ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
A model of mental model construction
Authors: C. Lewis
Venue: ACM SIGCHI Bulletin (1986)

Learning to control a computer system from limited experience with it seems to require constructing a mental model adequate to indicate the causal connections between user actions, system responses, and user goals. While many kinds of knowledge could be used in building such a model, a small number of simple, low-level heuristics is adequate to interpret some common computer interaction patterns. Designing interactions so that they fall within the scope of these heuristics may lead to easier mastery by learners.
Standard cell placement using simulated sintering
Authors: L. K. Grover
Venue: Proceedings of the 24th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (1987)

Simulated annealing is a powerful optimization technique based on the annealing phenomenon in crystallization. In this paper we propose a simulated sintering technique which is analogous to the sintering process in material processing. In sintering one improves the quality of a processed material by heating it to a temperature close to the melting point. Analogously, we show that by starting out with a good initial configuration instead of a random configuration, and restricting uphill moves, we can considerably speed up simulated annealing. We use this idea for a standard cell placement program - GRIM in LTX2, an AT T Bell Labs VLSI layout system. The initial configuration is produced either by changes to a layout the designer had done previously, or else by a fast program like min-cut. We obtain improvements of about 10% in chip area starting from a min-cut placement, in times about 3 times faster than our simulated annealing program (which itself is several times faster than other well known simulated annealing programs).
Graphos: a graphic operating system
Authors: Daniel A. Cañas
Venue: Proceedings of the eighteenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (1987)

To fully understand the conceptual principles behind operating systems it must be possible to 'see' what is happening inside the system as the execution of a task progresses. A graphic representation of information flow would give a clear picture of what is happening inside an operating system at every moment. Currently there are no tools which help visualize the flow of information as a task executes. GraphOS is a teaching tool that presents to the student a graphic representation of information flow inside an operating system. This paper discusses GraphOS and the advantages of using the system as a complement to the lectures in an operating systems course.
Optimal Partitioning and Redundancy Removal in Computing Partial Sums
Authors: A. T. Fam
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1987)

Two novel algorithms for simultaneous computation of a large number of partial sums are introduced, their performance assessed, and architectures for their implementation suggested. The direct computation of D operations are replaced by O(D/log D). The new approach is based on a new concept of optimal partitioning and redundancy removal in arithmetic intensive, high throughput computing that is expected to be the basis of a new class of algorithms which represent a, departure from brute force parallel computation where inherent redundancy is not detected or removed.
Arabic word processing
Authors: Joseph D. Becker
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1987)

Recently developed word processing software can correctly format the cursive, interacting letters of the Arabic script. Moreover, new layout procedures can automatically intermix right-to-left Arabic writing with left-to-right text in European or other languages.
Viewpoint: Military direction of academic CS research
Authors: Clark Thompson
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1986)

Most computer scientists know that the Department of Defense (DOD) supplies most of the funds for academic research, but few know how profoundly the funding situation has changed over the last decade. In 1976 most basic research in academic computer science was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) [see Figure 1]. In 1985 NSF's "market share" is much less than DoD's. When applied research money is added in, as in Figure 2 (on the next page), DOD'S preeminence is even more marked. Allowing $25 million for industrial, state, institutional, and other support in 1985 (exact data are unavailable), I conclude that most academic computer science (CS) research is now directed by military agencies.
Principles of database buffer management
Authors: Wolfgang Effelsberg, Theo Haerder
Venue: ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) (1984)

This paper discusses the implementation of a database buffer manager as a component of a DBMS. The interface between calling components of higher system layers and the buffer manager is described; the principal differences between virtual memory paging and database buffer management are outlined; the notion of referencing versus addressing of database pages is introduced; and the concept of fixing pages in the buffer to prevent uncontrolled replacement is explained. Three basic tasks have to be performed by the buffer manager: buffer search, allocation of frames to concurrent transactions, and page replacement. For each of these tasks, implementation alternatives are discussed and illustrated by examples from a performance evaluation project of a CODASYL DBMS.
Multidimensional Timestamp Protocols for Concurrency Control
Authors: Pei-Jyun Leu, Bharat Bhargava
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (1987)

We propose multidimensional timestamp protocols for concurrency control in database systems where each transaction is assigned a timestamp vector containing multiple elements. The timestamp vectors for two transactions can be equal if timestamp elements are assigned the same values. The serializability order among the transactions is determined by a topological sort of the corresponding timestamp vectors. The timestamp in our protocols is assigned dynamically and is not just based on the starting/finishing time as in conservative and optimistic timestamp methods. The concurrency control can be enforced based on more precise dependency information derived dynamically from the operations of the transactions. Several classes of logs have been identified based on the degree of concurrency or the number of logs accepted by a concurrency controller. The class recognized by our protocols is within D-serializable (DSR), and is different from all previously known classes such as two phase locking (2PL), strictly serializable (SSR), timestamp ordering (TO), which have been defined in literature. The protocols have been analyzed to study the complexity of recognition of logs. We briefly discuss the implementation of the concurrency control algorithm for the new class, and give a timestamp vector processing mechanism. The extension of the protocols for nested transaction and distributed database models has also been included.
MaRs: a parallel graph reduction multiprocessor
Authors: M. Castan, A. Contessa, E. Cousin, C. Coustet, B. Lecussan
Venue: ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News (1988)

We describe the MaRS machine: a parallel, distributed control multiprocessor for graph reduction using a functional machine language. The object code language is based on an optimized set of combinators, and its functional character allows an automatic parallelisation of the execution. A programming language, "MaRS LISP", has also been developed. A prototype of MaRS is currently being designed in VLSI 1.5-micron CMOS technology with 2 levels of metal, by means of a CAD system. The machine uses three basic types of processors for Reduction, Memory and Communication, plus auxiliary I/O and Arithmetic Processors; communications do not constitute an operational bottleneck, as interprocessor messages are routed via an Omega switching network. Initially, a Host Computer will be used for startup, testing and direct memory access. The machine architecture and its functional organization are described, as well as the theoretical execution model. We conclude on a number of specialized hardware and software mechanism that differentiate MaRS machine from other similar projects currently going on.
Signature Analysis for Multiple-Output Circuits
Authors: R David
Venue: IEEE Transactions on Computers (1986)

A scheme of a good signature analysis by a linear feedback shift register (LFSR) is presented. It works for k-output circuits, even if k is greater than the register length. It is built according to rules which are presented in the correspondence, taking into account error models which are introduced. The rules are derived from a property which is formally shown for one kind of LFSR. However, some of them apply to other LFSR schemes too.
Effective transformations on infinite trees, with applications to high undecidability, dominoes, and fairness
Authors: David Harel
Venue: Journal of the ACM (JACM) (1986)

Elementary translations between various kinds of recursive trees are presented. It is shown that trees of either finite or countably infinite branching can be effectively put into one-one correspondence with infinitely branching trees in such a way that the infinite paths of the latter correspond to the &ldquo;P-abiding&rdquo; infinite paths of the former. Here P can be any member of a very wide class of properties of infinite paths. For many properties ??, the converse holds too. Two of the applications involve (a) the formulation of large classes of highly undecidable variants of classical computational problems, and in particular, easily describable domino problems that are III11-complete, and (b) the existence of a general method for proving termination of nondeterministic or concurrent programs under any reasonable notion of fairness.
Interpolants for Runge-Kutta formulas
Authors: W. H. Enright, K. R. Jackson, S. P. Nørsett, P. G. Thomsen
Venue: ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) (1986)

A general procedure for the construction of interpolants for Runge-Kutta (RK) formulas is presented. As illustrations, this approach is used to develop interpolants for three explicit RK formulas, including those employed in the well-known subroutines RKF45 and DVERK. A typical result is that no extra function evaluations are required to obtain an interpolant with O(h5) local truncation error for the fifth-order RK formula used in RKF45; two extra function evaluations per step are required to obtain an interpolant with O(h6) local truncation error for this RK formula.
Automated heuristic analysis of spectroscopic data
Authors: Hank Simon
Venue: Issue 103 (Jan., 1988) (1988)

Spectroscopic data consists of a set of numbers which may be plotted on a graph. These numbers indicate a range of values rather than a single discrete value. It is straightforward to assign a meaning to a single value, but interpreting the meaning of a range of values requires more judgment. In nuclear physics, spectroscopic data is related to the mass or energy of a particle detected from a nuclear reaction. these data are discrete numbers, but because of the interactions between the nuclear reaction and the particle detector, a range of data is collected. Although it takes many years of experience to learn how to interpret nuclear physics spectra, the data reduction and analysis are fairly routine. The routine parts of data reduction and analysis can be automated by expert system techniques.
Application screen management: an APL2 approach
Authors: Stephen Deerhake
Venue: ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad (1987)

This paper describes a comprehensive full screen management system written in APL2. It provides an application I/O interface that may be adapted to a variety of screen management specific subsystems in both interactive and background environments. Besides the usual character and numeric field support, additional field types and attributes are supported by the system described here. This system differs from past efforts in several respects. It is written in APL2, and takes full advantage of APL2's extended data structures and vector notation for its implementation and application code interfaces. Additionally, it was designed as a generalized application-user I/O interface, and as such, provides a great deal of isolation between the application and the specific screen management subsystem employed by the screen functions. It is also easily extended to support new features, such as additional field types, as well as new screen management subsystem specific facilities as they become available. To date, such extensions have been made without impacting the existing application base. In actual application usage, these functions have been found to be easy to use, and have in most instances resulted in simpler application code than would have been possible otherwise.
Stepwise specification of dynamic database behaviour
Authors: Udo W. Lipeck
Venue: ACM SIGMOD Record (1986)

This paper presents a methodology for the stepwise specification of dynamic database behaviour. A conceptual schema is described in three levels: data, objects and transactions. To determine which sequences of database states are &ldquo;admissible&rdquo;, integrity constraints on objects are given in temporal logic. Transactions are specified by pre/postconditions to produce &ldquo;executable&rdquo; state sequences. In order to guarantee that executable state sequences already become admissible, integrity constraints are completely transformed into additional pre/postconditions. We introduce general rules for these transformations. Thus, schema specifications can be refined and simplified systematically.
Communication services under EMCON
Authors: B Nguyen, R Rom
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM conference on Communications architectures protocols (1986)

Hosts are under EMCON condition, short for Emission Control, when they are prohibited from transmitting any data. Under such condition, hosts can only receive data passively and can not acknowledge any data reception. This unidirectionality of the communication channel breaks down all currently defined transport protocols. In this paper, we present architectural alternatives that would support limited communication service under such condition and also discuss other open issues.
In search of a user interface reference model
Authors: Gene Lynch, Jon Meads
Venue: ACM SIGCHI Bulletin (1986)

The conclusion of the workshop on Planning for User Interface Standards (held at the CHI '85 conference in San Francisco) was that a reference model of human computer interaction should be developed before standards could reasonably be contemplated. That conclusion prompted the workshop on User Interface Reference Models which was held just prior to the CHI '86 conference in Boston. As the title implies we still do not have a reference model, but we have learned a lot in our search. The purpose of this paper is to convey the issues, process, problems, difficulties, suggested solutions, and directions that came to light during this workshop.
Elimination algorithms for data flow analysis
Authors: Barbara G. Ryder, Marvin C. Paull
Venue: ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) (1986)

A unified model of a family of data flow algorithms, called elimination methods, is presented. The algorithms, which gather information about the definition and use of data in a program or a set of programs, are characterized by the manner in which they solve the systems of equations that describe data flow problems of interest. The unified model provides implementation-independent descriptions of the algorithms to facilitate comparisons among them and illustrate the sources of improvement in worst case complexity bounds. This tutorial provides a study in algorithm design, as well as a new view of these algorithms and their interrelationships.
Finding heuristics for flowshop scheduling
Authors: M Bernstein
Venue: Issue 99 (January 1987) (1987)

Different flow shops are characterized by different-often wildly different--preferences and constraints. While simple heuristics often permit efficient construction of excellent schedules, the discovery of such heuristics generally depends on deep managerial insight or on trial and error. Given a description of a flowshop, the SH program proposes and tries to solve scheduling problems in order to identify heuristics which are especially valuable to the problem at hand.
Password-based authentication
Authors: Bill Nugent
Venue: ACM SIGSAC Review (1987)

The people who invented computer passwords obviously never met Charlie Fox. During my high school years, I worked Saturdays and Summers at Hampton General Store, in the small New England village of Hampton, Connecticut. Charlie Fox was the postman. For many years, every day at 3:30 PM Charlie would come into the store, having finished his route. Every day he took down the phone book, looked up his home telephone number, and called his wife to ask for her grocery order. He was a pleasant and perfectly normal fellow, but one who just couldn't remember a phone number, even his own.
Voice messaging enhancing the user interface design based on field performance
Authors: A. F. Aucella, S. F. Ehrlich
Venue: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (1986)

Computer-based voice messaging systems are used to send and receive confidential messages via touch-tone telephones. Auditory prompts guide users through a series of menus, listing options as users proceed through their sessions. This report describes how a voice messaging system was enhanced and redesigned based on thinking aloud protocols, customer site interviews, and usage statistics that described summary patterns of behavior. The goal of the human factors effort was to optimize system use. The evaluation of the length, wording and phrasing of auditory prompts as well as ease-of-accessibility provided by the menu structure led to specific enhancements and redesign. Feedback also helped define an audio HELP/OTHER OPTIONS system that (1) provided context sensitive assistance and (2) documented infrequently used options that enabled streamlining of routine transactions.
Synchronization primitives for a multiprocessor: a formal specification
Authors: A. Birrell, J. Guttag, J. Horning, R. Levin
Venue: ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (1987)

Formal specifications of operating system interfaces can be a useful part of their documentation. We illustrate this by documenting the Threads synchronization primitives of the Taos operating system. We start with an informal description, present a way to formally specify interfaces in concurrent systems, give a formal specification of the synchronization primitives, briefly discuss the implementation, and conclude with a discussion of what we have learned from using the specification for more than a year.
Memory allocation and higher-order functions
Authors: O. Danvy
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Notices (1987)

This paper presents a constant-time marking-collecting algorithm to efficiently implement recursion with a general heap memory rather than with a vectorial stack, in a context of frequent captures of continuations. It has been seen to reduce the 80% garbage collection overhead to less than 5% on average.The algorithm has been built into a virtual machine to efficiently implement at the assembly level the Actor language PLASMA, an Actor-oriented version of PROLOG and a variant of SCHEME, currently in use on 8086, 68000 and Vax.The rationale to use the heap memory is that continuations are available via a single pointer in a unified memory and can be shared optimally when recurrently captured, which is simply impossible using a strategy based on stack recopy. Further, non-captured continuations can be incrementally garbage collected on the fly.Part I describes the elementary recursive instructions of the virtual machine. Part II presents and proves the marking-collecting strategy. Part III safely generalizes the transformation "call + return = branch" in a way compatible with the possible capture of the current continuation. An appendix relates its integration in the Virtual Scheme Machine supporting Scheme 84.
Connectionist expert systems
Authors: Stephan I. Gallant
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1988)

Connectionist networks can be used as expert system knowledge bases. Furthermore, such networks can be constructed from training examples by machine learning techniques. This gives a way to automate the generation of expert systems for classification problems.
Cost/benefit analysis for incorporating human factors in the software lifecycle
Authors: Marilyn M. Mantei, Toby J. Teorey
Venue: Communications of the ACM (1988)

New software engineering techniques and the necessity to improve the user interface in increasingly interactive software environments have led to a change in traditional software development methods. Methodologies for improvement of the interface design, an overview of the human factors element, and cost/benefit aspects are explored.
More on Fortran 8X pointer proposals
Authors: Loren Meissner
Venue: ACM SIGPLAN Fortran Forum (1988)

Here is a program that I wrote to test the proposals of Burch, Schonfelder, et al for adding pointers to Fortran 8X. I read a comment by Steven O. Siegfried of Saint Paul MN that "it's tough to build a binary tree with implicit [de]referencing", and I wanted to see what the problems were.
An annotated bibliography on computers and the physically handicapped Part V-A: The speech impaired and hearing impaired, 1975-1980
Authors: Lisa Schurer, Ross W Lambert,  Jr.
Venue: Issue 36 (Winter 1986) (1986)

This is the fifth in a series of articles reviewing the scientific literature on computers and the physically hadicapped. Please see the Spring, 1983 issue of the SIGCAPH newsletter (No. 32) for a description of this series. This article is a bibliography of articles appearing in the literature between January, 1975 and December, 1980 concerning the speech impaired and the hearing impaired. Note that Part IV, Vol. 35 was erroneously titled Part V. It should be Part IV. The literature 1975-1090 is large enough to be listed in two parts, V-A and V-B. Articles are backordered and the publishing schedule will depend on their arrival.
Delay optimization of combinational static CMOS logic
Authors: M. Hofmann, J. K. Kim
Venue: Proceedings of the 24th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (1987)

Several methods for increasing the speed of combinational static CMOS circuits, including techniques for partitioning gates on the basis of circuit complexity and input arrival time, are described. The target layout style is standard cell, rather than a PLA or gate matrix scheme. Use of a standard-cell-like image allows a two-level buffered hierarchy to be introduced which is beneficial to reducing circuit delays. Preliminary results from device sizing algorithms are also given. The device sizer employs a fast, accurate, waveform-simulation-based, table-driven delay calculator to determine gate delays. A summary of results shows that partitioning techniques yield delay reductions of 10 - 15% compared with another currently employed program. The sizing heuristics provide an additional 15 - 20% increase in circuit speed.