IEEE-Compliant IDCT on FPGA-Augmented TriMedia

This paper presents a TriMedia processor extended with an IDCT reconfigurable design, and assesses the performance gain such an extension has when performing MPEG-2 decoding. We first propose the skeleton of an extension of the TriMedia architecture, which consists of a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based Reconfigurable Functional Unit (RFU), a Configuration Unit managing the reconfiguration of the RFU, and their associated instructions. Then, we address the computation of the 8 × 8 (2-D) IDCT on such extended TriMedia and propose a scheme to implement the 1-D IDCT operation on the RFU. When mapped on an ACEX EP1K100 FPGA from Altera, the proposed 1-D IDCT exhibits a latency of 16 and a recovery of 2 TriMedia@200 MHz cycles, and occupies 45% of the logic cells of the device. By configuring the 1-D IDCT on the RFU at application launch-time, the IEEE-compliant 2-D IDCT can be computed with the throughput of 1/32 IDCT/cycle. This figure translates to an improvement over the standard TriMedia of more than 40% in terms of computing time when 2-D IDCT is carried out in the framework of MPEG-2 decoding. Finally, the proposed reconfigurable IDCT is compared to a number of existing designs.Mihai Sima was born in Bucharest, Romania. He received the MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Politehnica University of Bucharest, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He had been with the Microelectronics Company in Bucharest for 3 years, where he was involved in instrumentation electronics for integrated circuit testing. Subsequently, he joined the Telecommunications Department of Politehnica University of Bucharest, where he had been involved in digital signal processing and speech recognition for 6 years. More recently, he had been with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, where he worked on reconfigurable architectures for mediaprocessing domain. He is currently an assistant professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria, B.C., Canada. His research interests include computer architecture, reconfigurable computing, embedded systems, digital signal processing, and speech recognition.Sorin D. Coofan was born in Mizil, Romania. He received the MS degree in Computer Science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He had worked with the Research & Development Institute for Electronic Components (ICCE) in Bucharest for a decade, being involved in structured design of digital systems, design rule checking of ICs layout, logic and mixed-mode simulation of electronic circuits, testability analysis, and image processing. He is currently an associate professor with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. His research interests include computer arithmetic, parallel architectures, embedded systems, reconfigurable computing, nano-electronics, neural networks, computational geometry, and computer aided design.Jos T.J. van Eijndhoven was born in Roosendaal, The Netherlands. He studied Electrical Engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, obtaining the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 1981 and 1984, respectively, for a work on piecewise linear circuit simulation. Then, he became a senior research member in the design automation group of the Eindhoven University of Technology. In 1986 he spent a sabbatical period at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, New York, for research on high level synthesis. In 1998 he joined Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, to work on the architectural design of programmable multimedia hardware and the associated mapping of media processing applications.Stamatis Vassiliadis was born in Manolates, Samos, Greece. He is a professor with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. He has also served in the faculties of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the State University of New York (S.U.N.Y.), Binghamton, NY.He hadworked for a decade with IBM in the AdvancedWorkstations and Systems laboratory in Austin TX, the Mid-Hudson Valley Laboratory in Poughkeepsie, NY, and the Glendale Laboratory in Endicott, NY. In IBM he was involved in a number of projects regarding computer design, organizations, and architectures and the leadership to advanced research projects. A number of his design and implementation proposals have been implemented in commerciallyavailable systems and processors including the IBM 9370 model 60 computer system, the IBM POWER II, the IBM AS/400 Models 400, 500, and 510, Server Models 40S and 50S, the IBM AS/400 Advanced 36, and the IBM S/390 G4 and G5 computer systems. For his work, he received numerous awards including 23 levels of Publication Achievement Awards, 15 levels of Invention Achievement Awards and an Outstanding Innovation Award for Engineering/Scientific Hardware Design in 1989. In 1990 he has been awarded the highest number of USA patents in IBM, six of his 70 USA patents being rated with the highest patent ranking in IBM.Kees A. Vissers graduated the Delft University of Technology, receiving his M.Sc. in 1980. He started directly with Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven where he was involved in highlevel simulation and high-level synthesis. He had been heading the research on hardware/software co-design and system level design for many years, and had a significant contribution to the TriMedia VLIW processor. From 1987 till 1988 he was a visiting researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the group of Don Thomas. He is currently a Research Fellow with University of California at Berkeley, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. His research interests include video processing, embedded media processing systems, and reconfigurable computing.     

An uncountable family of nonorbit equivalent actions of

For each , we construct an uncountable family of free ergodic measure preserving actions of the free group on the standard probability space such that any two are nonorbit equivalent (in fact, not even stably orbit equivalent). These actions are all ``rigid' (in the sense of Popa), with the IIfactors mutually nonisomorphic (even nonstably isomorphic) and in the class

     

The LP formulation of finite zero-sum games with incomplete information

This paper gives the LP formulation for finite zero sum games with incomplete information using Bayesian mixed strategies. This formulation is then used to derive general properties for the value of such games, the well known concave-convex property but also the “piecewise bilinearity”. These properties may offer considerable help for computational purposes but also provide structural guidelines for the analysis of special classes of games with incomplete information.     

Crossover and scaling in SU(3) lattice gauge theories with Susskind fermions

The phase diagram of SU(3) lattice gauge theories with Susskind fermions is investigated by Monte Carlo methods. For three flavors in the continuum a significant shift in the location of the peak in the specific heat is found, as compared to the pure gauge case. These results suggest that the crossover region moves to smaller β when fermion polarization effects are included.     

Progress in development of Nuclotron accelerator complex

The Nuclotron superconducting synchrotron was constructed in 1987–1992 [1]; it is the world’s first synchrotron based on fast cycling “window frame” electromagnets with a superconducting coil. For a design field of dipole magnets of 2 T, the magnetic rigidity is 45 T m, which corresponds to the energy of heavy nuclei (for example, gold) of 4.5 GeV/nucleon. The Nuclotron accelerator complex is currently being upgraded (the Nuclotron-M project); this upgrade is considered a key part of the first stage of fulfilling the new Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) project: the Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility and Multi-Purpose Detector (NICA/MPD). The most important task of this new project is the preparation of basic Nuclotron systems for its reliable operation as part of the NICA accelerator complex. Basic results of activity on the project, which started in 2007, are presented and the results of the last Nuclotron runs are analyzed.     

Géométries Lorentziennes de dimension 3 : classification et complétude

We classify three-dimensional Lorentz homogeneous spaces G/I having a compact manifold locally modeled on them. We prove a completeness result: any compact locally homogeneous Lorentz threefold M is isometric to a quotient of a Lorentz homogeneous space G/I by a discrete subgroup Γ of G acting properly and freely on G/I. Moreover, if I is noncompact, G/I is isometric to a Lie group L endowed with a left invariant Lorentz metric, where L is isomorphic to one of the following Lie groups:

Hyperspectral Imaging in the Medical Field: Present and Future

Abstract

Hyperspectral imaging is an optical method that provides a large amount of information about the investigated object. Its medical applications are reviewed in this article, including tumor delimitation and identification, assessing tissue perfusion and its pathological conditions (including some complications like diabetic foot ulceration), making accurate surgical decisions, evaluating the health of dental structures, etc. Many of the articles show very promising results that required brief comments by the authors. It is clear that choosing the appropriate hyperspectral imaging system for each medical field, together with the most reliable hyperspectral image processing methods, are the main goals of future studies, before hyperspectral imaging becomes a widely applicable evaluation method in medicine. The authors try to answer some questions on this topic and set up some directions for future research.     

Integrable Scalar Cosmologies I. Foundations and links with String Theory

We build a number of integrable one-scalar spatially flat cosmologies, which play a natural role in inflationary scenarios, examine their behavior in several cases and draw from them some general lessons on this type of systems, whose potentials involve combinations of exponential functions, and on similar non-integrable ones. These include the impossibility for the scalar to emerge from the initial singularity descending along asymptotically exponential potentials with logarithmic slopes exceeding a critical value (“climbing phenomenon”) and the inevitable collapse in a Big Crunch whenever the scalar tries to settle at negative extrema of the potential. We also elaborate on the links between these types of potentials and “brane supersymmetry breaking”, a mechanism that ties together string scale and scale of supersymmetry breaking in a class of orientifold models.     

Approximation of periodic solutions for a dissipative hyperbolic equation

This paper studies the numerical approximation of periodic solutions for an exponentially stable linear hyperbolic equation in the presence of a periodic external force $f$ . These approximations are obtained by combining a fixed point algorithm with the Galerkin method. It is known that the energy of the usual discrete models does not decay uniformly with respect to the mesh size. Our aim is to analyze this phenomenon’s consequences on the convergence of the approximation method and its error estimates. We prove that, under appropriate regularity assumptions on $f$ , the approximation method is always convergent. However, our error estimates show that the convergence’s properties are improved if a numerically vanishing viscosity is added to the system. The same is true if the nonhomogeneous term $f$ is monochromatic. To illustrate our theoretical results we present several numerical simulations with finite element approximations of the wave equation in one or two dimensional domains and with different forcing terms.     

CR immersions and Lorentzian geometry

We study the geometry of the second fundamental form of pseudohermitian immersions among nondegenerate CR manifolds. In particular we study existence and uniqueness of pseudohermitian immersions $\phi : M \rightarrow S^{2n+3}$ of a strictly pseudoconvex CR manifold $M$ into an odd dimensional sphere, as determined by the pseudohermitian Gauss and Weingarten equations.