Desktop Workstations Research Articles

Simulation as a cure process design tool for aerospace materials

Composite aerospace materials, known for their good mechanical properties and low weight, present interesting cure process design problems to the engineer. It is shown that computer simulation can be used as a powerful tool in solving these problems. Using physical principles, simple mathematical models are constructed which describe observed phenomena. With the advent of high-speed microcompu ters and desktop workstations, the simulations can be run at low cost. It is shown that with a properly validated model, the process engineer can use simulation to efficiently optimize cure cycles, as well as map undesirable operating regions. Examples are presented, which show that "standard" cure cycles for these materials can be modified to shorten processing times. Also, conditions which could cause reaction runaway are exposed.

KCM: a knowledge crunching machine

KCM (Knowledge Crunching Machine) is a high-performance back-end processor which, coupled to a UNIX * desk-top workstation, provides a powerful and user-friendly Prolog environment catering for both development and execution of significant Prolog applications. This paper gives a general overview of the architecture of KCM stressing some new features like a 64-bit tagged architecture, shallow backtracking and an original memory management unit. Some early benchmark results obtained on prototype machines are presented. They show that KCM, which runs at a peak speed of 833 Klips on list concatenation, compares favorably with other dedicated Prolog machines and available commercial systems running on fast general purpose processors.

Integrated Services Digital Networks: How it Can Be Used for Distance Education

Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) is an emerging telecommunications technology that will affect how distance education is designed, developed, and presented. Combined with integrated desktop workstations, it will put voice, text, and video telecommunications at the fingertips of educators and learners. Appropriate use of ISDN for distance education and training depends on the development of a conceptual scheme to integrate models from several closely related areas such as integrated information systems, educational broadcasting, computer assisted instruction, and distance education. In a project funded by Northern Telecom Inc., faculty and students of the Department of Educational Technology at San Diego State University are presently involved in evaluating an integrated telecommunications system and developing an integrated model of distance education.

Math chips: How they work: Augmenting microprocessors, they speed up math operations while giving systems designers a variety of performance, cost, and integration options

The use of mathematics coprocessors to speed up calculations on desktop computers and workstations is discussed. The reasons why interest in speed of mathematical operations rather than in the rate of program execution has arisen are examined. The different types of coprocessors are described. The different types of coprocessors are described, and the construction from standard building blocks of numeric processors that execute code independently of the main processor, thus offering even faster performance, is discussed. General-purpose attached numerics processors, which contains elements of both approaches, are described. The tradeoff between ease of use and performance is considered.

Lattice and ring array topologies using transputers

The development of a parallel processor architecture using transputers is described. Two alternative processor topologies, namely lattice and ring arrays, are described and compared. For a desk-top intelligent workstation there are significant advantages in the use of a ring array topology.

Workstations and mainframe computers working together

The history and design philosophy of a research project that produced a prototype soitware package are described. The package provides cooperation between large-scale mainframe computing systems and personal desktop workstations. Also discussed are the features of PC/VM Bond, the product that grew out of the research project.

A Distributed Workstation Architecture: The Convergent Cluster

This paper presents an architectural overview of the Convergent Cluster, a local area network used to connect Convergent's IWS, AWS and NGen families of desktop workstations. Implementation considerations are discussed, as well as some performance characteristics.

Some Issues In The Design Of Software For E-beam Analysis

The design of a software package for tracing and analysing the paths of charged particles in combined electric and magnetic fields must provide not only the usual facilities for field solution, but also those which are specific to the analysis of particle beams. The design of packages for use on desktop workstations must take account of the rapid evolution of facilities that are available for such machines. These include plug-in accelerator cards, newer facilities for integration of the package with graphical environments and client-server architectures. This integration is greatly assisted by modular design of the application package. These topics are discussed as they relate to the development of the package CIELAS2.