Windows NT Research Articles

The data collection modules and ATM-based event builder for the PHENIX experiment at RHIC

The PHENIX experiment at RHIC will study 200 AGeV Au+Au collisions as well as pp and pA collisions at higher energies. In order to study hard processes or high-mass vector mesons, which have small cross sections, PHENIX emphasizes measuring charged hadrons, leptons, and photons at a high rate in a limited aperture. At design RHIC luminosity, the minimum-bias interaction rate will be approximately 1000 Hz with an average zero-suppressed event size of 200 kB. We will discuss two major parts of the PHENIX online system: the data collection modules (DCM) and the event builder (EvB). The DCMs use a combination of FPGAs and DSPs to perform online pedestal subtraction, zero-suppression, and data formatting. They have been fully constructed and tested and are able to deliver data at a maximum rate of 160 MB/s. The event builder consists of commercially available PCs and a 10 Gb/s ATM switch. The software for it has been developed using Windows NT, Winsock-2 and Visual C++, allowing a fully object-oriented design. Currently, we are running configurations with up to 4 sources and 3 destinations that can deliver data at /spl sim/10 MB/sec/node and performance is improving steadily.

File system usage in Windows NT 4.0

No abstract available.

The on-line computational and control system for the 4/spl pi/-detector CHIMERA

A commercial two-DSP-based board is the basic unit of the on-line computational and control system under development for the multidetector array CHIMERA. The system design includes a small scale parallel and distributed architecture of PCs and DSP boards. The PCs are used both as host computer and interface between user and network. Each PC can host up to three DSP boards. The system is able to accomplish the on-beam control of CHIMERA, by means of the on-line computation of special algorithms, instead of using the usual techniques of special pulses to be sent off-beam. The physical data, collected and organized in UDP packets by the data acquisition system, are read through a 10 Mbit/s Ethernet network. The PC software, running under Windows NT 4.0, is based on threads and assures the communication and program managing as well as the result presentation. The DSP-software is written in C++ and takes care of the communication with the PC and of the computation of algorithms. The preliminary on beam results for the first three wheels (about 100 telescopes), obtained by employing two biprocessor boards located in the PCI bus of a Pentium MMX PC, are also presented.

Monitoring Cellular Responses to Listeria monocytogenes with Oligonucleotide Arrays

Listeria monocytogenes is a pathogenic intracellular microorganism whose infection induces pleiotropic biological changes associated with host cell gene expression regulation. Here we define the gene expression profiles of the human promyelocytic THP1 cell line before and after L. monocytogenes infection. Gene expression was measured on a large scale via oligonucleotide microarrays with probe sets corresponding to 6,800 human genes. We assessed and discussed the reproducibility of the hybridization signatures. In addition to oligonucleotide arrays, we also performed the large scale gene expression measurement with two high-density membranes, assaying for 588 and 18,376 human genes, respectively. This work allowed the reproducible identification of 74 up-regulated RNAs and 23 down-regulated RNAs as a consequence of L. monocytogenes infection of THP1. The reliability of these data was reinforced by performing independent infections. Some of these detected RNAs were consistent with previous results, while some newly identified RNAs encode gene products that may play key roles in L. monocytogenes infection. These findings will undoubtedly enhance the understanding of L. monocytogenes molecular physiology and may help identify new therapeutic targets.

3425 Digital capture of eus video using mpeg-2 compression: preliminary experience.

Background: Archiving EUS examinations traditionally requires SVHS or Betacam formats to capture sufficient detail. Greater use of networked computers and databases, however, suggests a trend toward digital storage of endoscopic data, including video.We report preliminary experience with capture and storage of EUS video using MPEG-2 compression, an international standard encoding digital video, including the DVD format. Methods: Video was captured using a WIndows NT Pentium II 400 w/128MB RAM and the Pinnacle Systems DC1000 capture card. Capture resolution was 720×480 pixels with a variable data bit rate to 25 Mbits/s and a frame rate of 29.97 fr/sec. EUS images were collected from the Olympus EU-M30 and Envision Plus processors via a throughput on a Sony Betacam SP recorder connected to the RGB outputs on each ultrasound processor. Twelve video segments were captured, ranging from 14 sec. to 3 min 11 sec. Segments captured were stored on the workstation hard drive then sent to a file server on the network. Files were viewed from the remote server to determine if video quality would be impaired when transmitted over the network. Video was reviewed for overall image quality, with resolution rated better, worse, or the same as Betacam, VHS videotape (1st generation tape from a Betacam master), and live exam. Clips were viewed by one endoscopist and two nonendoscopists. The number of dropped frames during capture was also recorded. Results: All clips were considered equivalent to Betacam images in resolution by all observers. Clips were considered equivalent to images seen during live examinations as well. VHS images were judged inferior by all observers. Average capture rate was 2.99MB/second, ranging from 2.84 - 3.11MB/sec. Longer clips had better compression. Two of 12 clips had 1 dropped frame, one in a 31 second clip and another in a 90 second clip. Dropped frames was not noticeable on playback in either case. No difficulties were noted in viewing images stored on a remote file server and quality was indistinguishable from video generated from the hard drive on the local computer. Conclusion: Initial experience with MPEG-2 compression demonstrates Betacam-quality video. The quality and compression ratio achieved with MPEG-2 suggests that DVD will qualify as a digital solution for diagnostic-quality EUS video archiving. Our success in networked viewing implies that video clips can be stored and retrieved centrally on a network. Further study of other compression formats, input sources, and capture cards will be forthcoming.

CDFVME-software framework for testing VME boards

New VME based boards are being produced for the Run II of the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). These boards are being developed and tested at both Fermilab and offsite institutions. A software framework called CDFVME has been developed in which DAQ code can be easily written to control such boards in a test stand. The framework has been used to perform diagnostics at single board, multi-board, and multi-crate levels. This software framework runs on Unix, Linux and Windows NT platforms with a Java GUI communicating via LAN to multiple intelligent front end VME crates. All distributed processes are managed by a custom CORBA based software. The system has been ported to Motorola 68 K and PPC front end processors running the VxWorks real-time kernel.

Parallel implementation of a two-factor Cheyette-beta model calibration

A parallel version of a calibration algorithm for a two-factor Cheyette-beta model using the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm is presented. A new development environment for parallel applications, based on the event-driven parallel application model is introduced. Advantages and drawbacks of such a model are discussed and it is argued why it is particularly suitable in the financial world. This work has been carried out on a network of workstations running the Microsoft ® Windows NT TM system. Some specific implementation issues related to this system are also addressed. The results are presented which are obtained on a real scale farm of 16 machines.

Building Cross-Platform Media Workgroup Solutions

This paper presents several essential development considerations pertinent to the creation of a new nonlinear editing (NLE) system operating on the Windows NT platform. A significant factor is that the new system is based on a product initially developed for the Macintosh. The initial product operated with Apple's QuickTime file-compatible standard, which offered several advantages resulting from the program's file architecture. The resulting NLE developed by Media 100 Inc. is called iFinish. The product is a cross-platform compatible system that permits easy access to the hardware by other applications as well as the use of a substantial number of QuickTime-compatible software applications. Also, the initial signal architecture readily lends itself to the inclusion of more recent interface standards including DV (IEEE 1394) and serial digital interface (SDI, SMPTE 259M). This is a consequence of the inherent flexibility stemming from the design choices initially made. Based on the ITU-R BT.601 YC r C b , structure, the system design also interfaces to component analog video (CAV) component analog, S-Video, and National Television Standard Committee (NTSC) or phase alternation line (PAL) sources.

A New Algorithm for CAD-Directed CMM Dimensional Inspection

The recent developments in computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems have made the traditional dimensional inspections bottlenecks in the production line. To overcome these bottlenecks, computer integrated dimensional inspection was proposed with the coordinate measuring machine (CMM) being the key device. In this investigation, a framework for integrating the CMM into the computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) environment is developed to automate the process of design, manufacturing and inspection. An algorithm to generate an optimum collision-free CMM probe path is proposed. This algorithm uses the ray tracing technique to locate the collision of the possible paths with the workpiece to be inspected, between the initial probe point and the target point. If there is a collision, the algorithm walks through the topological structure of the part and selects the midpoint of the edge shared by the face with which the path collides and the adjacent face nearest to the target point, as the next probe point. This procedure is followed until the target point is reached. The first half of the proposed algorithm is implemented using Mechanical Desktop as the CAD system and AutoCAD Runtime Extension (ARX) as the application programming interface, running on a Windows NT 4.0 platform. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by the results of the implementation which demonstrate optimum collision-free dimensional inspection path generation for three prismatic parts.

Object-oriented and distributed approach for programming robotic manufacturing cells

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) are essential for small/medium batch and job shop manufacturing. These types of production systems are used to manufacture a considerable variety of products with medium/small production volumes. Therefore, the manufacturing platforms supporting these types of production must be flexible and organized in flexible manufacturing cells (FMC). Programming FMCs remains a difficult task and is an actual area of research and development. This paper reports an object-oriented approach developed for FMC programming. The work presented was first thought for application in industrial robot manipulators, and later extended to other FMC equipments just by putting the underlying ideas in a general framework. Initially, the motivation for this work was to develop means to add force control to a standard industrial robot manipulator. This problem requires remote access to the robot controller, remote programming and monitoring, as also is required to program and monitor any other FMC equipment. The proposed approach is distributed based on a client/server model and runs on Win32 platforms, i.e., Microsoft Windows and Windows NT. Implementation for the special case of industrial robot manipulators is presented, along with some application examples used for educational, research and industrial purposes.

Exploiting Parallelism In General Purpose Optimization

VisualDOC, a general purpose design optimization code that is commercially available from Vanderplaats Research and Development, Inc. (VR&D), is used as a test-bed for evaluating the efficiency of parallelizing current optimization algorithms. The finite difference gradient calculations of VisualDOC are implemented in parallel form and these changes are evaluated using a typical aircraft wing example problem. VisualDOC provides three algorithms for performing constrained nonlinear optimization and the investigation focuses on the influence of the optimization algorithm and the number of design variables on the efficiency of performing the optimization in parallel. The need to additionally parallelize the one-dimensional search calculations is also investigated. The Local Area Multiprocessor (LAM) system, originally developed at Ohio State University, has been configured on VR&D workstations to allow them to be used as a parallel processing computer, referred to as a virtual parallel machine. This group of workstations consists of a combination of UNIX and Windows NT workstations. The LAM system contains an implementation of the MPI standard for message passing that allows for dynamic load balancing.

The Object-Oriented Design and Performance of JAWS: A High-performance Web Server Optimized for

This paper provides two contributions to the study of high-performance object-oriented (OO) Web servers. First, it outlines the design principles and optimizations necessary to develop efficient and scalable Web servers and illustrates how we have applied these principles and optimizations to create JAWS. JAWS is a high-performance Web server that is designed to alleviate overheads incurred by existing Web servers on high-speed networks. In addition to its highly extensible OO design, it is also highly efficient, consistently outperforming existing Web servers, such as Apache, Java Server, PHTTPD, Zeus, and Netscape Enterprise, over 155 Mbps ATM networks on UNIX platforms. Second, this paper describes how we have customized the JAWS OO design to leverage advanced features of Windows NT on multi-processor platforms linked by high-speed ATM networks. The Windows NT features used in JAWS include asynchronous mechanisms for connection establishment and data transfer. Our previous benchmarking studies demonstrate that once the overhead of disk I/O is reduced to a negligible constant factor (e.g., via memory caches), the primary determinants of Web server performance are its concurrency and event dispatching strategies. Our performance results over a 155 Mbps ATM network indicate that certain Windows NT asynchronous I/O mechanisms (i.e., TransmitFile) provide superior performance for large file transfers compared with conventional synchronous multi-threaded servers. Conversely, synchronous event dispatching performed better for files less than 50 Kbytes. Thus, to provide optimal performance, a Web server design should be adaptive, i.e., choosing to use different mechanisms (such as TransmitFile) to handle requests for large files, while using alternative I/O mechanisms (such as synchronous event dispatching) on requests for small files.

MEDIA REVIEWS. ATLAS.ti The Knowledge Workbench - software for visual qualitative data analysis, management and model building in education, research and business. Version 4.1 for Windows 95 and Windows NT. Thomas Muhr, Scientific Software Development, Berlin, Germany, 1997, CD-ROM, f250 for single user license.

MEDIA REVIEWS. ATLAS.ti The Knowledge Workbench - software for visual qualitative data analysis, management and model building in education, research and business. Version 4.1 for Windows 95 and Windows NT. Thomas Muhr, Scientific Software Development, Berlin, Germany, 1997, CD-ROM, f250 for single user license.

Computing [Technology 2000 analysis and forecast

The dawning of this millennium coincides with the start of a new epoch-that of Internet-distributed computing-and, as is typical with epochal changes, the entrenched are being uprooted. A new breed of device-the Internet appliance-is dethroning the PC, which has held sway over the computing industry for the last two decades. Microsoft Inc., the Redmond, Wash., software megalith whose Windows operating system has towered over the system software arena for the last decade, must now do battle on two fronts: at the heart of the network-the server-and at the edges, with the new Internet devices. As the number and size of Web publishers mushroom, so does the demand for servers and storage. Sales of server hardware and operating systems are growing rapidly, and Microsoft 2000, formerly known as Windows NT 5.0, must duke it out with established Unix systems and new Linux boxes. With growing reliance on the Internet for all kinds of information, computing is acquiring an unsuspected mobility. Unlike a laptop computer, which requires that the user be stationary (preferably seated) to be of use, Internet appliances free the user to work on the go, in ways not previously possible. Even as information technology reaches the next stage in its evolution, the PC has become something of a dinosaur, a metamorphosis that cannot be stopped even by Microsoft. In fact, while the outcome of its confrontation with the US Department of Justice may be to reshape the company in some way, it is the Internet that is truly restructuring Microsoft.

We Perfected the New Color Inspection System at Last

New Inspection System (ASP-P 3500-M) adoption 3 CCD Color line sensor. Distinction is pattern matching. This System is detection a small defect and a light defect. Conception a development easy operation and high capability and detection stability. System consists of Sensor unit, Indicate unit. Conduct unit and Control unit. Indicate unit is Dos/V PC (Windows NT). Conduct unit is SBC (OS-9).Control unit is PLC. High technology used all units. We are confident this System of a highly efficient detection.

建築環境工学教育用コンピュータソフトウェアET_AEEの開発

This paper reports on the development of ET_AEE, which is an acronym of Educational Tools for Architectural Environment Engineering. ET AEE is a new educational-tool program that calculates several tasks related to the topics of Architectural Environment Engineering aiming at undergraduate students. However, ET_AEE probably seems to be much useful and powerful not only for undergraduate students but also for graduate students, engineers and researchers. ET_AEE provides above-mentioned calculations on a userfriendly interface, in other words, Graphical User Interface, GUI, which works on the plat form of Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT. ET_AEE is free software, so then, anyone can download the installation file from the web-site of authors, http : //ktlabo.cm.kyushu-u.ac.jp/. Calculating functions provided by ET_AEE are totally 12 that are classified into 2 parts, Engineering Issues and Mathematical Issues. ET_AEE provides a separete dialog box for each calculation topic that was designed to be cool and easy understanding considering GUI. One of the specific features to be stressed is that ET_ AEE has a huge Help file using a bunch of image files, which is very useful and helpful.

The basics of Windows NT 4.0 administration

The basics of Windows NT 4.0 administration

Open system architecture modular tool kit for motion and machining process control

A user-friendly reconfigurable and modular monitoring and control system for computerized numerical control (CNC) machine tool control and machining process monitoring is described. The main part of the system is a fully integrated combination of a real-time preemptive operating system (ORTS-DSP) for machine-level soft real-time tasks running on digital signal processor (DSP) boards and an enhanced Windows-NT-based environment (ORTS-PC/NT), running on a PC, for applications such as high-level operator-machine interfaces and high-level communications with the ORTS-DSP tasks on the DSP boards. A transparent communication protocol allows connection between software modules on the same or different DSP boards and the host Windows NT computers. The communication connections can be set up at runtime via a scripting language. ORTS allows modular integration of new functions developed in the C language, and can be reconfigured to control robots, machine tools, or other processes, using simple script commands. The system can be used as an architecture modular operating system for the progressive development of real-time signal processing, motion, and process control applications. Sample applications for machine tool control and sensor-assisted machining applications are presented. An adjunct component of the above system is a module called the intelligent machining module (IMM) which is intended to provide an easy-to-use subsystem for sensor-assisted machining. IMM is a fast, synchronous, runtime configurable signal processing network that can be reconfigured by means of plug-in software modules (PIMs) to form a sensor-based control or signal processing system for applications that can take advantage of synchronous processing. Examples of existing PIMs are peak and average detectors, fast Fourier transforms, and control algorithms. IMM can be used as an integral part of the above system, or as a stand-alone subsystem, or integrated with semi-open commercial CNC machines.

A Newly developed PC Software for Measuring Reaction Time Running under Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0

A Newly developed PC Software for Measuring Reaction Time Running under Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0

Research on the security of national geospatial data clearinghouse based on ASP

On the basis of the authors' experiences of setting up an NGDC Web site, this paper attempts to present some significant aspects about the security of NGDC based on ASP. They include data storing, database maintenance, new technical support and so on. Firstly, this paper discusses how to provide the security of data which is saved in the hosts of NGDC. The security model of “Networks-DB Server-DB-DB Object” is also presented. In Windows NT Server, Internet Information Server (i. e., IIS) is in charge of transferring message and the management of Web sites. ASP is also based on IIS. The advantages of virtual directory technique provided by IIS are emphasized.