The Oregon Report omputer Science and Computer Engineering Education in the 80's

The computer's pervaiveness in the 1980's will demand even more professional talent, broader computer education, and perhaps even licensing of the computer professional. Industry, education, and professional groups must cooperate to meet these challenges.     

Integrated Design and Verification of Simulation Programs

One of the more critical problems in computing science today is the rapidly increasing cost of developing and maintaining software for new automated data systems. New software development is generally a standardized process whereby software evolves from an idea to a useful system operating on a computer. The traditional model for a software development project includes feasibility study, requirements analysis, system design, program design, coding, testing, documentation, and implementation. Program design, coding, and testing are relatively well defined activities, but they are rarely straightforward. Involving many iterations among the phases and the activities within the phases, these iterations are a result of the knowledge gained as the system is being generated. We will describe here a different approach to the software development process. This approach, called "top-down modular design," attempts to minimize the numerous iterations of the development cycle. The basic philosophy, similar to that of structured programming, has already been applied to a variety of applications but has not yet been utilized in the general process of constructing simulation programs.     

Finite modeling of parabolic equations using Galerkin methods and inverse matrix approximations

In this paper we examine order reduction of parabolic systems using modal truncation. The parabolic distributed system is first approximated using the Galerkin method. The system matrices have a special structure that allows us to find the approximate spectrum of the parabolic system. To do this we compute approximate inverses of tridiagonal, diagonally dominant symmetric matrices. The approximation leads to algorithms of orderO(n), as opposed to traditional algorithms of orderO(n), wheren is the order of the system. Finally, an example is presented to illustrate the proposed algorithm.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under contract NCR-9210408, by the Advanced Research Programs Agency under contract MDA-972-93-1-0032, and by the University of Hawaii Research Council Funds.