Ease Of Reconfiguration Research Articles

Recipe Control for Closed-Field Unbalanced Magnetron Sputter Ion-Plating Machines

The requirements, specification and chosen implementation of a secure, reliable and compact process control system on a personal computer is described for automating closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputter ion-plating machines. The made-to-order nature of many such installations has consequences for the design of the control system, necessitating great flexibility and ease of reconfiguration. The system described has been implemented for the deposition of Al2O3, alloy nitride, ‘diamond-like’ carbon and other coatings. Examples are presented of the control script language and a typical mimic display.

Exploring issues of operating systems structuring

The microkernel concept has once been the most advocated approach for operating system development. Unfortunately, before its publicized advantages have been fully realized in an operating system implementation, current operating system researchers claim its weaknesses and make their ways to develop "extensible" operating systems. New operating systems like SPIN, Ageis, Cache Kernel, Apertos and Scout, employ new concepts to support application specific customization and optimal allocation of system resource, in order to boost up the performance of certain applications. The microkernel concept in itself never contradicts with this purpose, as it is to provide basic efficient primitives for construction of system services. Probably, the crucial problem is that the OS architecture of most current microkernel implementations cannot suitably meet with the new requirements of extensibility. In this paper, we try to explore issues in developing a better OS architecture that can fully enhance OS extensibility. Moreover, we investigate how microkernel abstraction can be remodeled to support better reconfiguration in operating systems. To cope with the conflicting issues of efficiency, flexibility and ease of reconfiguration, we suggest and discuss an approach of structuring operating systems. The approach is characteristed by lightweight meta-abstraction mechanism and progressive reflective reconfiguration.

Remote booting in a hostile world: to whom am I speaking? [Computer security

Today's networked computer systems are very vulnerable to attack: terminal software, like that used by the X Window System, is frequently passed across a network, and a trojan horse can easily be inserted while it is in transit. Many other software products, including operating systems, load parts of themselves from a server across a network. Although users may be confident that their workstation is physically secure, some part of the network to which they are attached almost certainly is not secure. Most proposals that recommend cryptographic means to protect remotely loaded software also eliminate the advantages of remote loading-for example, ease of reconfiguration, upgrade distribution, and maintenance. For this reason, they have largely been abandoned before finding their way into commercial products. The article shows that, contrary to intuition, it is no more difficult to protect a workstation that loads its software across an insecure network than to protect a stand-alone workstation. In contrast to prevailing practice, the authors make essential use of a collision-rich hash function to ensure that an exhaustive off-line search by the opponent will produce not one, but many candidate pass words. This strategy forces the opponent into an open, on-line guessing attack and offers the user a defensive strategy unavailable in the case of an off-line attack. >

Automated Fault Analysis for Hydraulic Systems: Part 2: Applications

The paper provides further details of the automated failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) program outlined in Part 1. Some of the more difficult development problems are discussed, and solutions are presented. The functionality of the program was tested through application to two experimental rigs, namely a closed-loop hydrostatic transmission with a dynamometer and a regenerative pump test rig. Non-destructive faults, such as abnormally low relief valve settings and excessive loads, were manually inserted into these rigs, and the measured effects were compared with the predictions from the program to validate the software. The difference in complexity and configuration evident in the two examples considered serves to highlight the generality of the approach. The ease of reconfigurability of the software reflects the key aim of producing a program capable of analysing a wide range of hydraulic circuits.