Software Design Principles Research Articles

A Constructive Solution To The Extensibility Problem In Real-Time Computer Systems

AbstractComputer technology appears to be reaching a point of diminishing returns in attempts to increase the basic speed of uniprocessor systems. In order to avoid overloading, vfhich may be disastrous in real-time systems, a multiprocessor configuration may be necessary. The configuration should be easily extensible to accommodate system growth. A design methodology is presented which assists in the realization of a real-time computer system as a set of asynchronous cooperating processes. Both hardware and software design principles are applied to achieve parallel processing, processor sharing, and device sharing in an extensible, loosely coupled, multiprocessor configuration. The theme underlying our methodology is that a real-time computer system should be a product of the requirements of its environment, and not vice versa. Furthermore, we have followed the principle that software and hardware are two equally important aspects of computer system design; and, at the architecture level, they should be ...

Tweezers for handling ball bearings

Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) developed the transportation system capability (TRANSCAP) model to simulate the deployment of forces from Army bases, in collaboration with and under the sponsorship of the Military Transportation Management Command Transportation Engineering Agency (MTMCTEA). TRANSCAP's design separates its pre- and post-processing modules (developed in Java) from its simulation module (developed in MODSIM III®). This paper describes TRANSCAP's modelling approach, emphasizing Argonne's highly detailed, object-oriented, multilanguage software design principles. Fundamental to these design principles is TRANSCAP's implementation of an improved method for standardizing the transmission of simulated data to output analysis tools and the implementation of three Army deployment/redeployment community standards, all of which are in the final phases of community acceptance. The first is the extensive hierarchy and object representation for transport simulations (EXHORT), which is a reusable, object-oriented deployment simulation source code framework of classes. The second and third are algorithms for rail deployment operations at a military base.