The programming language standards scene, ten years on Paper 8: Basic

This paper, one of a simultaneously published set on ten years of activity in programming language standards, describes the developments in standardization of the programming language Basic which have taken place in the period 1983–1993.     

Qualitative representation of spatial knowledge in two-dimensional space

Various relation-based systems, concerned with the qualitative representation and processing of spatial knowledge, have been developed in numerous application domains. In this article, we identify the common concepts underlying qualitative spatial knowledge representation, we compare the representational properties of the different systems, and we outline the computational tasks involved in relation-based spatial information processing. We also describesymbolic spatial indexes, relation-based structures that combine several ideas in spatial knowledge representation. A symbolic spatial index is an array that preserves only a set of spatial relations among distinct objects in an image, called the modeling space; the index array discards information, such as shape and size of objects, and irrelevant spatial relations. The construction of a symbolic spatial index from an input image can be thought of as a transformation that keeps only a set of representative points needed to define the relations of the modeling space. By keeping the relative arrangements of the representative points in symbolic spatial indexes and discarding all other points, we maintain enough information to answer queries regarding the spatial relations of the modeling space without the need to access the initial image or an object database. Symbolic spatial indexes can be used to solve problems involving route planning, composition of spatial relations, and update operations.     

Decidability of the termination problem for completely specified protocols

Summary In this paper, we present a new class of protocols called completely specified protocols. Each protocol is represented as a system of Communicating Finite State Machines. The class of completely specified protocols is such that each message that can be received by a Finite State Machine, can also be received in every local state of the Finite State Machine. These protocols are important because they allow for modelling unbounded fifo channels and make it possible to decide the Termination Problem, that is whether the reachability tree is finite or not. An example of our techniques is given using a practical problem concerning link protocols. Alain Finkel is a Professor of Computer Science at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Cachan. His research is concerned with the models of concurrency and the practical possibilities to verify and to validate distributed systems. He is also interested by the cognitive interfaces.     

Domain-oriented design environments

The field of knowledge-based software engineering has been undergoing a shift in emphasis from automatic programming to human augmentation and empowerment. In our research work, we support this shift with an approach that embedshuman-computer cooperative problem-solving tools intodomain-oriented, knowledge-based design environments. Domain orientation reduces the large conceptual distance between problem-domain semantics and software artifacts. Integrated environments support the coevolution of specification and construction while allowing designers to access relevant knowledge at each stage within the software development process.This paper argues thatdomain-oriented design environments (DODEs) are complementary to the approaches pursued withknowledge-based software assistant systems (KBSAs). The DODE extends the KBSA framework by emphasizing a human-centered and domain-oriented approach facilitating communication about evolving systems among all stakeholders. The paper discusses the major challenges for software systems, develops a conceptual framework to address these problems, illustrates DODE with two examples, and assesses the contributions of the KBSA and DODE approaches toward solving these problems.     

并行面向对象语言综述

近年来,面向对象语言的并行化技术取得了许多重要进展.以Mentat,CC++,pC++,HPC++和ICC++等几个典型系统为代表,从并行执行模型、语言并行设施、优化技术和运行时支持等几个方面归纳、总结了近年来这些语言和编译器支持并行的新技术.同时,还给出了对这些技术的分析和评价,总结了需要进一步研究和解决的问题.     

Formal Reduction of Interfaces to Large-scale Process Control Systems

A formal methodology is proposed to reduce the amount of information displayed to remote human operators at interfaces to large-scale process control plants of a certain type.The reduction proceeds in two stages.In the first stage,minimal reduced subsets of components,which give full information about the state of the whole system,are generated by determining functional dependencies between components.This is achieved by using a temporal logic proof obligation to check whether the state of all components can be inferred from the state of components in a subset in specified situations that the human operator needs to detect,with respect to a finite state machine model of the system and other human operator behavior.Generation of reduced subsets is automated with the help of a temporal logic model checker.The second stage determines the interconnections between components to be displayed in the reduced system so that the natural overall graphical structure of the system is maintained.A formal definition of an aesthetic for the required subgraph of a graph representation of the full system,containing the reduced subset of components,is given for this purpose. The methodology is demonstrated by a case study.     

基于瞬态动力学复合材料火箭定向器数值仿真

随着世界军事科学的日益发展,纤维增强复合材料在武器装备上得到越来越多的应用,为了深入研究纤维增强复合材料定向器的刚强度,必然要对各种参数进行大量的实验,造成效费比很高.为解决这个问题,文中用数值仿真的方法对玻璃纤维增强复合材料火箭定向器进行了研究,计算了火箭在定向器内运行的全过程,得到了复合材料定向器的一些有价值的计算数据曲线.数值计算结果与实际数据对比,取得良好的一致性.研究表明,用该复合材料制成的火箭定向器完全能够满足工程需要.     

图像去噪中的有限元求解方法

提出一种图像去噪中的有限元求解方法.从P-M模型出发,利用双线性插值得到图像在任意点的灰度值,将该值作为初始条件,采用有限元法对模型进行分析求解.在相同的时间间隔与迭代次数的条件下,该方法的求解结果与传统的有限差分法相比,平滑去噪和保持边界的效果更好,峰值信噪比有较大提高.     

Multi-GPU accelerated multi-spin Monte Carlo simulations of the 2D Ising model

A Modern Graphics Processing unit (GPU) is able to perform massively parallel scientific computations at low cost. We extend our implementation of the checkerboard algorithm for the two-dimensional Ising model [T. Preis et al., Journal of Chemical Physics 228 (2009) 4468-4477] in order to overcome the memory limitations of a single GPU which enables us to simulate significantly larger systems. Using multi-spin coding techniques, we are able to accelerate simulations on a single GPU by factors up to 35 compared to an optimized single Central Processor Unit (CPU) core implementation which employs multi-spin coding. By combining the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) with the Message Parsing Interface (MPI) on the CPU level, a single Ising lattice can be updated by a cluster of GPUs in parallel. For large systems, the computation time scales nearly linearly with the number of GPUs used. As proof of concept we reproduce the critical temperature of the 2D Ising model using finite size scaling techniques.     

An element-based displacement preconditioner for linear elasticity problems

Finite element analysis of problems in structural and geotechnical engineering results in linear systems where the unknowns are displacements and rotations at nodes. Although the solution of these systems can be carried out using either direct or iterative methods, in practice the matrices involved are usually very large and sparse (particularly for 3D problems) so an iterative approach is often advantageous in terms of both computational time and memory requirements. This memory saving can be further enhanced if the method used does not require assembly of the full coefficient matrix during the solution procedure. One disadvantage of iterative methods is the need to apply preconditioning to improve convergence. In this paper, we review a range of established element-based preconditioning methods for linear elastic problems and compare their performance with a new method based on preconditioning with element displacement components. This new method appears to offer a significant improvement in performance.