Group items tagged

A common requirement in digital-dominated mixed-signal verification is the need for purely event-driven models that imitate Spice or AMS blocks at low fidelity but high speed. Resolved record types are commonly used for this modeling style in VHDL-based flows. Unfortunately, SystemVerilog defines only one resolved net type, the logic type. A second, non-standard net type, wreal, has been borrowed from Verilog-AMS and, with proprietary extensions, added to some implementations of SystemVerilog. wreal is a single real value with a small, fixed set of resolution functions. It solves only a subset of the problems commonly encountered in event-driven analog modeling. In contrast, the ADMS_signals approach is completely general and extensible while still conforming strictly to the IEEE SystemVerilog standard. The stored data type can be any type that is legal in SystemVerilog, including arrays and structs (nested to arbitrary depth) and even class instances (objects). The resolution function is a user-supplied SystemVerilog function. Different networks in the same design hierarchy may be given distinct stored type and resolution function.

Because telecommunication systems require by essence to conform to a common standard that covers static and dynamic interfaces, telecommunication standardization bodies as well as telecommunication equipment manufacturer have been using advanced modeling technologies such as MSC, ASN.1, SDL, and TTCN for years. In fact these technologies cover the whole development cycle from requirements, specification, design, and test. That is why it should definitely be considered when developing communicating systems.   

There's an interesting video on YouTube from Binary Millenium showing how to make a 3D model out of real objects using Microsoft's Photosynth. It's an interesting idea that, while unofficial, may be a big time saver and a lot of fun for many of you. This will work best if you use a Photosynth that not only has a high rate of 'synthiness' but also lots of points in the point cloud. A point in the point cloud means that a specific feature has been identified in two or more photos, allowing for Photosynth to determine to some degree where in space that point exists. While a good Photosynth might have 100% synthiness, meaning all the pictures are connected, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be lots of points in the point cloud.

Model based Optical proximity correction is usually used to compensate for the pattern distortion during the microlithography process. Currently, almost all the lithography effects, such as the proximity effects from the limited NA, the 3D mask effects due to the shrinking critical dimension, the photo resist effects, and some other well known physical process, can all be well considered into modeling with the OPC algorithm. However, the micro-lithography is not the final step of the pattern transformation procedure from the mask to the wafer. The etch process is also a very important stage. It is well known that till now, the etch process still can't be well explained by physics theory. In this paper, we will demonstrate our study on the model based etch bias retarget for OPC.

Researchers at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research are working on a new mathematical model to mimic the human brain's ability to identify objects. The model can predict human performance on certain visual-perception tasks suggesting it’s a good indication of what's actually happening in the brain. Researchers are hoping the new findings will make their way into future object-recognition systems for automation, mobile robotics, and other applications.

If you need a quick reference guide for the UML notation, check one of the following, IMHO, gret UML cheat sheets (in no particular order):

There's an interesting video on YouTube from Binary Millenium showing how to make a 3D model out of real objects using Microsoft's Photosynth. It's an interesting idea that while unofficial, may be a big time saver and a lot of fun for many of you. This will work best if you use a Photosynth that not only has a high rate of 'synthiness' but also tons of points in the point cloud. A point in the point cloud means that a specific feature in two more photos has been identified allowing for Photosynth to some degree determine where in space that point exists. While a good Photosynth might have 100% synthiness, meaning all the pictures were connected, it doesn't necissarily mean there will be lots of points in the point cloud.

PMA is just kicking off in earnest down in Anaheim, and it looks like Sony has arrived in a big way. Looking to make a splash in a DSLR world dominated by Canon and Nikon, the outfit has brought a few of its best and brightest concepts to SoCal. Up first is an ultra-compact "interchangeable lens" concept, which is no doubt Sony's attempt to get in on the fledgling Micro Four Thirds game before it blows up big. Few details on the device are available, but we'll be doing our best to pry whatever specifications we can from the booth representatives in short order. Moving on, there's a conceptual model of the Alpha A700 replacement, complete with an Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor that promises full AVCHD video capabilities. There's also a prototype of a Super Telephoto Lens (500mm F4 G) as well as a prototype Distagon T 24mm F2 ZA SSM, which ought to make wide angle junkies drool profusely. The company's also dishing out a raft of accessories, including underwater housing devices, HD lenses and output cables, tripods / accessory packs and a Compact PictureStation photo printing kiosk. Stay tuned for some hands-on action from the show floor

The computer models used to determine whether it was safe for airlines to fly through the ash resulting from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland were flawed, European Union officials now admit, says a story in the Financial Times of London.

Erlang allows for massively scalable concurrency, often with millions of lightweight, thread-like components known as actors. Unfortunately, using Erlang requires rewriting all of your legacy code into a rather esoteric language. But there are other options, such as the little known CCR platform that was developed by .NET's robotics department. Actor based languages such as Erlang are able to achieve high degrees of parallelism by using the Actor model. Under this model the fundamental unit of concurrency is not a thread or fiber, but rather something much smaller. Known as a "process" in Erlang, each unit of concurrency has a base overhead of about 1200 bytes on a 32-bit system. By comparison, a thread on the Windows operating system defaults to 1 MB just for the stack, additional space is also needed for bookkeeping and thread local storage. Because they are so lightweight, an application can spawn literally millions of processes simultaneously.

The Care-O-bot® research initiative aims at making Care-O-bot® 3 available as high-tech research platform. The main objectives to reach this goal are to provide a common open source repository for the hardware platform provide simulation models of hardware components provide remote access to the Care-O-bot® 3 hardware platform

In separate keynote addresses in Silicon Valley, two Internet pioneers gave different takes on the future of the network of networks Monday (May 24). Vint Cerf, co-developer of the Net's TCP/IP protocol, shared his thoughts with developers of the smart electric grid, seen as a massive embedded extension to the Internet. Larry Roberts, who helped launch the forerunner of the Internet, explained his ideas for remedying the growing congestion that plagues the Web today. Smart grid developers can learn from the lessons of the Internet, Cerf told attendees at Connectivity Week here. They should follow the model of the Net in creating a layered architecture with plenty of room for flexibility in areas that cannot be anticipated today, he said in a keynote at Connectivity Week.

Engineers aim to deliver within a year a broad suite of standards needed to build smart electric grids. They reported on their stepwise progress at the end of Connectivity Week here. Beyond the standards, the industry needs to create new regulations and business models and show consumers the benefits of a smart grid to make the transition to a digital, networked grid happen, said attendees and presenters at the event. The good news is the standards are underway.

Complex computer models can involve thousands of variables. But paradoxically, adding more variables can sometimes make them easier to work with.

In Stack Machines, Expression Evaluation, and the Magic of Reverse Polish, I showed how expressions can be evaluated by rewriting them in reverse Polish and translating this into machine-code instructions for a stack machine. I demonstrated with a stack-machine interpreter that I'd written as part of a working model of a Pascal compiler. But as well as expressions, the compiler needs to compile assignments and jumps, so — in my progress towards explaining the compiler — I'm going to extend the machine code so it can handle these. I'll demonstrate by interpreting a program that calculates five factorial.

Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen).

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) were awarded no less than $34.5 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to continue their outstanding work in the field of prosthetic limb testing, which has seen them come up with the most advanced model yet. Their Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) system is just about ready to be tested on human subjects, as it has proved successful with monkeys. Basically, the prosthetic arm is controlled by the brain through micro-arrays that are implanted (gently) in the head. They record brain signals and send the commands to the computer software that controls the arm. To be honest, it will be interesting to see just how these hair-chips are attached to the brain, but the APL say clinical tests have shown the devices to be entirely harmless. The monkeys didn’t mind them too much, at least.

What made me fall of my chair is the methodology/architecture part of this statement. It’s hard enough (but doable) to use RDF to map philosophically similar APIs. It’s a non-starter to use it to bridge architectural and methodological differences. I have spent a fair amount of time looking at Semantic Web technologies in the context of modeling IT systems (see the “semantic tech” category of this blog). While I think they would be a great foundation I don’t see them ever coming anywhere near what Reuven describes.