A Classification of Scripting Systems for Entertainment and Serious Computer Games

The technology base for modern computer games is usually provided by a game engine. Many game engines have built-in dedicated scripting languages that allow the development of complete games that are built using those engines, as well as extensive modification of existing games through scripting alone. While some of these game engines implement proprietary languages, others use existing scripting systems that have been modified according to the game engine's requirements. Scripting languages generally provide a very high level of abstraction method for syntactically controlling the behaviour of their host applications and different types of scripting system allow different types of modification of their underlying host application. In this paper we propose a simple classification for scripting systems used in computer games for entertainment and serious purposes

Programming language trends : an empirical study

Predicting the evolution of software engineering technology trends is a dubious proposition. The recent evolution of software technology is a prime example; it is fast paced and affected by many factors, which are themselves driven by a wide range of sources. This dissertation is part of a long term project intended to analyze software engineering technology trends and how they evolve. Basically, the following questions will be answered: How to watch, predict, adapt to, and affect software engineering trends? In this dissertation, one field of software engineering, programming languages, will be discussed. After reviewing the history of a group of programming languages, it shows that two kinds of factors, intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors, could affect the evolution of a programming language. Intrinsic factors are the factors that can be used to describe the general desigu criteria of programming languages. Extrinsic factors are the factors that are not directly related to the general attributes of programming languages, but still can affect their evolution. In order to describe the relationship of these factors and how they affect programming language trends, these factors need to be quantified. A score has been assigued to each factor for every programming language. By collecting historical data, a data warehouse has been established, which stores the value of each factor for every programming language. The programming language trends are described and evaluated by using these data. Empirical research attempts to capture observed behaviors by empirical laws. In this dissertation, statistical methods are used to describe historical programming language trends and predict the evolution of the future trends. Several statistics models are constructed to describe the relationships among these factors. Canonical correlation is used to do the factor analysis. Multivariate multiple regression method has been used to construct the statistics models for programming language trends. After statistics models are constructed to describe the historical programming language trends, they are extended to do tentative prediction for future trends. The models are validated by comparing the predictive data and the actual data

Low Power Processor Architectures and Contemporary Techniques for Power Optimization – A Review

The technological evolution has increased the number of transistors for a given die area significantly and increased the switching speed from few MHz to GHz range. Such inversely proportional decline in size and boost in performance consequently demands shrinking of supply voltage and effective power dissipation in chips with millions of transistors. This has triggered substantial amount of research in power reduction techniques into almost every aspect of the chip and particularly the processor cores contained in the chip. This paper presents an overview of techniques for achieving the power efficiency mainly at the processor core level but also visits related domains such as buses and memories. There are various processor parameters and features such as supply voltage, clock frequency, cache and pipelining which can be optimized to reduce the power consumption of the processor. This paper discusses various ways in which these parameters can be optimized. Also, emerging power efficient processor architectures are overviewed and research activities are discussed which should help reader identify how these factors in a processor contribute to power consumption. Some of these concepts have been already established whereas others are still active research areas. © 2009 ACADEMY PUBLISHER

Enhancing System Realisation in Formal Model Development

Software for mission-critical systems is sometimes analysed using formal specification to increase the chances of the system behaving as intended. When sufficient insights into the system have been obtained from the formal analysis, the formal specification is realised in the form of a software implementation. One way to realise the system's software is by automatically generating it from the formal specification -- a technique referred to as code generation. However, in general it is difficult to make guarantees about the correctness of the generated code -- especially while requiring automation of the steps involved in realising the formal specification. This PhD dissertation investigates ways to improve the automation of the steps involved in realising and validating a system based on a formal specification. The approach aims to develop properly designed software tools which support the integration of formal methods tools into the software development life cycle, and which leverage the formal specification in the subsequent validation of the system. The tools developed use a new code generation infrastructure that has been built as part of this PhD project and implemented in the Overture tool -- a formal methods tool that supports the Vienna Development Method. The development of the code generation infrastructure has involved the re-design of the software architecture of Overture. The new architecture brings forth the reuse and extensibility features of Overture to take into account the needs and requirements of software extensions targeting Overture. The tools developed in this PhD project have successfully supported three case studies from externally funded projects. The feedback received from the case study work has further helped improve the code generation infrastructure and the tools built using it

On the Extensibility of Formal Methods Tools

Modern software systems often have long lifespans over which they must continually evolve to meet new, and sometimes unforeseen, requirements. One way to effectively deal with this is by developing the system as a series of extensions. As requirements change, the system evolves through the addition of new extensions and, potentially, the removal of existing extensions. In order for this kind of development process to thrive, it is necessary that the system have a high level of extensibility. Extensibility is the capability of a system to support the gradual addition of new, unplanned functionalities. This dissertation investigates extensibility of software systems and focuses on a particular class of software: formal methods tools. The approach is broad in scope. Extensibility of systems is addressed in terms of design, analysis and improvement, which are carried out in terms of source code and software architecture. For additional perspective, extensibility is also considered in the context of formal modelling. The work carried out in this dissertation led to the development of various extensions to the Overture tool supporting the Vienna Development Method, including a new proof obligation generator and integration with theorem provers. Additionally, the extensibility of Overture itself was also improved and it now better supports the development and integration of various kinds of extensions. Finally, extensibility techniques have been applied to formal modelling, leading to an extensible architectural style for formal models

Executable formal specifications of complex distributed systems with CoreASM

Formal specifications play a crucial role in the design of reliable complex software systems. Executable formal specifications allow the designer to attain early validation and verification of design using static analysis techniques and accurate simulation of the runtime behavior of the system-to-be. With increasing complexity of software-intensive computer-based systems and the challenges of validation and verification of abstract software models prior to coding, the need for interactive software tools supporting executable formal specifications is even more evident. In this paper, we discuss how CoreASM, an environment for writing and running executable specifications according to the ASM method, provides flexibility and manages the complexity by using an innovative extensible language architecture

Research and Education in Computational Science and Engineering

Over the past two decades the field of computational science and engineering (CSE) has penetrated both basic and applied research in academia, industry, and laboratories to advance discovery, optimize systems, support decision-makers, and educate the scientific and engineering workforce. Informed by centuries of theory and experiment, CSE performs computational experiments to answer questions that neither theory nor experiment alone is equipped to answer. CSE provides scientists and engineers of all persuasions with algorithmic inventions and software systems that transcend disciplines and scales. Carried on a wave of digital technology, CSE brings the power of parallelism to bear on troves of data. Mathematics-based advanced computing has become a prevalent means of discovery and innovation in essentially all areas of science, engineering, technology, and society; and the CSE community is at the core of this transformation. However, a combination of disruptive developments---including the architectural complexity of extreme-scale computing, the data revolution that engulfs the planet, and the specialization required to follow the applications to new frontiers---is redefining the scope and reach of the CSE endeavor. This report describes the rapid expansion of CSE and the challenges to sustaining its bold advances. The report also presents strategies and directions for CSE research and education for the next decade.Comment: Major revision, to appear in SIAM Revie

LHCb upgrade software and computing : technical design report

This document reports the Research and Development activities that are carried out in the software and computing domains in view of the upgrade of the LHCb experiment. The implementation of a full software trigger implies major changes in the core software framework, in the event data model, and in the reconstruction algorithms. The increase of the data volumes for both real and simulated datasets requires a corresponding scaling of the distributed computing infrastructure. An implementation plan in both domains is presented, together with a risk assessment analysis