ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
An experience in teaching &ldquo;cobol?&rdquo; to graduate engineers
Authors: Dale Bremmer, Bart Childs
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1977)

Texas A M University was involved for ten years in a program to train civilian engineers for the US Army. The engineer, the program's product, was to be capable of moving into positions of management and middle management within the civilian employment force of the Army. Most of the participants held various undergraduate degrees in engineering, science, or mathematics, and a few held degrees in technology or business. The structure and tenure of the program made it feasible for the participants to earn a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering. Once on the job, many of the engineers found they were faced with large data file manipulation and information retrieval tasks. To many, this meant time consuming efforts and often additional training or help from other departments. The authors believe that some of the engineer's job frustrations were inherent in the manner in which the computer's growth and application has influenced the pedagogy of computer courses related to engineering curricula. The authors also believe they have found one solution to the problem within the confines of the above mentioned Army civilian engineer training program.
Simulating the operation of a logistics system
Authors: P. Dulchinos, J. Hill
Venue: Proceedings of the second conference on Applications of simulations (1968)

This paper deals with the flow of replacement units through a supply system. It simulates, utilizing Monte Carlo techniques, the logistics flow of these replacement units through the various echelons of support. The operating echelon generates demands on the supply system. These demands cause a flow of requisitions and failed units up through the system. Subsequently, a return of good replacement units comes back to the operational level. The logistics model generates the turn around or reaction time for each replacement unit taking into account all of the delays occurring at each level of the supply system.
The optimization of user programs for an Algebraic Manipulation System
Authors: P. D. Pearce, R. J. Hicks
Venue: Proceedings of the fourth ACM symposium on Symbolic and algebraic computation (1981)

This paper attempts to list some optimising transformations for user programs for an Algebraic Manipulation System. To investigate optimisation of both computer time and space, a general purpose system REDUCE has been chosen for study. The optimising transformations may be applied manually. However, the authors hope to automate the process. Examples using various optimisations are included and clearly show the benefit of the process.
Types, distribution, and test and correction times for programming errors
Authors: M. L. Shooman, M. I. Bolsky
Venue: Proceedings of the international conference on Reliable software (1975)

In order to develop some basic information on software errors, an experiment in collecting data on types and frequencies of such errors was conducted at Bell Laboratories. The paper reports the results of this experiment, whose objectives were to: (1) Develop and utilize a set of terms for describing possible types of errors, their nature, and their frequency; (2) Perform a pilot study to determine if data of the type reported in this paper could be collected; (3) Investigate the error density and its correspondence to predictions from previous data reported; (4) Develop data on how resources are expended in debugging. A program of approximately 4K machine instructions (final size) was chosen. Programmers were asked to fill out for each error, in addition to the regular Trouble Report/Correction Report (TR/CR) form, a special Supplementary TR/CR form for the purposes of this experiment. Sixty-three TR/CR and Supplementary forms were completed during the Test and Integration phase of the program. In general, the data collected were felt to be accurate enough for the purposes of the analyses presented. The 63 forms represented a little over 1-1/2% of the total number of machine instructions of the program. (In good agreement with the 1% to 2% range noted in previous studies.) It was discovered that a large percentage of the errors was found by hand processing (without the aid of a computer). This method was found to be much cheaper than techniques involving machine testing.
ACM SIGPLAN history of programming languages conference SNOBOL language summary
Authors: Michael D Shapiro
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1978)

The SNOBOL programming languages introduced or popularized most of the concepts of character string processing. The original SNOBOL had just one data type: a string of characters. It could appear in a program as a literal delimited by quotation marks, or as a value assigned to a variable: PET &equil; &ldquo;MY CALICO CAT&rdquo; Concatenation, a basic string operation, forms a new string from two or more strings placed end to end: MYPET &equil; &ldquo;HERE Is&rdquo; PET &ldquo;. &rdquo;
The IPAD System: A future management/engineering/design environment
Authors: Carlos A. Garrocq, Michael J. Hurley
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th Design Automation Workshop (1974)

The results of a feasibility study on an &ldquo;Integrated Programs for Aerospace Vehicle Design (IPAD) System&rdquo; are presented, along with details of its usage philosophy, its organization, and a preview of the future design environment offered by such a system. The results of the study show that an IPAD System is feasible within four years from go-ahead, it can be implemented in all major host computers, and provides a user-oriented computer environment applicable to many aerospace and nonaerospace engineering and scientific Two independent and parallel feasibility studies were funded by the NASA Langley Research Center, from March 1972 to August 1973, to define an IPAD System and its implementation schedule. This paper summarizes the IPAD System design approach generated by the General Dynamics Corporation and does not purport to be NASA's final views for IPAD.
User consulting in three forms of network-based organization
Authors: Richard C. Roistacher
Venue: Proceedings of the joint conference on Easier and more productive use of computer systems. (Part - II): Human interface and the user interface - Volume 1981 (1981)

The utility of computer networking to organizal tasks is discussed. Three forms of network organization are described, and some examples given. Problems of user consulting in each form of organization are discussed.
Design verification of a VLSI VAX microcomputer
Authors: Sridhar Samudrala, Charles Lo, John F. Brown,  III, Richard E. Calcagni
Venue: ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter (1984)

Design verification as part of development provides an opportunity to correct design errors, improve performance characteristics, and optimize hardware. This paper presents the strategy and an overview of the verification performed in the development of a VLSI VAX microcomputer. Using a hierarchical methodology for simulation and verification, the logic design and circuit design have been verified.
Computers in society&mdash;a course description, purpose and rationale
Authors: Hans E. Lee
Venue: Proceedings of the second SIGCSE technical symposium on Education in computer science (1972)

Irrespective of one's personal position on the role of computers in society, it is indeed desirable that all college graduates in the coming years have a realistic even though minimal understanding of how computers work and how they may be directed to implement and maintain almost any desired social system. Consequently, the primary purpose of this course on computers in society is to give an elementary but sound fundamental understanding of how computers work, what they can do, what applications of computer technology currently exist or are now in research consideration, and the relationships of these applications to the role of man in society. Thus, the course is conceived as a citizen's social problems course in which much of the time will be devoted to documentation of the claim that society is undergoing a computer revolution and to illumination of this position by the presentation of several problem areas resulting from computer applications.
A simulator for evaluation of information systems
Authors: M. W. Shiveley, John Weaver
Venue: Proceedings of the 7th conference on Winter simulation - Volume 2 (1974)

A simulation package has been developed to enable a user to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of file structures in the development of Information Systems. The simulator provides a tool to estimate response time for specific types of data structures and files and evaluate the effect of different maintenance procedures. The model provides a tool for the analyst to evaluate the feasibility of different approaches for data collection and analysis. It enables the analyst to develop information systems which are compatible with operations research models.
Fault modeling in a hierarchical simulator
Authors: James J. Strunge
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th Design Automation Conference (1977)

A powerful fault modeling capability has recently been added to an established hierarchical logic analysis simulation and verification program. Both the simulator and modeling are described in detail.
Robustness of confidence intervals for transient simulations
Authors: Averill M. Law
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th conference on Winter simulation - Volume 1 (1977)

Most of the statistical simulation literature is concerned with steady-state simulations. That is, a simulation where the quantity to be estimated is defined as a limit as time (or the number of customers) goes to infinity. For example, the regenerative method is for this case. However, we have discovered by talking to a large number of simulation practitioners that, for the majority of real-world simulations, the length of the simulation is specified by the problem context. (The proportion may be 75 percent or higher.) For example, a simulation to determine the mean wait in a bank during the noon rush hour or a simulation to determine the time to failure of a system of electronic components. We call this type of simulation a transient simulation. Since the length of a transient simulation is fixed, suppose we make k independent runs. If Yi(i&equil;1,2,...,k) is the estimate from the ith run, then the Yi's are independent and identically distributed, and classical statistical analysis may be applied to construct a c.i. for E (Y).
A System of Communicating Residential Environments
Authors: Erik Sandewall, Henrik Sörensen, Claes Strömberg
Venue: Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming (1980)

The SCREEN system is an experimental tool for development and maintenance of application software. It is organized as a System of Communicating REsidential ENvironments, where each environment may be e.g. a programming environment or an end-user environment. Environments are able to send and receive modules which contain programs and data, and the maintenance of an application (throughout the software life-cycle) is performed by communicating such modules. Each programming environment may send several modules to each of several end-user environments, to account for specialized user needs, as well as updates of those modules. End-user environments consist of a fixed framework, into which contributed modules can plug in. The framework is designed specifically for each class of applications, and can be viewed as a special-purpose operating system for that class of applications. The organizational principles used in the SCREEN system are an extension of the residential programming systems that have been developed for Lisp, but they have an increased emphasis on software engineering issues. They represent an alternative to the classical principles for the production and use of software, which are based on the use of compilers, linkage editors, and general-purpose operating systems.
International market opportunities (Panel)
Venue: ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics (1984)

The Panel will discuss the subject of entering foreign markets with the objective of increasing company revenues. The first panelist will discuss the general benefits of international trade and the potential for the computer graphics industry. Foreign markets which hold the greatest promise for penetration will be identified and an overview of the regulations governing the exports of the industry will be presented. The discussion will conclude with the identification of select services offered to U.S. firms by the U.S. Department of Commerce for the purpose of assisting companies in reaching foreign markets.
Program control via transition matrices&mdash;a novel application of micro-programming
Authors: S. Ron Oliver, Nell D. Jones
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1976)

The problem of processing and interpreting character-strings in a systematic, efficiently implementable manner has given rise to a variety of decision- (or transition-) table and transition-diagram techniques. These have been used in the design and/or coding of string-oriented processors, such as lexical analysis portions of compilers. All these techniques share in common the idea of an input driven transition control. This report describes a micro-coded implementation of a particularly rich concept&mdash;the transition matrix (TM). The micro-coded interpreter (ITM) executes the flow-of-control implicit within the structure of the TM. The TM may be coded in a natural, easy to use language (LTM&Oslash;SP), and then be automatically translated into ITM-usable form by a user-level translator called TM&Oslash;SP. The completed system (ITM and TM&Oslash;SP) permits TM-oriented decision-making techniques to be utilized in virtually any task that can be described by means of a transition matrix.
Monitoring in a software development environment: A relational approach
Authors: Richard Snodgrass
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1984)

A monitor is an important component of a software development environment. The information collected and processed by a monitor is vital for debugging and tuning programs, and is useful to compilers performing selective optimization. A relational database, extended to incorporate time, is introduced as an appropriate representation of dynamic information concerning a program's execution. TQuel, a language permitting high level queries about a program's behavior, is briefly described. Measurements of an initial implementation of the relational monitor show that it can efficiently support the conceptual viewpoint of a dynamic database of a program's behavior.
A computer system providing microcoded APL
Authors: Charles A. Grant, Mark L. Greenberg, David D. Redell
Venue: Proceedings of the sixth international conference on APL (1974)

A new computer system is now under development at the Center for Research in Management Science (CRMS) of the University of California, Berkeley. It is an inexpensive, medium-scale time-sharing system, whose primary application is the implementation of multiterminal, interactive simulation experiments for the purpose of social science research. This paper describes the APL-language subsystem implemented on this system. The CRMS APL language system includes a microcoded APL interpreter which is implemented on a high-speed microprocessor. In addition to an extremely high rate of execution, CRMS APL offers a unified facility for terminal input/output, file accessing, and multi-process synchronization and inter-communication in APL.
A survey of compiler optimization techniques
Authors: Paul B. Schneck
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM annual conference (1973)

This survey describes the major optimization techniques of compilers and groups them into three categories: machine dependent, architecture dependent, and architecture independent. Machine-dependent optimizations tend to be local and are performed upon short spans of generated code by using particular properties of an instruction set to reduce the time or space required by a program. Architecture-dependent optimizations are global and are performed while generating code. These optimizations consider the structure of a computer, but not its detailed instruction set. Architecture-independent optimizations are also global but are based on analysis of the program flow graph and the dependencies among statements of source program. The paper also presents a conceptual review of a universal optimizer that performs architecture-independent optimizations at source-code level.
An implementation of a saturated zone multi-layer printed circuit board router
Authors: Michael J. Lorenzetti, Robert J. Smith,  II
Venue: Proceedings of the 17th Design Automation Conference (1980)

A new multi-layer printed circuit board routing technique is presented which combines two existing algorithms with a new cost function. The present implementation of this new technique handles up to four layers at a time. The earlier works are overviewed and enhancements incorporated in the new implementation are pointed out. Experimental results obtained using this new router on printed circuit boards of various sizes and routing densities are also described.
Interactive error diagnostics for an instructional programming system
Authors: Alan Davis, Michael H. Tindall, Thomas R. Wilcox
Venue: ACM SIGCSE Bulletin (1975)

This paper is concerned with the development of an interactive error analysis system for a highly interactive programming language compiler. Although the proposed system should have reasonably wide applicability to various time-sharing systems and interactive compilers, the following is a description of the goals and constraints of a particular compiler in which the error system is to be implemented.
Microcomputers and mainframes: A marriage of effectiveness
Authors: Michael J. D'Amore, Daniel J. Oberst
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services (1983)

Section 1 touches on the notion of distributed processing in order to gain a perspective on the roles of mainframe computers, microcomputers and their &ldquo;marriage&rdquo; in the general computing environment. It then examines how the marriage is possible and looks at two appropriate uses of the micro/mainframe interface. Section 2 deals with some of the specifics: EDUNET'S involvement with microcomputer as intelligent terminal; some details on file transfer protocols; the efforts of several institutions of higher education to develop intelligent terminal emulation software for micros; and two commercial terminal emulation packages.
Curricula for two-year data-processing programs: A review and recommendation
Authors: James F. Kearney
Venue: Proceedings of the fifth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (1975)

A review is given of the current situation in two-year institutions with data-processing course offerings. There are three types of students, &ldquo;transfer,&rdquo; &ldquo;occupational,&rdquo; and &ldquo;optional,&rdquo; whose needs must be satisfied by any curriculum. The author suggests a curriculum for all schools, large and small, containing six courses, of which the student enrolls in four according to his educational goals.
A bayesian differential debugging model for software reliability
Authors: B. Littlewood
Venue: ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review (1981)

An assumption commonly made in early models of software reliability is that the failure rate of a program is a constant multiple of the number of bugs remaining. This implies that all bugs have the same effect upon the overall failure rate. The assumption is challenged and an alternative proposed. The suggested model results in earlier bug-fixes having a greater effect than later ones (the worst bug show themselves earlier and so are fixed earlier), and the DFR properly between bug-fixes (confidence in programs increases during periods of failure-free operation, as well as at bug-fixes). The model shows a high degree of mathematical tractability, and allows a range of reliability, and allows a range of reliability measures to be calculated exactly. Predictions of total execution time to achieve a target reliability, are obtained.
PIRAMED project an integrated CAD/CAM system development
Authors: R. W. Srch
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th Design Automation Conference (1977)

A study was conducted in 1976 by GTE Automatic Electric Laboratories to determine what is required to more effectively support product (e.g., Electronic Switching System) development and product manufacturing by GTE Automatic Electric. The results of the study was a project proposal (PIRAMED). The PIRAMED System is being developed from the basic perspective that Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacturing must not be separate, disjoint functions but, instead, integrated functions. Key design concepts upon which the system structure will rest are: an integrated database system, an interactive user access to the system, and a flexible system structure. The above discussion about the system only addresses the technical aspects of the total project. What is equally important is an environmental plan to deal with the present organization, such that the likelihood of a successive implementation is greatly enhanced. An analysis of GTE Automatic Electric environment was performed within the study and formed the basis for the environmental plan.
The detection of anomalous interprocedural data flow
Authors: Lloyd D. Fosdick, Leon J. Osterweil
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering (1976)

In an earlier paper, the authors have defined type 1 and type 2 data flow anomalies to be, respectively, the reference to an undefined variable and the definition of a variable without subsequent reference. It is not difficult to devise search techniques to detect such anomalies when the anomalous data flow is contained in a single procedure. When the data flow crosses procedure boundaries, however, many difficulties may arise. In this paper, we carefully define the conditions under which interprocedural anomalies occur. We also show how algorithms currently used in global program optimization can easily be adapted to yield highly efficient algorithms for the detection of such interprocedural anomalies.
A PMS level language for performance evaluation modelling (V-PMS)
Authors: Helmut Kerner, Werner Beyerle
Venue: Proceedings of the 3rd annual symposium on Computer architecture (1976)

A comparison of Register Transfer level modelling and V-PMS is quite indicative. While RT-modelling approaches a restricted goal, viz. a hardware structure capable of performing a few hundred algorithms, a V-PMS level model has a complete computer system as its target, i.e. a composite of hardware structures of the RT-level complexity cooperating under the control of an operating system in the execution of a load. In order to construct a language suitable for describing the hardware as part of a total PMS-level model for performance evaluation, the original form of PMS was substantially changed by providing an expanded set of building blocks with corresponding definitions. This language, with its clearly defined functions and performance data, its unambiguous communication blocks and rules for interconnections, provides a human reader with a clear understanding of the performance of components and of their internal communication within the computer system, and links the hardware part to a model of an operating system (to be supplied at a later time). For computer readable system specification a syntax for connecting the above symbolic components is proposed. A description of the CDC Cyber 74/CDC 6600 system examplifies the use of the proposed language and its merits for building performance evaluation models.