ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of the FACOM ALPHA Lisp machine
Authors: M. Yuhara, A. Hattori, M. Niwa, M. Kishimoto, H. Hayashi
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th annual international symposium on Computer architecture (1986)

The FACOM ALPHA is the first and only commercially dedicated processor for Lisp and Prolog manufactured in Japan. This paper discusses the evaluation of the FACOM ALPHA for Lisp execution when compared with a general-purpose computer. The CPU use rate of machine instructions and the utilization ratio of the hardware resources are discussed. This paper also explains the interaction between the garbage collector and the virtual memory system, which improves system response time.
DPUP: a distributed processing utilities package
Authors: Timothy J Gardner
Venue: ACM SIGNUM Newsletter (1986)

DPUP is a library of utilities that support distributed concurrent computing on a local area network of computers. The library is built upon the interprocess communication facilities in Berkeley Unix 4.2bsd. Thus it will run on any network, connected by an Ethernet, where each computer runs a version of the Unix operating system that supports the Berkeley Unix interprocess communication facilities. DPUP supports two models of distributed concurrent computation, a master-slave model based upon stream sockets, and a broadcast model based upon datagram sockets. With each model, facilities for creating and terminating remote processes, establishing communications between them, and sending and receiving data between these processes are provided. This paper describes the facilities provided in DPUP and gives examples of their use.
Attacking the process migration bottleneck
Authors: E. Zayas
Venue: ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (1987)

Moving the contents of a large virtual address space stands out as the bottleneck in process migration, dominating all other costs and growing with the size of the program. Copy-on-reference shipment is shown to successfully attack this problem in the Accent distributed computing environment. Logical memory transfers at migration time with individual on-demand page fetches during remote execution allows relocations to occur up to one thousand times faster than with standard techniques. While the amount of allocated memory varies by four orders of magnitude across the processes studied, their transfer times are practically constant. The number of bytes exchanged between machines as a result of migration and remote execution drops by an average of 58% in the representative processes studied, and message-handling costs are cut by over 47% on average. The assumption that processes touch a relatively small part of their memory while executing is shown to be correct, helping to account for these figures. Accent's copy-on-reference facility can be used by any application wishing to take advantage of lazy shipment of data.
Automatic Pattern Recognition: A Study of the Probability of Error
Authors: Luc Devroye
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (1988)

A test sequence is used to select the best rule from a class of discrimination rules defined in terms of the training sequence. The Vapnik-Chervonenkis and related inequalities are used to obtain distribution-free bounds on the difference between the probability of error of the selected rule and the probability of error of the best rule in the given class. The bounds are used to prove the consistency and asymptotic optimality for several popular classes, including linear discriminators, nearest-neighbor rules, kernel-based rules, histogram rules, binary tree classifiers, and Fourier series classifiers. In particular, the method can be used to choose the smoothing parameter in kernel-based rules, to choose k in the k-nearest neighbor rule, and to choose between parametric and nonparametric rules.
The Image Prism: A Device for Rotating and Mirroring Bitmap Images
Authors: Cary Kornfeld
Venue: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (1987)

It is sometimes necessary to orthogonally reorient bitmap images. Traditional techniques for doing so are difficult to implement on classically organized bitmap memory systems because of their raster-scan ordering of images. In some cases, this can require several hundred times more processor activity, and many times more memory references, than are required to bitblt an image. This article describes a new bitmap graphic hardware component, the "image prism" which enables us to implement all orthogonal transformations with minimum processor and memory activity. A new algorithm, which is significantly faster than previously known techniques, is outlined. Along with the image prism, this algorithm performs all mirroring and 90-degree image rotations in time and memory activity equivalent to bitblt'ing an image. A VLSI implementation of the prism is also described.
Parallelism and algorithms for algebraic manipulation: current work
Authors: Carl G. Ponder
Venue: ACM SIGSAM Bulletin (1988)

We outline recent results relating to the use of parallelism for solving problems in algebraic manipulation. Practical issues are discussed.
Concurrency control performance modeling: alternatives and implications
Authors: Rakesh Agrawal, Michael J. Carey, Miron Livny
Venue: ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) (1987)

A number of recent studies have examined the performance of concurrency control algorithms for database management systems. The results reported to date, rather than being definitive, have tended to be contradictory. In this paper, rather than presenting &ldquo;yet another algorithm performance study,&rdquo; we critically investigate the assumptions made in the models used in past studies and their implications. We employ a fairly complete model of a database environment for studying the relative performance of three different approaches to the concurrency control problem under a variety of modeling assumptions. The three approaches studied represent different extremes in how transaction conflicts are dealt with, and the assumptions addressed pertain to the nature of the database system's resources, how transaction restarts are modeled, and the amount of information available to the concurrency control algorithm about transactions' reference strings. We show that differences in the underlying assumptions explain the seemingly contradictory performance results. We also address the question of how realistic the various assumptions are for actual database systems.
The cryptographic security of truncated linearly related variables
Authors: J Hastad, A Shamir
Venue: Proceedings of the seventeenth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing (1985)

In this paper we describe a polynomial time algorithm for computing the values of variables x1, &hellip; xk when some of their bits and some linear relationships between them are known. The algorithm is essentially optimal in its use of information in the sense that it can be applied as soon as the values of the xi become uniquely determined by the constraints. Its cryptanalytic significance is demonstrated by two applications: breaking linear congruential generators whose outputs are truncated, and breaking Blum's protocol for exchanging secrets.
Towards functional programming in Prolog
Authors: Antonio L. Furtado
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1988)

The integration of functional and logic programming is attempted, using the strategy to add a functional component to Prolog. The component takes the form of extended computable expressions, allowing user-defined functions and operators as well as a number of functional forms. The problem of evaluating expressions combining functions and predicates is investigated. Examples are provided to illustrate the discussion. The paper includes a prototype implementation.
Realistic student projects
Authors: William J. Joel
Venue: Proceedings of the eighteenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (1987)

When a student performs a project, under the supervision of a faculty member, it is important that the student feel that the project is of merit and reflects both the student's capabilities as well as the student's interests. All too often the project is fine unto itself but has no connection to the student's other studies or background except that the project falls in the same major field.Therefore it is important to create a project, in cooperation with a student, that is not only challenging in itself but also relies heavily upon the student's previous coursework. It should mimic project work as performed outside the academic sphere in that it yields a useable result.Through the use of techniques such as a contract for project grade, outlining attainable goals agreed upon by both the student and the instructor, the student gains an understanding of the project in relation to the student's entire course of studies, as well as future endeavors.
Jasmine: a software system modelling facility
Authors: Keith Marzullo, Douglas Wiebe
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1987)

Jasmine is a programming-in-the-large system designed by the authors at Xerox Information Systems Division. Jasmine consists of workstation tools and network services that help programmers develop, release, and maintain large software systems. Jasmine has three primary parts: (1) system models that describe the structure and versions of software, (2) context-relative, distributed naming of software components (supporting replication), and (3) a collection of tools that use (1) and (2) to manipulate software systems. We present an overview of these parts of Jasmine.
A new approach of stuck-at fault simulation for synchronous digital systems
Authors: Leonard J. Tung, Mark Mills
Venue: Proceedings of the 20th annual symposium on Simulation (1987)

A new approach is proposed for stuck-at fault simulations. Stuck-at fault models in the approach are developed via the component connection model. Based on the approach, a simulation program is designed. A combinational logic circuit is simulated and the test sets are generated using the program.
On the successful application of software reliability modeling
Authors: R. P. Ejzak
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

In the fall of 1985, the ALPHA project was faced with planning a major new release (and the first commercial release) of their product (ALPHA, of course), which was earmarked for significant new external customers. ALPHA is a collection of source control, modification request tracking, and large product construction tools that make up a software development environment that runs on UNIX&reg; System V. It consists of dozens of UNIX user-level commands used by software developers, administrators, planners and others involved in the software development of small through very large projects. Approximately ten percent of the non-commentary source lines in ALPHA are new or changed for this release. When the ALPHA project decided to try to apply software reliability modeling (SRM) to this new release, they had one primary goal in mind; to aid project management in evaluating the quality of the final release. A secondary goal was to monitor and evaluate the techniques used to apply software reliability modeling as well as the characteristics of the project being modeled to help further our understanding of how to apply SRM successfully in future projects. We decided early in the project to use the logarithmic Poisson execution time model for software reliability measurement defined in [1] and [2].
Constraint-based tools for building user interfaces
Authors: Alan Borning, Robert Duisberg
Venue: ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (1986)

A constraint describes a relation that must be maintained. Constraints provide a useful mechanism to aid in the construction of interactive graphical user interfaces. They can be used to maintain consistency between data and a view of the data, to maintain consistency among multiple views, to specify layout, and to specify relations between events and responses for describing animations of interactive systems and event-driven simulations. Object-oriented techniques for constraint representation and satisfaction are presented, and a range of examples that demonstrate the practical use of static and temporal constraints for such purposes is presented. These examples include animations of algorithms and physics simulations, and constructing user-interface elements such as file browsers, views onto statistical data, and an interactive monitor or a simulated operating system.
An example of stepwise refinement of distributed programs: quiescence detection
Authors: Mani Chandy, Jayadev Misra
Venue: ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) (1986)

We propose a methodology for the development of concurrent programs and apply it to an important class of problems: quiescence detection. The methodology is based on a novel view of programs. A key feature of the methodology is the separation of concerns between the core problem to be solved and details of the forms of concurrency employed in the target architecture and programming language. We begin development of concurrent programs by ignoring issues dealing with concurrency and introduce such concerns in manageable doses. The class of problems solved includes termination and deadlock detection.
Petri net-based object-oriented modelling of distributed systems
Authors: Giorgio Bruno, Alessandra Balsamo
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1986)

This paper presents an object-oriented approach for building distributed systems. An example taken from the field of computer integrated manufacturing systems is taken as a guideline. According to this approach a system is built up through three steps: control and synchronization aspects for each class of objects are treated first using PROT nets, which are a high-level extension to Petri nets; then data are introduced specifying the internal states of the objects as well as the messages they send each other; finally the connections between the objects are introduced by means of a data flow diagram between classes. The implementation uses ADA as the target language, exploiting its tasking and structuring mechanisms. The flexibility of the approach and the possibility of using a knowledge-based user interface promote rapid prototyping and reusability.
A System for Generating Language-Oriented Editors
Authors: Takao Tenma, Hideaki Tsubotani, Minoru Tanaka, Tadao Ichikawa
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1988)

The authors seek to establish a simple and flexible framework for internal representation of language-dependent information, and the behavior of language-oriented tools for user's operations. They present a system for generating language-oriented editors based on object-oriented concepts. Features of the target language are represented as classes and their relations. A program is represented as an abstract syntax tree. Each node in the tree belongs to a node class. For generating more advanced editors, probes, internal-classes, and gates are incorporated into the system. The system generates a flexible and easily extendable language-oriented editor from a target language description in a highly modularized fashion by using the description language which the system provides.
Traces for hardware verification
Authors: Roger Stokes
Venue: ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News (1986)

Traces are histories of signal values. Traces can be used for describing and formally reasoning about digital circuits, at the register-transfer level where there is synchronous logic. Two proofs are given for an example circuit, and proved with the aid of a mechanical theorem-prover. The first proof is of correctness - that the required behaviour is a consequence of internal structure. The second proof is of consistency - that the given structure can in fact exist.
Understanding and Automating Algorithm Design
Authors: Elaine Kant
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1985)

Algorithm design is a challenging intellectual activity that provides a rich source of observation and a test domain for a theory of problem-solving behavior. This paper describes a theory of the algorithm design process based on observations of human design and also outlines a framework for automatic design. The adaptation of the theory of human design to a framework for automation in the DESIGNER system helps us understand human design better, and the implementation process helps validate the framework. Issues discussed in this paper include the problem spaces used for design, the loci of knowledge and problem-solving power, and the relationship to other methods of algorithm design and to automatic programming as a whole.
A comparison of concurrent languages: a class project
Authors: Verlynda Dobbs
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1987)

This paper describes a class project for a graduate level course in systems programming which emphasizes concurrency issues.
Challenges in applying artificial intelligence methodologies to military operations
Authors: L F Arrowood, M R Hilliard, H L Hwang, M L Emrich
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM SIGART international symposium on Methodologies for intelligent systems (1986)

Artificial intelligence methodologies are being applied to support decision making at all levels of military operations. Applications being studied include assessing force readiness, reliability and capability; planning complex missions; and integrating data from multiple sources. Unclassified research is addressing the considerable challenges presented by supporting such decision making in time-sensitive environments. We examine current efforts to utilize artificial intelligence in the military, discuss difficulties which need to be resolved before intelligent systems can become fully operational, and identify potential applications of artificial intelligence for the Military Airlift Command of the U. S. Air Force.
A typology of management information systems users and its implications for user information satisfaction research
Authors: Joseph C Davis
Venue: Proceedings of the twenty-first annual conference on Computer personnel research (1985)

User Information Satisfaction (UIS) has emerged as the major surrogate for the effectiveness of Management Information Systems (MIS) in organizations. While the concepts of &ldquo;information&rdquo; and &ldquo;satisfaction&rdquo; have been researched extensively, we argue that our understanding of the MIS user is inadequate. This inadequacy is compounded by the rapidly changing information technology which has tended to blur the traditional distinctions between users and non-users and is rendering obsolete the implicit assumption of the functionally homogeneous user underlying a wide spectrum of studies. Based on a detailed survey of the literature, we propose a typology of users consisting of three categories: direct user, autonomous user, and indirect user. Direct user is someone who interfaces directly with the computer-based information systems, working with one or more systems, largely designed, implemented, and maintained by the MIS/Data Processing (DP) department or receives periodic computer reports. Autonomous user develops and uses simple systems and/or application programs he or she needs, either individually or in small groups of users. This class of users possesses some amount of computing skills and makes use of a variety of tools such as general purpose, commercial software, user-friendly operating systems, personal computers (PCs), workstations and higher level programming languages. The third category of users&mdash;indirect users&mdash;are typically managers in the higher levels of the organizational hierarchy whose interface with the computer is mediated by staff analysts or assistants. A certain degree of overlap across the categories is to be expected. The implications of the typology for UIS research in particular and MIS research and practice in general are discussed.
Implementing Watson's algorithm in three dimensions
Authors: D A Field
Venue: Proceedings of the second annual symposium on Computational geometry (1986)

Computer generated solid models must be decomposed into finite element meshes for analysis by the Finite Element Method. To enable decompositions of complex solid models, tetrahedra are employed and to avoid badly skewed tetrahedra for finite element analysis, a Delaunay triangulation is created by Watson's Algorithm [6]. Certain two-dimensional properties of Delaunay triangulations do not extend to the three-dimensional implementation of Watson's Algorithm. Furthermore, serious numerical difficulties can occur due to the nonrandomness of triangulation points, Nonrandomness imposed by the geometry can be ameliorated by using tetrahedral decompositions of icosahedra to fill space. A measure of the quality of tetrahedra is proposed and used to identify undesirable tetrahedra created due to point distributions and geometric constraints of solid models. Postprocessing Delaunay triangulations to rectify undesirable tetrahedra is briefly discussed.
Testability Conditions for Bilateral Arrays of Combinational Cells
Authors: Anastasios Vergis, Kenneth Steiglitz
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1986)

Two sets of conditions are derived that make one- dimensional bilateral arrays of combinational cells testable for single faulty cells. The test sequences are preset and, in the worst case, grow quadratically with the size of the array. Conditions for testability in linear time are also derived. The basic cell can operate at the bit or at the word level. An implementation of FIR filters using (systolic) one-dimensional bilateral arrays of cells, which can be considered combinational at the word level, is presented as an example. A straightforward generalization for the two- dimensional case is made; a systolic array used for matrix multiplication is presented as an example for this case.
User development of applications: a study of a model of success
Authors: Suzanne Rivard, Sid L Huff
Venue: Proceedings of the twenty-first annual conference on Computer personnel research (1985)

Development of computer-based applications by end users themselves is a new phenomenon that is gaining rapid acceptance today. A field study of user development of computer-based applications (UDA) was carried out in ten large Canadian business enterprises. A research model representing the key success factors for UDA activities was developed from the available literature. In-depth interviews of users and DP managers in the firms were carried out to evaluate the model. A revised, improved version of the model emerged from those interviews. This paper presents and discusses the two versions of the model.
An approach to integrating expert system components into production software
Authors: W. B. Frakes, C. J. Fox
Venue: Proceedings of the 1987 Fall Joint Computer Conference on Exploring technology: today and tomorrow (1987)

Expert systems techniques are a powerful technology with many potential applications such as the enhancement of software tools. It can, however, be difficult to incorporate expert systems techniques into production software. We are attempting to solve this problem using CEST (C expert systems tools). CEST will consist of (1) a library of inference engines implemented as C functions and callable from C programs, and (2) a workbench of knowledge engineering support tools for building, analyzing, and maintaining knowledge bases. The first tool in CEST is AVIEN a backwards chaining inference engine implemented a set of C functions.