules, respectively. Extensive experiments show that this algorithm is highly accurate and runs very efficiently.
Design theory and implementation for low-power segmented bus systems
Authors: Jone W.-B. , Wang J. S. , Lu Hsueh-I , Hsu I. P. , Chen J.-Y.
Published: May 2003

The concept of bus segmentation has been proposed to minimize power consumption by reducing the switched capacitance on each bus [Chen et al. 1999]. This paper details the design theory and implementation issues of segmented bus systems. Based on a graph model and the Gomory-Hu cut-equivalent tree algorithm, a bus can be partitioned into several bus segments separated by pass transistors. Highly communicating devices are placed to adjacent bus segments, so most data communication can be achieved by switching a small portion of the bus segments. Thus, a significant amount of power consumption can be saved. It can be proved that the proposed bus partitioning method achieves an optimal solution. The concept of tree clustering is also proposed to merge bus segments for further power reduction. The design flow, which includes bus tree construction in the register-transfer level and bus segmentation cell placement and routing in the physical level, is discussed for design implementation. The technology has been applied to a μ-controller design, and simulation results by PowerMill show significant improvement in power consumption.
Floorplan representations
Authors: Yao Bo , Chen Hongyu , Cheng Chung-Kuan , Graham Ronald
Published: May 2003

Floorplan representation is a fundamental issue in designing a floorplanning algorithm. In this paper, we first present a twin binary trees structure for mosaic floorplans. It is a nonredundant representation. We then derive the exact number of configurations for mosaic floorplans and slicing floorplans. Finally, the relationships between various state-of-the-art floorplan representations are discussed and explored.
Transistor placement for noncomplementary digital VLSI cell synthesis
Authors: Riepe Michael A. , Sakallah Karem A.
Published: May 2003

There is an increasing need in modern VLSI designs for circuits implemented in high-performance logic families such as Cascode Voltage Switch Logic (CVSL), Pass Transistor Logic (PTL), and domino CMOS. Circuits designed in these noncomplementary ratioed logic families can be highly irregular, with complex diffusion sharing and nontrivial routing. Traditional digital cell layout synthesis tools derived from the highly stylized "functional cell" style break down when confronted with such circuit topologies. These cells require a full-custom, two-dimensional layout style which currently requires skilled manual design. In this work we propose a methodology for the synthesis of such complex noncomplementary digital cell layouts. We describe a new algorithm which permits the concurrent optimization of transistor chain placement and the ordering of the transistors within these diffusion-sharing chains. The primary mechanism for supporting this concurrent optimization is the placement of transistor subchains, diffusion-break-free components of the full transistor chains. When a chain is reordered, transistors may move from one subchain (and therefore one placement component) to another. We will demonstrate how this permits the chain ordering to be optimized for both intra-chain and inter-chain routing. We combine our placement algorithms with third-party routing and compaction tools, and present the results of a series of experiments which compare our technique with a commercial cell synthesis tool. These experiments make use of a new set of benchmark circuits which provide a rich sample of representative examples in several noncomplementary digital logic families.
On the properties of the input pattern fault model
Authors: Blanton R. D. (Shawn) , Hayes John P.
Published: May 2003

A review of traditional IC failure analysis techniques strongly indicates the need for fault models that directly analyze the function of circuit primitives. The input pattern (IP) fault model is a functional fault model that allows for both complete and partial functional verification of every circuit module, independent of the design level. We describe the IP fault model and provide a method for analyzing IP faults using standard single stuck-line- (SSL-) based fault simulators and test generation tools. The method is used to generate test sets that target the IP faults of the ISCAS85 benchmark circuits and a carry-lookahead adder. Improved IP fault coverage for the benchmarks and the adder is obtained by adding a small number of test patterns to tests that target only SSL faults. We also conducted fault simulation experiments that show IP test patterns are effective in detecting nontargeted faults such as bridging and transistor stuck-on faults. Finally, we discuss the notion of IP redundancy and show how large amounts of this redundancy exist in the benchmarks and in SSL-irredundant adder circuits.
Search space definition and exploration for nonuniform data reuse opportunities in data-dominant applications
Authors: Van Achteren Tanja , Catthoor Francky , Lauwereins Rudy , Deconinck Geert
Published: May 2003

Efficient exploitation of temporal locality in the memory accesses on array signals can have a very large impact on the power consumption in embedded data dominated applications. The effective use of an optimized custom memory hierarchy or a customized software controlled mapping on a predefined hierarchy is crucial for this. Only recently have effective systematic techniques to deal with this specific design step begun to appear. They are still limited in their exploration scope. In this paper we construct the design space by introducing three parameters which determine how and when copies are made between different levels in a hierarchy, and determine their impact on the total memory size, storage-related power consumption, and code complexity. Strategies are then established for an efficient exploration, such that cost-effective solutions for the memory size/power trade-off can be achieved. The effectiveness of the techniques is demonstrated for several real-life image processing algorithms.
Architecting families of software systems with process algebras
Authors: Bernardo Marco , Ciancarini Paolo , Donatiello Lorenzo
Published: May 2003

Software components can give rise to several kinds of architectural mismatches when assembled together in order to form a software system. A formal description of the architecture of the resulting component-based software system may help to detect such architectural mismatches and to single out the components that cause the mismatches. In this article, we concentrate on deadlock-related architectural mismatches arising from three different causes that we identify: incompatibility between two components due to a single interaction, incompatibility between two components due to the combination of several interactions, and lack of interoperability among a set of components forming a cyclic topology. We develop a process algebra-based architectural description language called PADL, which deals with all three causes through an architectural compatibility check and an architectural interoperability check relying on standard observational equivalences. The adequacy of the architectural compatibility check is assessed on a compressing proxy system, while the adequacy of the architectural interoperability check is assessed on a cruise control system. We then address the issue of scaling the architectural compatibility and interoperability checks to architectural styles through an extension of PADL. The formalization of an architectural style is complicated by the presence of two degrees of freedom within the set of instances of the style: variability of the internal behavior of the components and variability of the topology formed by the components. As a first step towards the solution of the problem, we propose an intermediate abstraction called architectural type, whose instances differ only for the internal behavior of their components. We define an efficient architectural conformity check based on a standard observational equivalence to verify whether an architecture is an instance of an architectural type. We show that all the architectures conforming to the same architectural type possess the same compatibility and interoperability properties.
Diagramming information structures using 3D perceptual primitives
Authors: Irani Pourang , Ware Colin
Published: May 2003

The class of diagrams known collectively as node-link diagrams are used extensively for many applications, including planning, communications networks, and computer software. The defining features of these diagrams are nodes, represented by a circle or rectangle connected by links usually represented by some form of line or arrow. We investigate the proposition that drawing three-dimensional shaded elements instead of using simple lines and outlines will result in diagrams that are easier to interpret. A set of guidelines for such diagrams is derived from perception theory and these collectively define the concept of the geon diagram. We also introduce a new substructure identification task for evaluating diagrams and use it to test the effectiveness of geon diagrams. The results from five experiments are reported. In the first three experiments geon diagrams are compared to Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams. The results show that substructures can be identified in geon diagrams with approximately half the errors and significantly faster. The results also show that geon diagrams can be recalled much more reliably than structurally equivalent UML diagrams. In the final two experiments geon diagrams are compared with diagrams having the same outline but not constructed with shaded solids. This is designed to specifically test the importance of using 3D shaded primitives. The results also show that substructures can be identified much more accurately with shaded components than with 2D outline equivalents and remembered more reliably. Implications for the design of diagrams are discussed.
The effects of information scent on visual search in the hyperbolic tree browser
Authors: Pirolli Peter , Card Stuart K. , Van Der Wege Mija M.
Published: May 2003

The Hyperbolic Tree is a focus + context information visualization that has been developed to amplify users' ability to navigate large tree-structured information systems. Information scent is a theoretical construct that captures one kind of interaction between task and display. Information scent is provided by task-relevant display cues, such as node labels on a tree that influence a user's visual search behavior and navigation decisions. An empirical Accuracy of Scent (AOS) score was developed to characterize a set of tasks that required users to find (Retrieval Tasks) or compare (Comparison Tasks) information in tree structures. Two experiments investigated the effect of information scent (tasks with different AOS scores) on performance with the Hyperbolic Tree Browser and the Microsoft Windows File Browser, which is a widely available conventional browser. Experiment 1 found no overall difference in performance time between the two browsers, but did reveal a marginal interaction of information scent with browser performance on Retrieval Tasks. On high AOS tasks the Hyperbolic showed faster performance, but on low AOS tasks the Windows File Browser showed faster performance. Experiment 2 focused only on the Retrieval tasks and revealed that Hyperbolic Tree users examined more tree nodes at a faster rate and visually searched through the tree hierarchy at a faster rate than users of a Windows File Browser lookalike, however, visual search paths were shortened in dense areas of the Hyperbolic Tree display when information scent was low. Two processes appear to affect visual search in the Hyperbolic display: strong information scent improves visual search, and the crowding of targets in a compressed region degrades visual search especially when there is weak information scent.
Experiments in social data mining
Authors: Amento Brian , Terveen Loren , Hill Will , Hix Deborah , Schulman Robert
Published: May 2003

Social data mining systemsenable people to share opinions and benefit from each other's experience. They do this by mining and redistributing information from computational records of social activity such as Usenet messages, system usage history, citations, or hyperlinks. Some general questions for evaluating such systems are: (1) is the extracted information valuable? and (2) do interfaces based on the information improve user task performance? We report here onTopicShop, a system that mines information from the structure and content of Web pages and provides an exploratory information workspace interface. We carried out experiments that yielded positive answers to both evaluation questions. First, a number of automatically computable features about Web sites do a good job of predicting expert quality judgments about sites. Second, compared to popular Web search interfaces, the TopicShop interface to this information lets users select significantly more high-quality sites, in less time and with less effort, and to organize the sites they select into personally meaningful collections more quickly and easily. We conclude by discussing how our results may be applied and considering how they touch on general issues concerning quality, expertise, and consensus.
QProber
Authors: Gravano Luis , Ipeirotis Panagiotis G. , Sahami Mehran
Published: May 2003

The contents of many valuable Web-accessible databases are only available through search interfaces and are hence invisible to traditional Web "crawlers." Recently, commercial Web sites have started to manually organize Web-accessible databases into Yahoo!-like hierarchical classification schemes. Here we introduce QProber, a modular system that automates this classification process by using a small number of query probes, generated by document classifiers. QProber can use a variety of types of classifiers to generate the probes. To classify a database, QProber does not retrieve or inspect any documents or pages from the database, but rather just exploits the number of matches that each query probe generates at the database in question. We have conducted an extensive experimental evaluation of QProber over collections of real documents, experimenting with different types of document classifiers and retrieval models. We have also tested our system with over one hundred Web-accessible databases. Our experiments show that our system has low overhead and achieves high classification accuracy across a variety of databases.
Local versus global link information in the Web
Authors: Calado Pável , Ribeiro-Neto Berthier , Ziviani Nivio , Moura Edleno , Silva Ilmério
Published: May 2003

Information derived from the cross-references among the documents
in a hyperlinked environment, usually referred to as link
information, is considered important since it can be used to
effectively improve document retrieval. Depending on the retrieval
strategy, link information can be local or global. Local link
information is derived from the set of documents returned as
answers to the current user query. Global link information is
derived from all the documents in the collection. In this work, we
investigate how the use of local link information compares to the
use of global link information. For the comparison, we run a series
of experiments using a large document collection extracted from the
Web. For our reference collection, the results indicate that the
use of local link information improves precision by 74%.
When global link information is used, precision improves by
35%. However, when only the first 10 documents in the
ranking are considered, the average gain in precision obtained with
the use of global link information is higher than the gain obtained
with the use of local link information. This is an interesting
result since it provides insight and justification for the use of
global link information in major Web search engines, where users
are mostly interested in the first 10 answers. Furthermore, global
information can be computed in the background, which allows
speeding up query processing.
Early user---system interaction for database selection in massive domain-specific online environments
Authors: Conrad Jack G. , Claussen Joanne R. S.
Published: May 2003

The continued growth of very large data environments such as Westlaw and Dialog, in addition to the World Wide Web, increases the importance of effective and efficient database selection and searching. Current research focuses largely on completely autonomous and automatic selection, searching, and results merging in distributed environments. This fully automatic approach has significant deficiencies, including reliance upon thresholds below which databases with relevant documents are not searched (compromised recall). It also merges documents, often from disparate data sources that users may have discarded before their source selection task proceeded (diluted precision). We examine the impact that early user interaction can have on the process of database selection. After analyzing thousands of real user queries, we show that precision can be significantly increased when queries are categorized by the users themselves, then handled effectively by the system. Such query categorization strategies may eliminate limitations of fully automated query processing approaches. Our system harnesses the WIN search engine, a sibling to INQUERY, run against one or more authority sources when search is required. We compare our approach to one that does not recognize or utilize distinct features associated with user queries. We show that by avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach that restricts the role users can play in information discovery, database selection effectiveness can be appreciably improved.
Simulation-based minimization
Authors: Bustan Doron , Grumberg Orna
Published: May 2003

We present a minimization algorithm that receives a Kripke structure
M
and returns the smallest structure that is simulation equivalent to
M
. The
simulation equivalence
relation is weaker than bisimulation but stronger than the simulation preorder. It strongly preserves ACTL and LTL (as sublogics of ACTL*).We show that every structure
M
has a unique-up-to-isomorphism
reduced
structure that is simulation equivalent to
M
and smallest in size. Our Minimizing Algorithm constructs this reduced structure. It first constructs the quotient structure for
M
, then eliminates transitions to little brothers, and finally deletes unreachable states.Since the first step of the algorithm is based on the simulation preorder over
M
, it has maximal space requirements. To reduce them, we present the Partitioning Algorithm, which constructs the quotient structure for
M
without ever building the simulation preorder. The Partitioning Algorithm has improved space complexity, but its time complexity might have worse.
On proving left termination of constraint logic programs
Authors: Mesnard Fred , Ruggieri Salvatore
Published: May 2003

The Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) Scheme merges logic programming with constraint solving over predefined domains. In this article, we study proof methods for universal left termination of constraint logic programs. We provide a sound and complete characterization of left termination for ideal CLP languages which generalizesacceptabilityof logic programs. The characterization is then refined to the notion ofpartial acceptability, which is well suited for automatic modular inference. We describe a theoretical framework for automation of the approach, which is implemented. For nonideal CLP languages and without any assumption on their incomplete constraint solvers, even the most basic sound termination criterion from logic programming does not lift. We focus on a specific system, namely CLP(R), by proposing some additional conditions that make (partial) acceptability sound.
Logics of metric spaces
Authors: Kutz Oliver , Wolter Frank , Sturm Holger , Suzuki Nobu-Yuki , Zakharyaschev Michael
Published: May 2003

We investigate the expressive power and computational properties of two different types of languages intended for speaking about distances. First, we consider a first-order language FM the two-variable fragment of which turns out to be undecidable in the class of distance spaces validating the triangular inequality as well as in the class of all metric spaces. Yet, this two-variable fragment is decidable in various weaker classes of distance spaces. Second, we introduce a variable-free modal language MS that, when interpreted in metric spaces, has the same expressive power as the two-variable fragment of FM. We determine natural and expressive fragments of MS which are decidable in various classes of distance spaces validating the triangular inequality, in particular, the class of all metric spaces.
A framework for using insurance for cyber-risk management
Authors: Gordon Lawrence A. , Loeb Martin P. , Sohail Tashfeen
Published: May 2003

Seeking to protect an organization against a new form of business losses.
Spatial data integration in a collaborative design framework
Authors: Pinto Gustavo da Rocha Barreto , Medeiros Sergio Palma J. , de Souza Jano Moreira , Strauch Julia Celia Mercedes , Marques Carlete Rosana Ferreira
Published: May 2003

Building an extended architecture to eliminate boundaries to accessing and sharing data.
Third-generation information architecture
Authors: Evernden Roger , Evernden Elaine
Published: May 2003

Addressing the imbalance favoring technology over information structure and design, it redirects corporate information strategy toward exploiting information as a corporate resource.
Deficiencies in LDAP when used to support PKI
Authors: Chadwick David
Published: May 2003

Problems arise when a protocol initially developed to simplify access to a distributed directory failed to take into account all the uses the directory was originally intended for.
Finding your balance in the products and services debate
Authors: Cusumano Michael
Published: May 2003

Software companies must balance product and service revenues to survive bad times and grow rapidly in good times.
The missing customer
Authors: Denning Peter J. , Dunham Robert
Published: May 2003

We can no longer afford to treat our customers as abstract entities. They are real people with real concerns seeking our professional assistance.
Bounty hunting in the patent base
Authors: Besaha Bob
Published: May 2003

Like Robin Hood and his band of merry men, patent bounty hunters and software agent communities may one day patrol the patent kingdom.
Introduction
Authors: Vertegaal Roel
Published: May 2003

If there was a Moore's Law for user interfaces, it would state that the
number
of computers per user will double every two years. In the past four decades, we have moved from many users sharing a single mainframe computer through command line interfaces, to a single user with a personal computer using a graphical user interface (GUI). Today, increasing numbers of users are surrounded by
multiple
ubiquitous computing devices, such as BlackBerries, PDAs, and cell phones. As our devices connect to a global wireless network, we become members of a 24-hour global society---one where we are always connected, and always on.
What's in the eyes for attentive input
Authors: Zhai Shumin
Published: May 2003

Eye-tracking systems hold some of the greatest potential among AUIs. Here, two systems that focus on eye gazing demonstrate how this simple form of visual attention can perform a level of common interactive tasks.
Interacting with groups of computers
Authors: Shell Jeffrey S. , Selker Ted , Vertegaal Roel
Published: May 2003

AUIs recognize human attention in order to respect and react to how users distribute their attention in technology-laden environments.
Attentive agents
Authors: Maglio Paul P. , Campbell Christopher S.
Published: May 2003

In the anticipated symbiotic partnership, men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking.

J.C.R. Licklider, 1960
A foundation for designing deadlock-free routing algorithms in wormhole networks
Authors: Jayasimha D. N. , Schwiebert Loren , Manivannan D. , May Jeff A.
Published: May 2003

This article provides necessary and sufficient conditions for deadlock-free unicast and multicast routing with the
path-based
routing model in interconnection networks that use the wormhole switching technique. The theory is developed around three central concepts:
channel waiting, False Resource Cycles
, and
valid destination sets
. The first two concepts are suitable extensions to those developed for unicast routing by two authors of this article; the third concept has been developed by Lin and Ni. The necessary and sufficient conditions relax the requirements for deadlock-free routing, compared to techniques that provide only a sufficient condition. These necessary and sufficient conditions can be applied in a straightforward manner to prove deadlock freedom of newly developed adaptive routing algorithms for collective communication, which in turn will help in developing efficient and correct routing algorithms. The latter point is illustrated by developing two routing algorithms for multicast communication on 2D mesh architectures. The first algorithm uses fewer resources (channels) than an algorithm proposed in the literature but achieves the same adaptiveness. The second algorithm provides fully adaptive routing for both unicast and multicast messages.
Planning biped locomotion using motion capture data and probabilistic roadmaps
Authors: Choi Min Gyu , Lee Jehee , Shin Sung Yong
Published: May 2003

Typical high-level directives for locomotion of human-like characters are useful for interactive games and simulations as well as for off-line production animation. In this paper, we present a new scheme for planning natural-looking locomotion of a biped figure to facilitate rapid motion prototyping and task-level motion generation. Given start and goal positions in a virtual environment, our scheme gives a sequence of motions to move from the start to the goal using a set of live-captured motion clips. Based on a novel combination of probabilistic path planning and hierarchical displacement mapping, our scheme consists of three parts: roadmap construction, roadmap search, and motion generation. We randomly sample a set of valid footholds of the biped figure from the environment to construct a directed graph, called a roadmap, that guides the locomotion of the figure. Every edge of the roadmap is associated with a live-captured motion clip. Augmenting the roadmap with a posture transition graph, we traverse it to obtain the sequence of input motion clips and that of target footprints. We finally adapt the motion sequence to the constraints specified by the footprint sequence to generate a desired locomotion.
An efficient instantiation algorithm for simulating radiant energy transfer in plant models
Authors: Soler Cyril , Sillion François X. , Blaise Frédéric , Dereffye Philippe
Published: May 2003

We describe a complete lighting simulation system tailored for the difficult case of vegetation scenes. Our algorithm is based on hierarchical instantiation for radiosity and precise phase function modeling. It allows efficient calculations both in terms of computation and memory resources. We provide an in-depth description and study of the instantiation-based radiosity technique and we address the problems related to generating and managing phase functions of plant structures, as needed by the instantiation process. We present results demonstrating the high performance of the hierarchical instantiation algorithm and we describe two examples of applications: rendering of large vegetation scenes and plant growth simulation. Other applications of our system range from landscape simulation to agronomical and agricultural studies, and to the design of virtual plants responding to their environment.
Image-based reconstruction of spatial appearance and geometric detail
Authors: Lensch Hendrik P. A. , Kautz Jan , Goesele Michael , Heidrich Wolfgang , Seidel Hans-Peter
Published: May 2003

Real-world objects are usually composed of a number of different materials that often show subtle changes even within a single material. Photorealistic rendering of such objects requires accurate measurements of the reflection properties of each material, as well as the spatially varying effects. We present an image-based measuring method that robustly detects the different materials of real objects and fits an average bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) to each of them. In order to model local changes as well, we project the measured data for each surface point into a basis formed by the recovered BRDFs leading to a truly spatially varying BRDF representation. Real-world objects often also have fine geometric detail that is not represented in an acquired mesh. To increase the detail, we derive normal maps even for non-Lambertian surfaces using our measured BRDFs. A high quality model of a real object can be generated with relatively little input data. The generated model allows for rendering under arbitrary viewing and lighting conditions and realistically reproduces the appearance of the original object.
Changing of the guard
Authors: Weiss Aaron
Published: May 2003

Single-purpose computing products are threatening the dominance of the desktop PC.
Minding the store
Authors: Satchell Stephen
Published: May 2003

Data storage has become serious business. Here's a look at current options for the weary data-manager.
Onward and upward
Authors: Fowler Dennis
Published: May 2003

Expect the unexpected. The only constant is change. Never mind the state of the economy. Even though IT spending is in a slump, there's an irresistible pressure driving us. As one sector staggers, another moves forward. New technologies emerge, new uses are found for "old" technology, and new approaches to old ideas are tested.
Talk is cheap
Authors: Schindler Esther
Published: May 2003

Online communities are more than hobbyist sites where consumers gather. Increasingly, they're becoming a business necessity.
Who do you want to control your living room?
Authors: Treese Win
Published: May 2003

A decade ago, the technology world was in the midst of a raging debate over who was going to control the data connections and content into the home. Would it be the cable television companies? Or the telephone companies? Both industries had a vision of how they would be dominant, each providing news, information, entertainment, and shopping over their private communications network. Both had a presence in the vast majority of homes in the United States, and both were offering new technologies to expand the services they offered.
Convenience rules
Authors: Weiss Aaron
Published: May 2003

In Bill Bryson's collection of essays, "I'm a Stranger Here Myself," he recounts the many differences between his 20-year adopted life in the United Kingdom and his return to his birth country, the United States. A recurring theme in Bryson's observations is convenience: The United States is a society whose marketplace is built around convenience, from drive-through food and pharmacies to 24-hour supermarkets. These are now commonplace. A visit to towns where local grocers may close at six or eight p.m. on a weekday comes as a rude shock. Convenience also drives the exploding market for computer-driven products designed to perform only one or two tasks.
Rainbow usability
Authors: Norton Diane
Published: May 2003

Usability in developing countries presents special challenges. Using her own South Africa as an example, Diane Norton examines the issues of diversity in "rainbow nations" and questions whether designing to accommodate the associated differences in understanding technology is really wiser than seeking to eliminate them.
--Elizabeth Buie
Cultures, literacy, and the web
Authors: Walton Marion , Vukovic Vera
Published: May 2003

Cecil Rhodes wanted to build a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo in order to subjugate the continent. Now we want to build an information super-highway from Cape to Cairo which will liberate the continent [11].
Adopting information technology as a first step in design
Authors: de Souza Clarisse S. , Prates Raquel O. , Barbosa Simone D. J.
Published: May 2003

Lessons learned from working with Brazilian social volunteers
Software development method tailoring at Motorola
Authors: Fitzgerald Brian , Russo Nancy L. , O'Kane Tom
Published: May 2003

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to be added but when there is nothing left to take away.
---Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Content management for electronic music distribution
Authors: Pachet François
Published: May 2003

Two approaches to distributing music on the Net---the hard way and the easy way---compete and complement each other in the quest for meaningful musical metadata.
Bringing non-adopters along
Authors: Brown Susan A. , Venkatesh Viswanath
Published: May 2003

Until holdout buyers are convinced a PC will operate like a workhorse home appliance, PC sales will continue to stall.
Innovative web use to learn about consumer behavior and online privacy
Authors: Earp Julia B. , Baumer David
Published: May 2003

Consumers are more protective of their personal data than most e-marketers probably ever expected. Indeed, any willingness by consumers to provide certain information online greatly depends on who's doing the asking.
Building customer trust in mobile commerce
Authors: Siau Keng , Shen Zixing
Published: May 2003

Gaining customer trust in m-commerce is a daunting process, extending from initial trust formation to continuous trust development---but it can be done.
Anonymizing the net
Authors: Berghel Hal , Womack Kim
Published: May 2003

Sanitizing packets for fun and profit.
Legal and technological efforts to lock up content threaten innovation
Authors: Grove Jeff
Published: May 2003

Legislation poses greater restrictions on the very freedom on which the Net was founded.
Getting real
Authors: McGinity Meg
Published: May 2003

Providers have a new boss: The customer.
Introduction
Authors: Mulligan Deirdre K.
Published: May 2003

The fair-use exceptions in U.S. copyright law are being undermined by rules programmed into consumer electronics and computers that reflect the exclusive interest of rights holders alone.
Fair use, DRM, and trusted computing
Authors: Erickson John S.
Published: May 2003

How can DRM architectures protect historical copyright limitations like fair use while ensuring the security and property interests of copyright owners?
DRM {and, or, vs.} the law
Authors: Samuelson Pamela
Published: May 2003

The main purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright infringement but to change consumer expectations about what they are entitled to do with digital content.
Fair use by design in the European copyright directive of 2001
Authors: Dusollier Séverine
Published: May 2003

Is it an empty promise, privileging and preserving author interests at the expense of the public goal of safeguarding fair-use exceptions?
A skeptical view of DRM and fair use
Authors: Felten Edward W.
Published: May 2003

Don't expect DRM to ever be smart enough to distinguish fair use from copyright infringement.
Encouraging recognition of fair uses in DRM systems
Authors: Fox Barbara L. , LaMacchia Brian A.
Published: May 2003

Create subsets of fair uses---safe harbors---that are allowed without the explicit permission of copyright holders.
A survey of processors with explicit multithreading
Authors: Ungerer Theo , Robič Borut , Šilc Jurij
Published: May 2003

Hardware multithreading is becoming a generally applied technique in the next generation of microprocessors. Several multithreaded processors are announced by industry or already into production in the areas of high-performance microprocessors, media, and network processors.A multithreaded processor is able to pursue two or more threads of control in parallel within the processor pipeline. The contexts of two or more threads of control are often stored in separate on-chip register sets. Unused instruction slots, which arise from latencies during the pipelined execution of single-threaded programs by a contemporary microprocessor, are filled by instructions of other threads within a multithreaded processor. The execution units are multiplexed between the thread contexts that are loaded in the register sets.Underutilization of a superscalar processor due to missing instruction-level parallelism can be overcome by simultaneous multithreading, where a processor can issue multiple instructions from multiple threads each cycle. Simultaneous multithreaded processors combine the multithreading technique with a wide-issue superscalar processor to utilize a larger part of the issue bandwidth by issuing instructions from different threads simultaneously.Explicit multithreaded processors are multithreaded processors that apply processes or operating system threads in their hardware thread slots. These processors optimize the throughput of multiprogramming workloads rather than single-thread performance. We distinguish these processors from implicit multithreaded processors that utilize thread-level speculation by speculatively executing compiler- or machine-generated threads of control that are part of a single sequential program.This survey paper explains and classifies the explicit multithreading techniques in research and in commercial microprocessors.