Reconfigurable Processor Research Articles

Internal corporate venturing: riding the relational rollercoaster through sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration

PurposeInternal corporate venturing is a vehicle for firms to realize strategic and financial goals through entrepreneurial ventures. Prior research presents a strategic process in which individual managers make rational choices based on their formal roles and top-down corporate objectives. Recent work has challenged this by adopting a relational approach using a macro-level perspective highlighting cultural and institutional logics. This study augments and develops this relational approach by contributing a micro-level perspective by focusing on managers engaged in developing ventures in large organizations. The data show how internal corporate venturing (ICV) actors use discursive practices to make sense of their relationship contexts and develop interpretive repertoires to give sense to their decisions and shape their future strategies. The data illustrate how corporate venturing actors make sense of their uncertain experience and develop insider-outsider strategies by balancing three competing interpretive repertories, which form the basis of strategies supporting an entrepreneurial future in an organizational context.Design/methodology/approachForty-two interviews were conducted with ICV actors, including senior directors of corporate venturing units in multinational corporations and their venture project leaders. The authors conducted a micro-level study through an interpretive sensemaking analysis of managers' “talk.” Interviews are considered through three lenses: “functional talk” (why they said it), “interpretive themes” (what they said) and “interpretive repertoires” (how they said it).FindingsThe perceived challenges experienced by the participants through their relationships were identified. Participants emphasized balancing project and organizational role risk in pursuing venture development, leading to a perceived dependent trust relationship between supporters. Three interpretive repertories were identified through which participants positioned their explanations of their relationship contexts in ICV. Participants used these to discursively frame their corporate venturing practices and position their future strategies.Originality/valueA new framework of corporate venture sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration is provided to explain how managers discursively resolve conflicting relationship pressures while maintaining personal positioning. The paper shows how conflicting interpretive repertoires and personal interpretations are generated through a discursive practice comprising sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration processes to shape their future strategies. The paper contributes to theory by explicating the relational perspective of ICV at the micro-level and demonstrates how this is influenced by the discursive practices of managers leading the ICV activity.

Analytic solution for combined in-plane and out-of-plane spacecraft formation reconfiguration with passive collision avoidance

Passive collision avoidance mechanism are effective for ensuring the safety of spacecraft formations during the reconfiguration process. This paper investigates the combined in-plane and out-of-plane formation reconfiguration, while incorporating passive collision avoidance constraints. We design a low-collision-risk impulsive maneuver sequence using the relative Eccentricity/Inclination (E/I) vectors theory and conduct a comprehensive passive safety analysis. Furthermore, we introduce an analytic, passively collision-free maneuver strategy by deriving constraint-satisfying solutions for the relative E/I vectors reconfiguration path. For the first time, our approach achieves theoretical completeness in passive collision avoidance, significantly enhancing the safety of transition configurations compared with existing analytic solutions. Finally, simulations results show that our approach offers substantial improvements in reconfiguration passive safety while incurring negligible additional fuel consumption in comparison to existing solution.

Facile sulfur chemistry assisted carbon reconfiguration for efficient potassium ion electrochemical storage

Carbon-based materials are commonly used as anodes for potassium-ion batteries due to their high conductivity and stable cycling performance. However, their practical application is greatly hindered by their low capacity. Herein, we introduce facile sulfur chemistry including thioether bonds and CoS₂ into a nitrogen-oxygen co-doped partially graphitized carbon skeleton (NOGC), while the extra reconfiguration process of carbon assists forming the CoS₂@R-NOGC composites. The reconfigured NOGC (R-NOGC), enriched with highly electronegative elements (N, O, S), significantly enhances the reversible potassium ion storage capacity. The ordered carbon structure provides more efficient ionic transport pathways, thereby improving K⁺ transport efficiency. Moreover, layered CoS₂ acts as additional ion transport channels and active sites, further enhancing ion mobility and storage capacity. R-NOGC also promotes the reconstruction and repair of the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer to form a more robust interface. As a result of the synergistic effect between R-NOGC and CoS₂, it exhibits excellent anode performance, including a high reversible capacity (314.0 mAh/g at 0.1 A/g) and long-term stability (250.3 mAh/g at 0.5 A/g after 1,000 cycles). This work presents a novel strategy for designing and synthesizing high-performance anode materials for potassium-ion batteries, significantly enhancing both capacity and cycling stability.

Reconfigurable in-sensor processing based on a multi-phototransistor–one-memristor array

Reconfigurable in-sensor processing based on a multi-phototransistor–one-memristor array

PV Array Reconfiguration for Global Maximum Power Optimizing under Partial Shading Conditions based on PV Switched System

Background: Due to the partial shading effects on different photovoltaic (PV) modules in a PV array, PV module operating conditions are inconsistent, and PV array output power is significantly reduced. Although the maximum power point (MPP) of a non-uniform irradiance PV array can be observed through global maximum power point tracking (GMPPT), no evaluation of the array's energy potential has been done. Objective: One of the most effective solutions to overcome the negative effects of partial shading in PV systems is the PV array reconfiguration process. To optimize the electrical structure of the PV array as the PV modules are partially shaded in a non-uniform manner, this study proposes a promising technique for dynamic reconfiguring a PV array in order to improve the extracted maximum power from a PV array under partial shading conditions (PSC). Methods: PV modules are rearranged by iteratively sorting them to allow the PV array with nonuniform irradiance to produce as much power as possible. This is conducted by applying a switching matrix to implement a PV-switched system approach. The proposed system with different PV array dimensions (e.g., 3×4, 4×6, and 5×8) is assessed in order to validate the proposed algorithm. A MATLAB/Simulink PV array developed model is used to find the global maximum power point for the different PV array dimensions in both pre-reconfiguration and post-reconfiguration states. Results: A detailed numerical comparison of the extracted power from the proposed system has been provided. Conclusion: The results show that the proposed system has the potential to extract the exact global maximum power for a PV-switched system under PSC, irrespective of array dimensions, according to simulation results.

Optimization-based trajectory planning for reconfigurable unmanned vehicle units with multi-steering modes during the reconfiguration process

Reconfigurable unmanned vehicle unit (RUVU) exhibits three distinct steering modes: Ackermann steering, Diagonal steering, and In-Situ steering. This arises from its capacity for All-Wheel-Independent-Steering (AWIS) and All-Wheel-Independent-Driving (AWID). Given its unique motion characteristics, there is currently a lack of established methods to assist a RUVU in autonomously planning trajectories. In response to this deficiency, this paper proposes the Multi-Steering Modes Trajectory Planning algorithm (MSMTP) based on the framework of optimal control problem (OCP). The approach innovatively formulates the kinematics and Steering-Mode-Switch theory for vehicles with multi-steering modes. Additionally, a safe traveling corridor (STC) is implemented to guarantee non-conflicting interaction with the surrounding environment. Ultimately, the Bonmin solver is utilized to derive optimal results. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in RUVU’s trajectory planning. When comparing the trajectory of RUVU to that of a vehicle only with Ackermann steering, the results also reveal that RUVU has the advantage of reaching its destination in a shorter time, especially in narrow environments.

A Collaborative Visual Sensing System for Precise Quality Inspection at Manufacturing Lines

Visual sensing has been widely adopted for quality inspection in production processes. This article presents the design and implementation of a smart collaborative camera system, called BubCam , for automated quality inspection of manufactured ink bags in Hewlett-Packard (HP) Inc.’s factories. Specifically, BubCam estimates the volume of air bubbles in an ink bag, which may affect the printing quality. The design of BubCam faces challenges due to the dynamic ambient light reflection, motion blur effect, and data labeling difficulty. As a starting point, we design a single-camera system that leverages various deep learning (DL)-based image segmentation and depth fusion techniques. New data labeling and training approaches are proposed to utilize prior knowledge of the production system for training the segmentation model with a small dataset. Then, we design a multi-camera system that additionally deploys multiple wireless cameras to achieve better accuracy due to multi-view sensing. To save power of the wireless cameras, we formulate a configuration adaptation problem and develop the single-agent and multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based solutions to adjust each wireless camera’s operation mode and frame rate in response to the changes of presence of air bubbles and light reflection. The multi-agent DRL approach aims to reduce the retraining costs during the production line reconfiguration process by only retraining the DRL agents for the newly added cameras and the existing cameras with changed positions. Extensive evaluation on a lab testbed and real factory trial shows that BubCam outperforms six baseline solutions including the current manual inspection and existing bubble detection and camera configuration adaptation approaches. In particular, BubCam achieves 1.3x accuracy improvement and 300x latency reduction compared with the manual inspection approach.

Multifunctional Reconfigurable Operations in an Ultra-Scaled Ferroelectric Negative Transconductance Transistor.

The integration of functional materials into electronic devices has become a key approach to extending Moore's law by increasing the functional density of electronic circuits. Here, we present a device technology based on ultrascaled ferroelectric, antiambipolar transistors (ferro-AAT) with robust negative transconductance, enabling a wide range of reconfigurable functionalities with applications in both the digital and analog domains. The device relies on the integration of a hafnia-based ferroelectric gate stack on a vertical nanowire tunnel field-effect transistor. Through intentional gate/source overlap and tunnel-junction engineering, we demonstrate enhanced antiambipolarity with a high negative transconductance that is reconfigurable using the nonvolatile remanent polarization of the ferroelectric. Experimental validation highlights the versatility of this ferro-AAT in two implementation scenarios: content addressable memory (CAM) for high-density data search and reconfigurable signal processing in analog circuits. As a single-transistor cell for CAMs, the ferro-AAT shows subpicojoule operation for one search with a compact footprint of ∼0.01 μm2. For single-transistor-based signal modulation, multistate reconfigurations and high power conversion (>95%) are achieved in the ferro-AAT, resulting in a significant reduction in the complexity of analog circuit design. Our results reveal that the distinctive device properties allow ferro-AATs to operate beyond conventional transistors with multiple reconfigurable functionalities, ultrascaled footprint, and low power consumption.

Optimization of Division and Reconfiguration Locations of the Medium-Voltage Power Grid Based on Forecasting the Level of Load and Generation from Renewable Energy Sources

The article addresses challenges in optimizing the operation of medium voltage networks, emphasizing optimizing network division points and selecting the best network configuration for minimizing power and energy losses. It critically reviews recent research on the issue of network configuration optimization. The optimization of the medium voltage power grid reconfiguration process was carried out using known optimization tools. The novelty lies in the inclusion of a probabilistic approach in the decision-making process in forecasting loads and generation from renewable energy sources (RES). Optimization studies utilizing heuristic optimization methods were completed, and an algorithm was developed for forecasting load and power generated from RES based on historical data and current weather data obtained from weather API. The solution proposed in the article allows multiple applications, including optimizing network division points’ locations (which decreases financial costs of modernizing network infrastructure) as well as improving the reconfiguration process, resulting in lower power losses while maintaining voltage requirements.

New Spain through the Lens of Spatial Humanities: The Case of the Bishopric of Michoacán

This article provides an overview of the development of spatial humanities in Mexico, focusing specifically on the Bishopric of Michoacán. This ecclesiastical and jurisdictional unit, established during the Viceroyalty of New Spain, has recently been examined through the lens of spatial humanities. Our review identifies that this approach, when combined with traditional historical methods, can be highly effective in advancing research on territorial reconfiguration processes involving both Spanish and Indigenous actors. Furthermore, we present two examples of geographical text analysis (GTA) applied to the Relaciones Geográficas of Michoacán. Building on this review and the examples, we aim to encourage researchers interested in Mexico's past to enhance the potential of early historical sources by extracting valuable information intertwined with the spatial data contained in these documents.

Reconfigurable flexible assembly model and implementation for cross-category products

As the production orders are becoming multi-category and small-batch in the era of product personalization, these require frequent reconfiguration of reconfigurable flexible assembly system for cross-category products (RFAS-CCP). However, there is no suitable theoretical assembly model and systematic implementation framework. We first propose a five-element assembly model (FAM) for RFAS-CCP, i.e. product, process, resource, knowledge, and decision. The product, process, and resource element describe the objects, steps to be assembled, and the tools, fixtures, and other equipment used for assembly, respectively. The knowledge element is a form representation of various heterogeneous data, such as a knowledge graph. The decision element includes various assembly methods to achieve assembly automation, flexibility, and intelligence. Then, in order to standardize and easy the frequent reconfiguration process, we reorganize various decision methods into a three-phase systematic implementation framework according to which stage they are used: design, configuration, and operation phases. The design phase methods primarily design various assembly modules for a product family, forming an assembly resource library. The configuration phase methods primarily configure suitable assembly lines for a specific product in the product family. The operation phase methods monitor the status of the assembly line and ensures its stable operation through health management. Finally, the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed five-element assembly model and three-phase systematic implementation framework are experimented with a pressure reducing valve product.

A sharding blockchain protocol for enhanced scalability and performance optimization through account transaction reconfiguration

Sharding is a critical technology for enhancing blockchain scalability. However, existing sharding blockchain protocols suffer from a high cross-shard ratio, high transaction latency, limited throughput enhancement, and high account migration. To address these problems, this paper proposes a sharding blockchain protocol for enhanced scalability and performance optimization through account transaction reconfiguration. Firstly, we construct a blockchain transaction account graph network structure to analyze transaction account correlations. Secondly, a modularity-based account transaction reconfiguration algorithm and a detailed account reconfiguration process is designed to minimize cross-shard transactions. Finally, we introduce a transaction processing mechanism for account transaction reconfiguration in parallel with block consensus uploading, which reduces the reconfiguration time overhead and system latency. Experimental results demonstrate substantial performance improvements compared to existing shard protocols: up to a 34.7% reduction in cross-shard transaction ratio, at least an 83.2% decrease in transaction latency, at least a 52.7% increase in throughput and a 7.8% decrease in account migration number. The proposed protocol significantly enhances the overall performance and scalability of blockchain, providing robust support for blockchain applications in various fields such as financial services, supply chain management, and industrial Internet of Things. It also enables better support for high-concurrency scenarios and large-scale network environments.

Photonic topological phase transition induced by material phase transition.

Photonic topological insulators (PTIs) have been proposed as an analogy to topological insulators in electronic systems. In particular, two-dimensional PTIs have gained attention for the integrated circuit applications. However, controlling the topological phase after fabrication is difficult because the photonic topology requires the built-in specific structures. This study experimentally demonstrates the band inversion in two-dimensional PTI induced by the phase transition of deliberately designed nanopatterns of a phase change material, Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST), which indicates the first observation of the photonic topological phase transition in two-dimensional PTI with changes in the Chern number. This approach allows us to directly alter the topological invariants, which is achieved by symmetry-breaking perturbation through GST nanopatterns with different symmetry from original PTI. The success of our scheme is attributed to the ultrafine lithographic alignment technologies of GST nanopatterns. These results demonstrate how to control photonic topological properties in a reconfigurable manner, providing insight into the possibilities for reconfigurable photonic processing circuits.

A novel reconfigurable UAV design and control based on the parallel linkage

To enhance the maneuverability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in confined spaces, this paper proposes a novel reconfigurable multi-rotor UAV. The UAV uses servos to drive its arms and thus change its configuration, enabling it to alter its morphology like a bird, reduces the largest dimension of the vehicle by approximately 41%↑. The body is connected to the motor base through a linkage mechanism, allowing synchronized movement between the arm and the motor. This synchronization helps the UAV to reduce the loss of thrust suffered after morphology transformation. This paper analyzes and deduces the changes in physical characteristic parameters during the process of UAV reconfiguration. It combines the active disturbance rejection control with the backstepping-based super-twisted sliding mode control to design a cascade control strategy that suppresses the disturbance caused by the UAV reconfiguration on flight control. The simulation and physical flight experiments demonstrate that the UAV is capable of reconfiguring into multiple morphologies during flight while maintaining flight stability throughout the reconfiguration process.

Computing dimension for a reconfigurable photonic tensor processing core based on silicon photonics.

In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence, integrated photonic computing has emerged as a promising solution to address the growing demand for high-performance computing with ultrafast speed and reduced power consumption. This study presents what we believe is a novel photonic tensor processing core (PTPC) on a chip utilizing wavelength division multiplexing technology to perform parallel multiple vector-matrix multiplications concurrently, allowing for reconfigurable computing dimensions without changing the hardware scale. Specifically, this architecture significantly enhances the number of operations in convolutional neural networks, making it superior to other photonic computing systems. Experimental evaluations demonstrate the high-speed performance of the PTPC, achieving an impressive total computing speed of 0.252 TOPS and a computing speed per unit as high as 0.06 TOPS /unit in a compact hardware scale. Additionally, proof-of-concept application experiments are conducted on benchmark datasets, including the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST), Google Quickdraw, and CIFAR-10, with high accuracies of 97.86%, 93.51%, and 70.22%, respectively, in image recognition and classification tasks. By enabling parallel operations in PTPC on a chip, this study opens new avenues for exploration and innovation at the intersection of silicon photonics, scalable computation, and artificial intelligence, shaping the future landscape of computing technologies.

Reconfigurable metamaterial processing units that solve arbitrary linear calculus equations

Calculus equations serve as fundamental frameworks in mathematics, enabling describing an extensive range of natural phenomena and scientific principles, such as thermodynamics and electromagnetics. Analog computing with electromagnetic waves presents an intriguing opportunity to solve calculus equations with unparalleled speed, while facing an inevitable tradeoff in computing density and equation reconfigurability. Here, we propose a reconfigurable metamaterial processing unit (MPU) that solves arbitrary linear calculus equations at a very fast speed. Subwavelength kernels based on inverse-designed pixel metamaterials are used to perform calculus operations on time-domain signals. In addition, feedback mechanisms and reconfigurable components are used to formulate and solve calculus equations with different orders and coefficients. A prototype of this MPU with a compact planar size of 0.93λ0×0.93λ0 (λ0 is the free-space wavelength) is constructed and evaluated in microwave frequencies. Experimental results demonstrate the MPU’s ability to successfully solve arbitrary linear calculus equations. With the merits of compactness, easy integration, reconfigurability, and reusability, the proposed MPU provides a potential route for integrated analog computing with high speed of signal processing.

Digital twin‐based virtual commissioning for evaluation and validation of a reconfigurable process line

AbstractThe benefits of advancements in information and communication technologies have proliferated in manufacturing applications as more industries are migrating towards industry 4.0 compliance. The industry 4.0 process lines should be dynamic and reconfigurable. Digital twin (DT), supported by real‐time data, is getting wide acceptance as a tool for monitoring and control of complex processes. Virtual commissioning (VC) has played a vital role in the software‐based validation of the control systems. A DT‐based VC methodology is proposed to evaluate and validate a reconfigured process line. The proposed new asset is commissioned virtually in the DT environment maintaining other stations and parameters synchronised. The proposed methodology is validated in a modular production system assembly line. A storage and retrieval station is virtually commissioned by the hardware in loop technique in the assembly line DT with a station time error of 1.3% between the VC model and the actual assembly line data. The case study demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed methodology in assessing the impacts due to reconfiguration of a process line. The findings offer significant support to decision makers in taking informed decisions and to reduce unforeseen interruptions resulting from the integration of a new asset with the existing process line.

NC-Library: Expanding SystemC Capabilities for Nested reConfigurable Hardware Modelling

As runtime reconfiguration is used in an increasing number of hardware architectures, new simulation and modeling tools are needed to support the developer during the design phases. In this article, a language extension for SystemC is presented, together with a design methodology for the description and simulation of dynamically reconfigurable hardware at different levels of abstraction. The library presented offers a high degree of flexibility in the description of reconfiguration features and their management, while allowing runtime reconfiguration simulation, removal, and replacement of custom modules as well as third-party components throughout the architecture development process. In addition, our approach supports the emerging concept of nested reconfiguration and split regions with a minimal simulation overhead of a maximum of three delta cycles for signal and transaction forwarding, and four delta cycles for the reconfiguration process.

A Common Knowledge-Driven Generic Vision Inspection Framework for Adaptation to Multiple Scenarios, Tasks, and Objects.

The industrial manufacturing model is undergoing a transformation from a product-centric model to a customer-centric one. Driven by customized requirements, the complexity of products and the requirements for quality have increased, which pose a challenge to the applicability of traditional machine vision technology. Extensive research demonstrates the effectiveness of AI-based learning and image processing on specific objects or tasks, but few publications focus on the composite task of the integrated product, the traceability and improvability of methods, as well as the extraction and communication of knowledge between different scenarios or tasks. To address this problem, this paper proposes a common, knowledge-driven, generic vision inspection framework, targeted for standardizing product inspection into a process of information decoupling and adaptive metrics. Task-related object perception is planned into a multi-granularity and multi-pattern progressive alignment based on industry knowledge and structured tasks. Inspection is abstracted as a reconfigurable process of multi-sub-pattern space combination mapping and difference metric under appropriate high-level strategies and experiences. Finally, strategies for knowledge improvement and accumulation based on historical data are presented. The experiment demonstrates the process of generating a detection pipeline for complex products and continuously improving it through failure tracing and knowledge improvement. Compared to the (1.767°, 69.802 mm) and 0.883 obtained by state-of-the-art deep learning methods, the generated pipeline achieves a pose estimation ranging from (2.771°, 153.584 mm) to (1.034°, 52.308 mm) and a detection rate ranging from 0.462 to 0.927. Through verification of other imaging methods and industrial tasks, we prove that the key to adaptability lies in the mining of inherent commonalities of knowledge, multi-dimensional accumulation, and reapplication.

Аналіз технологій реконфігурації систем інтернету речей на рівні програмних модулів та завантажувачів

The subject of study and research in this article are the technology of programming and interaction of nodes, as well as individual small-sized components of embedded Internet of Things (IoT) systems. The goal is to increase the flexibility of IoT system components by simplifying the reconfiguration process of individual nodes and components. The task is: to analyze existing approaches to building configurable systems, analyze and describe existing solutions that implement joint approaches; to analyze the tools for implementing the selected approaches; to describe the method of building a living system based on the analysis approach; and to provide a technical example of the proposed programming method. According to the tasks, the following results were obtained. Possible ways of reconfiguration of IoT components are analyzed. Methods of reconfiguration at the network level and partial node reconfiguration are considered. Methods to ensure the flexibility of IoT components are analyzed and classified. A comparative analysis of the summary parameters of the loaders was carried out. The possibility of using software components as immutable blocks of code to modify the microcontroller program as a method of reconfiguration was analyzed. The idea of using variable software modules to represent the microcontroller program at a higher level of abstraction with a modified bootloader is thus proposed. Elements of a method for reprogramming variable software modules of microcontrollers as middleware are proposed. Conclusions. According to a review of the existing types of systems, they were classified according to the level of organization of their reconfigured parts. According to the obtained preliminary classifications, some architectural solutions were considered from the point of view of improving operational characteristics. The main advantages for each type of organization of the reconfigurable parts of the systems are highlighted. An analysis of practical solutions regarding the modification of the built-in components of microcontrollers for managing and updating their firmware was conducted. The practical significance of this study is the proposal of a method of programming with variable software modules for microcontrollers and the obtained results of a competitive analysis of methods of modifying components and loader characteristics.