Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Technology Mapping On Fault Detection Coverage In Reprogrammable Fpgas, Kevin A. Kwiat, Warren Debany, Salim Hariri

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Although Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are tested by their manufacturers prior to shipment, they are still susceptible to failures in the field. In this paper, test vectors generated for the emulated (i.e., mission) circuit are fault simulated on two different models: the original view of the circuit, and the design as it is mapped to the FPGA's logic cells. Faults in the cells and in the programming logic are considered. Experiments show that this commonly-used approach fails to detect most of the faults in the FPGA.

Graduate Bulletin, 1995-1996 (1995), Moorhead State University

Graduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

Shape Reconstruction From Shading Using Linear Approximation, Ping Sing Tsai

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

Shape from shading (SFS) deals with the recovery of 3D shape from a single monocular image. This problem was formally introduced by Horn in the early 1970s. Since then it has received considerable attention, and several efforts have been made to improve the shape recovery. In this thesis, we present a fast SFS algorithm, which is a purely local method and is highly parallelizable. In our approach, we first use the discrete approximations for surface gradients, p and q, using finite differences, then linearize the reflectance function in depth, Z ( x , y), instead of p and q. This …

Experimenting With The Finite Element Method In The Calculation Of Radiosity Form Factors, Donna Marie Chesteen

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

Radiosity has been used to create some of the most photorealistic computer-generated images to date. The problem, however, is that radiosity algorithms are so computationally and memory expensive that few applications can employ them successfully. Form factor calculation is the most costly part of the process. This report describes an algorithm for using the finite element method to reduce the amount of time that is used in the form factor calculation portion of the radiosity algorithm. This technique for form factor calculation significantly reduces the number of projections done at each iteration by using shape functions to determine the distribution …

Critical Success Factors For Organizational Case Success, Chad Strauss

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

Practitioners and researchers have suggested that Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) technology can significantly improve the productivity of systems analysts and the quality of systems development. Before CASE can succeed, however, specific components must exist. This paper explores CASE and the components necessary for its widespread acceptance and use within information systems departments. Specifically, this paper will examine the systems development life cycle (SDLC), the possible benefits of CASE, the current state of CASE, critical success factors for CASE, and finally CASE use.

Learning Via Queries With Teams And Anomalies, William I. Gasarch, Efim Kinber, Mark G. Pleszkoch, Carl H. Smith, Thomas Zeugmann

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

Most work in the field of inductive inference regards the learning machine to be a passive recipient of data. In a prior paper the passive approach was compared to an active form of learning where the machine is allowed to ask questions. In this paper we continue the study of machines that ask questions by comparing such machines to teams of passive machines. This yields, via work of Pitt and Smith, a comparison of active learning with probabilistic learning. Also considered are query inference machines that learn an approximation of what is desired. The approximation differs from the desired result …

Optimizing Object Invocation Using Optimistic Incremental Specialization, Jon Inouye, Andrew P. Black, Charles Consel, Calton Pu, Jonathan Walpole

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

To make object invocation efficient, it is important to minimize overhead. In general, overhead is incurred in order to maintain transparency; with the advent of mobile computer systems, persistence, increasing security and privacy concerns, transparency becomes more expensive and overhead is increasing. Invocation mechanisms maintain transparency by finding objects, choosing communication media, performing data translation into common formats (e.g., XDR), marshalling arguments, encrypting confidential data, etc. Performing all of these operations on every invocation would lead to unacceptable performance, so designers often avoid operations by specializing object invocation for more restricted environments. For example, the Emerald compiler performs several optimizations …

An Ada-Like Language To Facilitate Reliable Coding Of Low Cost Embedded Systems, Michael Collins

Theses : Honours

Due to a lack of operating system (0/S) support, it is more difficult to develop programs for embedded systems than for workstations. For those developing on a low budget, the problem is often further compounded by the necessity of using inappropriate, 0/S dependent, compilers. This study attempts to ascertain those elements of a High Level Language (HLL) which are absolutely necessary and implementable to produce reliable, efficient, embedded programs without the benefit of a large budget. The study is based upon the Ada philosophy as the Ada language incorporates many desirable features for modelling real-world problems in terms of embedded …

Analysis And Extension Of Model-Based Software Executives, Keith E. Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

This research developed a comprehensive description of the simulation environment of Architect, a domain-oriented application composition system being developed at the Air Force Institute of Technology to explore new software engineering technologies. The description combines information from several previous research efforts and Architect's source code into a single, comprehensive document. A critical evaluation of the simulation environment was also performed, identifying improvements and modifications that enhance Architecture's application execution capabilities by reducing complexity and execution time. The analysis was then taken one step further and presented extensions to the current simulation environment. The extensions included investigating the feasibility of mixed-mode …

Visage: Improving The Ballistic Vulnerability Modeling And Analysis Process, Brett F. Grimes

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to improve the process of modeling and analyzing ballistic vulnerability data. This was accomplished by addressing two of the more urgent needs of vulnerability analysts; the ability to display fault tree data and to edit target descriptions. A vulnerability data visualization program called VISAGE was modified to meet these needs. VISAGE was originally created to preview static shotline plots and subsequently grew into a full-featured visualization package for vulnerability target descriptions and analyses data. The next logical step in the programs evolution was to include the needed editing and fault tree display capabilities. The …

Interaction And Interdependency Of Software Engineering Methods And Visual Programming, Robert A. Touchton

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Visual Programming Languages and Visual Programming Tools incorporate non-procedural coding mechanisms that may duplicate, or perhaps even conflict with, the analysis and design mechanisms promulgated by the mainstream Software Engineering methodologies. By better understanding such duplication and conflict, software engineers can take proactive measures to accommodate and, ideally, eliminate them. Better still, there may be opportunities for synergy that can be exploited if one is looking for them.

This research explored, documented and classified the interactions and interdependencies, both positive (synergies) and negative (conflicts), between two closely related and rapidly evolving Computer Science subdisciplines: software engineering and visual programming. A …

Towards An Ontology Of Problems, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

Systems theory offers a language in which one might formulate a metaphysics (or more specifically an ontology) of problems. This proposal is based upon a conception of systems theory shared by von Bertalanffy, Wiener, Boulding, Rapoport, Ashby, Klir, and others, and expressed succinctly by Bunge, who considered game theory, information theory, feedback control theory, and the like to be attempts to construct an "exact and scientific metaphysics." Our prevailing conceptions of "problems" are concretized yet also fragmented and in fact dissolved by the standard reductionist model of science, which cannot provide a general framework for analysis. The idea of a …

A Proposal For A Development Platform For Microcontroller-Based Devices, Michael L. Wetton

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is concerned with designing, implementing and testing a miniaturised temperature data logging device. Investigations demonstrated that a microcontroller could provide a low-cost single-chip solution to this problem and after a detailed review of 8-bit microcontrollers, the MC68HCll was chosen for this task. This document also includes discussion on an environment that was developed for creating and testing MC68HC11 software and the use of Motorola's evaluation boards. To ensure that the device was designed to software engineering standards an investigation into software engineering analysis techniques took place. This resulted in the Jackson Structured Programming (JSP) methodology being adapted to …

Some Issues In The Sliding Mode Control Of Rigid Robotic Manipulators, Sanjay Rao

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis investigates the problem of robust adaptive sliding mode control for nonlinear rigid robotic manipulators. A number of robustness and convergence results are presented for sliding mode control of robotic manipulators with bounded unknown disturbances, nonlinearities, dynamical couplings and parameter uncertainties. The highlights of the research work are summarized below : • A robust adaptive tracking control for rigid robotic manipulators is proposed. In this scheme, the parameters of the upper bound of system uncertainty are adaptively estimated. The controller estimates are then used as controller parameters to eliminate the effects of system uncertainty and guarantee asymptotic error convergence. …

Feasible Offset And Optimal Offset For General Single-Layer Channel Routing, Ronald I. Greenberg, Jau-Der Shih

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper provides an efficient method to find all feasible offsets for a given separation in a very large-scale integration (VLSI) channel-routing problem in one layer. The previous literature considers this task only for problems with no single-sided nets. When single-sided nets are included, the worst-case solution time increases from $\Theta ( n )$ to $\Omega ( n^2 )$, where n is the number of nets. But if the number of columns c is $O( n )$, the problem can be solved in time $O( n^{1.5} \lg n )$, which improves upon a “naive” $O( cn )$ approach. As a …

An Efficient Multicomputer Algorithm For The Solution Of Chemical Process Flowsheeting Equations, Fikret Ercal, Neil L. Book, S. Pait, J. J. Fielding

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a parallel solution method of large sparse systems of linear equations arising in the context of a chemical process flowsheeting application on a message passing multicomputer. To maximize the performance, the algorithm uses a novel matrix decomposition and solution method, called parallel two-phased LU decomposition, which schedules the concurrent tasks in a maximally overlapping manner, and at the same time, tries to minimize the interprocessor data dependencies and obtain optimal load balancing. The forward elimination step is performed concurrently with the parallel two-phased LU decomposition step and backward substitution is parallelized in a piecewise manner. Implementation results …

Hardware Assists For High Performance Computing Using A Mathematics Of Arrays, Hardy J. Pottinger, W. Eatherton, J. Kelly, T. Schiefelbein, Lenore Mullin, R. Ziegler

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Work in progress at the University of Missouri-Rolla on hardware assists for high performance computing is presented. This research consists of a novel field programmable gate array (FPGA) based reconfigurable coprocessor board (the Chameleon Coprocessor) being used to evaluate hardware architectures for speedup of array computation algorithms. These algorithms are developed using a Mathematics of Arrays (MOA). They provide a means to generate addresses for data transfers that require less data movement than more traditional algorithms. In this manner, the address generation algorithms are acting as an intelligent data prefetching mechanism or special purpose cache controller. Software implementations have been …

Decimation Of 2d Scalar Data With Error Control, Daniel R. Schikore, Chandrajit L. Bajaj

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Reliable Stream Transmission In Mobile Computing Environments, Houzhi Xu, Bharat Bhargava

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Brokered Collaborative Infrastructure For Cscw, Chandrajit Bajaj, Peinan Zhang, Alok R. Chaturvedi

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

File-System Workload On A Scientific Multiprocessor, David Kotz, Nils Nieuwejaar

Dartmouth Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Trainable, Single-Pass Algorithm For Column Segmentation, Son Sylwester, Sharad C. Seth

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

Column Segmentation logically precedes OCR in the document analysis process. The trainable algorithm described here, XYCUT, relies on horizontal and vertical binary profiles to produce an XY- tree representing the column structure of a page of a technical document in a single pass through the bit image. Training against ground truth adjusts a single, resolution independent, parameter using only local information and guided by an edit distance function. The algorithm correctly segments the page image for a (fairly) wide range of parameter values, although small, local and repairable errors may be made, an effect measured by a repair cost function.

Parallel Test Generation With Low Communication Overhead, Sivaramakrishnan Venkatraman, Sharad C. Seth, Prathima Agrawal

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

In this paper we present a method of parallelizing test generation for combinational logic using boolean satisfiability. We propose a dynamic search-space allocation strategy to split work between the available processors. This strategy is easy to implement with a greedy heuristic and is economical in its demand for inter-processor communication. We derive an analytical model to predict the performance of the parallel versus sequential implementations. The effectiveness of our method and analysis is demonstrated by an implementation on a Sequent (shared memory) multiprocessor. The experimental data shows significant performance improvement in parallel implementation, validates our analytical model, and allows predictions …

Implementation And Evaluation Of Enhanced Areal Interpolation Using Mapinfo And Mapbasic, Gordon Wragg

Theses : Honours

Many researchers today have a need to analyse data in a spatial context. An inherent problem is the mismatch of boundaries between the geographic regions for which data is collected and those regions for which the data is required. Often the solution is to interpolate data from one set of regions to another. This project examines and implements a method of areal interpolation that enables the user to use extra information in areal interpolation to increase the "intelligence ' of the process. This method of Enhanced Areal Interpolation uses a conditional Poisson distribution and the EM algorithm to provide estimated …

Production Of Excited Beauty States In Z Decays, D. Buskulic, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A data sample of about 3.0 million hadronic Z decays collected by the ALEPH experiment at LEP in the years 1991 through 1994, is used to make an inclusive selection of B hadron events.

First Measurement Of The Quark-To-Photon Fragmentation Function, D. Buskulic, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Earlier measurements at LEP of isolated hard photons in hadronic Z decays, attributed to radiation from primary quark pairs, have been extended in the ALEPH experiment to include hard photon production inside hadron jets. Events are selected where all particles combine democratically to form hadron jets, one of which contains a photon with a fractional energy z 0:7. After statistical subtraction of non-prompt photons, the quark-to-photon fragmentation function, D(z), is extracted directly from the measured 2-jet rate. By taking into account the perturbative contributions to D(z) obtained from an O(S ) QCD calculation, the unknown non-perturbative component of D(z) is …

Inclusive Production Of Neutral Vector Mesons In Hadronic Z Decays, D. Buskulic, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Data on the inclusive production of the neutral vector mesonsρ 0(770),ω(782), K*0(892), andφ(1020) in hadronic Z decays recorded with the ALEPH detector at LEP are presented and compared to Monte Carlo model predictions. Bose-Einstein effects are found to be important in extracting a reliable value for theρ 0 production rate. An averageρ 0 multiplicity of 1.45±0.21 per event is obtained. Theω is detected via its three pion decay modeω→π + π − π 0 and has a total rate of 1.07±0.14 per event. The multiplicity of the K*0 is 0.83±0.09, whilst that of theφ is 0.122±0.009, both measured using their …

Improved Tau Polarisation Measurement, D. Buskulic, M. Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Using 22 pb−1 of data collected at LEP in 1992 on the peak of the Z resonance, the ALEPH collaboration has measured the polarisation of the tau leptons decaying intoevv¯,μvv¯evv¯,μvv¯,πν, ρν and a1 ν from their individual decay product distributions. The measurement of the tau polarisation as a function of the production polar angle yields the two parametersN τ andN e, where, in terms of the axial and vector couplingsg Al andg Vl,N l=2g Vl gAl/(g 2Vl+g2Al). This analysis follows to a large extent the methods devised for the 1990 and 1991 data but with improvements which bring a better …

Adaptive Resonance Associative Map, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This article introduces a neural architecture termed Adaptive Resonance Associative Map (ARAM) that extends unsupervised Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) systems for rapid, yet stable, heteroassociative learning. ARAM can be visualized as two overlapping ART networks sharing a single category field. Although ARAM is simpler in architecture than another class of supervised ART models known as ARTMAP, it produces classification performance equivalent to that of ARTMAP. As ARAM network structure and operations are symmetrical, associative recall can be performed in both directions. With maximal vigilance settings, ARAM encodes pattern pairs explicitly as cognitive chunks and thus guarantees perfect storage and recall …

Transplanting Manufacturing Power: Observations From Five Years At Fujitsu, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Within a factory, what are the underpinnings of manufacturing power? During my thirty-month residency at Fujitsu's factory in Oyama, Japan, I constantly reflected on this question. The standard view of a factory structure provided by an organization chart was inadequate for summarizing my observations.