Reusability in software engineering

This paper surveys recent work concerning reusability in software engineering. The current directions in software reusability are discussed, and the two major approaches of reusable building blocks and reusable patterns studied. An extensive bibliography, parts of which are annotated, is included

RATFOR user's guide version 2.0

This document is a user's guide for RATFOR at Ames Research Center. The main part of the document is a general description of RATFOR, and the appendix is devoted to a machine specific implementation for the Cray X-MP. The general stylistic features of RATFOR are discussed, including the block structure, keywords, source code, format, and the notion of tokens. There is a section on the basic control structures (IF-ELSE, ELSE IF, WHILE, FOR, DO, REPEAT-UNTIL, BREAK, NEXT), and there is a section on the statements that extend FORTRAN's capabilities (DEFINE, MACRO, INCLUDE, STRING). THE appendix discusses everything needed to compile and run a basic job, the preprocessor options, the supported character sets, the generated listings, fatal errors, and program limitations and the differences from standard FORTRAN

A Study of Speed of the Boundary Element Method as applied to the Realtime Computational Simulation of Biological Organs

In this work, possibility of simulating biological organs in realtime using the Boundary Element Method (BEM) is investigated. Biological organs are assumed to follow linear elastostatic material behavior, and constant boundary element is the element type used. First, a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is used to speed up the BEM computations to achieve the realtime performance. Next, instead of the GPU, a computer cluster is used. Results indicate that BEM is fast enough to provide for realtime graphics if biological organs are assumed to follow linear elastostatic material behavior. Although the present work does not conduct any simulation using nonlinear material models, results from using the linear elastostatic material model imply that it would be difficult to obtain realtime performance if highly nonlinear material models that properly characterize biological organs are used. Although the use of BEM for the simulation of biological organs is not new, the results presented in the present study are not found elsewhere in the literature.Comment: preprint, draft, 2 tables, 47 references, 7 files, Codes that can solve three dimensional linear elastostatic problems using constant boundary elements (of triangular shape) while ignoring body forces are provided as supplementary files; codes are distributed under the MIT License in three versions: i) MATLAB version ii) Fortran 90 version (sequential code) iii) Fortran 90 version (parallel code

The SCC and the SICSA multi-core challenge

Two phases of the SICSA Multi-core Challenge have gone past. The first challenge was to produce concordances of books for sequences of words up to length N; and the second to simulate the motion of N celestial bodies under gravity. We took both challenges on the SCC, using C and the Linux Shell. This paper is an account of the experiences gained. It also gives a shorter account of the performance of other systems on the same set of problems, as they provide benchmarks against which the SCC performance can be compared with

Research on speech understanding and related areas at SRI

Research capabilities on speech understanding, speech recognition, and voice control are described. Research activities and the activities which involve text input rather than speech are discussed

Practical applications of interactive voice technologies: Some accomplishments and prospects

A technology assessment of the application of computers and electronics to complex systems is presented. Three existing systems which utilize voice technology (speech recognition and speech generation) are described. Future directions in voice technology are also described

Implementing embedded artificial intelligence rules within algorithmic programming languages

Most integrations of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities with non-AI (usually FORTRAN-based) application programs require the latter to execute separately to run as a subprogram or, at best, as a coroutine, of the AI system. In many cases, this organization is unacceptable; instead, the requirement is for an AI facility that runs in embedded mode; i.e., is called as subprogram by the application program. The design and implementation of a Prolog-based AI capability that can be invoked in embedded mode are described. The significance of this system is twofold: Provision of Prolog-based symbol-manipulation and deduction facilities makes a powerful symbolic reasoning mechanism available to applications programs written in non-AI languages. The power of the deductive and non-procedural descriptive capabilities of Prolog, which allow the user to describe the problem to be solved, rather than the solution, is to a large extent vitiated by the absence of the standard control structures provided by other languages. Embedding invocations of Prolog rule bases in programs written in non-AI languages makes it possible to put Prolog calls inside DO loops and similar control constructs. The resulting merger of non-AI and AI languages thus results in a symbiotic system in which the advantages of both programming systems are retained, and their deficiencies largely remedied