Design flow for efficient FPGA reconfiguration

In Run Time Reconfiguration (RTR) systems, the amount of reconfiguration is considerable when compared to the circuit changes implemented. This is because reconfiguration is not considered as part of the design flow. This paper presents a method for reconfigurable circuit design by modeling the underlying FPGA reconfigurable circuitry and taking it into consideration in the system design. This is demonstrated for an image processing example on the Xilinx Virtex FPGA.

Pilot Tone Actuated Antenna Array Pattern Reconfiguration

A new strategy for remote reconfiguration of an antenna array far field radiation pattern is described. The scheme uses a pilot tone co-transmitted with a carrier signal from a location distant from that of a receive antenna array whose far field pattern is to be reconfigured. By mixing the co-transmitted signals locally at each antenna element in the array an IF signal is formed which defines an equivalent array spacing that can be made variable by tuning the frequency of the pilot tone with respect to the RF carrier. This makes the antenna array factor hence far field spatial characteristic reconfigurable on receive. For a 10 x 1 microstrip patch element array we show that the receive pattern can be made to vary from 35 to 10 degrees half power beam width as the difference frequency between the pilot and the carrier at 2.45 GHz varies between 10 MHz and 500 MHz carrier.

Technology and the architecture of markets: re-configuring the Canadian equity market

This paper examines the relation between technical possibilities, liberal logics, and the concrete reconfiguration of markets. It focuses on the enrolling of innovations in communication and information technologies into the markets traditionally dominated by stock exchanges. With the development of capacities to trade on-screen, the power of incumbent market makers has been challenged as a less stable array of competing quasi-public and private marketplaces emerges. Developing a case study of the Toronto Stock Exchange, I argue that narrative emphasis on the performative power of sociotechnical innovations, the deterritorialisation of financial relations, and the erosion of state capacities needs qualification. A case is made for the importance of developing an understanding of: the spaces of encounter between emerging social technologies and property rights, rules of exchange, and structures of governance; and the interplay of orderings of different institutional composition and spatial reach in the reconfiguration of market architectures. Only then can a better grasp be gained of the evolving dynamics between making markets, the regulatory powers of the state, and their delimitations.

Reterritorialising Canada: Arctic ice’s liquid modernity and the imagining of a Canadian archipelago

Studying mobile actor networks of moving people, objects, images, and discourses, in conjunction with changing time-spaces, offers a unique opportunity to understand important, and yet relatively neglected, “relational material” dynamics of mobility. A key example of this phenomenon is the recontinentalization of Canada amidst dramatically changing articulations of the meanings and boundaries of the Canadian land-ice- ocean mass. A notable reason why Canada is being re-articulated in current times is the extensiveness of Arctic thawing. The reconfiguration of space and “motility” options in the Arctic constitutes an example of how “materiality and sociality produce themselves together.” In this paper we examine the possibilities and risks connected to this recontinentalization of Canada’s North. In exploring the past, present, and immediate future of this setting, we advance the paradigmatic view that Canada’s changing Arctic is the key element in a process of transformation of Canada into a peninsular body encompassed within a larger archipelagic entity: a place more intimately attuned to its immense (and growing) coastal and insular routes.

Design and implementation of a field programmable CRC circuit architecture

The design and implementation of a programmable cyclic redundancy check (CRC) computation circuit architecture, suitable for deployment in network related system-on-chips (SoCs) is presented. The architecture has been designed to be field reprogrammable so that it is fully flexible in terms of the polynomial deployed and the input port width. The circuit includes an embedded configuration controller that has a low reconfiguration time and hardware cost. The circuit has been synthesised and mapped to 130-nm UMC standard cell [application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)] technology and is capable of supporting line speeds of 5 Gb/s. © 2006 IEEE.

Culture and the Irish Border:Spaces for Conflict Transformation

The Irish border has been described as a ‘natural’ cultural divide between the island's two dominant indigenous ethno-national communities. However, an examination of key resources of ethno-national group culture - religion, sport and language - provides evidence to challenge this representation. Moreover, in the post-1994 period of conflict transformation, evidence is also presented to support the proposition that the Irish border region has developed into a cultural space in which Irish nationalist and Ulster unionist ethno-national communities can explore cultural differences and commonalities through cross-border, cross-community contact and communication in small group encounters. This space underpins the reconfiguration of the border from barrier to political bridge between North and South. European Union (EU) Peace programmes for Ireland, beginning in 1995, provided the support for a cross-border approach to escaping the cage of ethno-national conflict in Northern Ireland. However, post-2004 EU enlargement signalled the beginning of the end for EU Peace funding and severe economic recession has undermined the expectation of British-Irish intergovernmental intervention to support cross-border partnerships and their work. Therefore, the outlook for the sustainability of this cross-border cultural space is gloomy with potentially deleterious consequences for the continued reconfiguration of the border from barrier to bridge.

Devolution and the political representation of business interests in the UK

The devolution of political power in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the developing regional agenda in England are widely read as a significant reconfiguration of the institutions and scales of economic governance. The process is furthest developed in Scotland while Wales and Northern Ireland, in their own distinct ways, provide intermediate cases. Devolution is least developed in England where regional political identities are generally weak and the historical legacy of regional institutions is limited.

Business representation and the UK regions: mapping institutional change

Political devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the developing regional agenda in England are prompting changes in the organization of business interest representation within the devolved and decentralized territories. In this paper we seek to describe the realignment of business interest representation at the 'regional' scale, first through a detailed review of changes underway across specific business associations and representative fora, and secondly through an initial attempt to compare and 'map' the patterns of institutional change recorded in the various territories. In broad terms the overall scale, operation and degree of formalization of the new political arrangements for business representation tend broadly to reflect the established institutional and political contexts of the respective nations and regions and the level of devolution ceded to the territories. However, there are important variations in a complex process of uneven development. In the concluding section we present some initial thoughts on the nature of the changes observed in the institutional framework for business representation. A key argument is that to date such changes suggest a reconfiguration of business political activity rather than a step-change in the institutional foundation for sub-national business interest representation in the UK. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Government – Voluntary Sector Compacts: Governance, Governmentality and Civil Society

In 1998 government and the main representatives of the voluntary sector in each of the four countries in the United Kingdom published "compacts" on relations between government and the voluntary sector. These were joint documents, carrying forward ideas expressed by the Labor Party when in opposition, and directed at developing a new relationship for partnership with those "not-for-profit organizations" that are involved primarily in the areas of policy and service delivery. This article seeks to use an examination of the compacts, and the processes that produced them and that they have now set in train, to explore some of the wider issues about the changing role of government and its developing relationships with civil society. In particular, it argues that the new partnership builds upon a movement from welfarism to economism which is being developed further through the compact process. Drawing upon a governmentality approach, and illustrating the account with interview material obtained from some of those involved in compact issues from within both government and those umbrella groups which represent the voluntary sector, an argument is made that this overall process represents the beginning of a new reconfiguration of the state that is of considerable constitutional significance.

Class and Performance in the Age of Global Capitalism

This article addresses the relative absence of class-based analysis in theatre and performance studies, and suggests the reconfiguration of class as performance rather than as it is traditionally conceived as an identity predicated solely on economic stratification. It engages with the occlusion of class by the ascendancy of identity politics based on race, gender and sexuality and its attendant theoretical counterparts in deconstruction and post-structuralism, which became axiomatic as they displaced earlier methodologies to become hegemonic in the arts and humanities. The article proceeds to an assessment of the development of sociological approaches to theatre, particularly the legacy of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu. The argument concludes with the application of an approach which reconfigures class as performance to the production of Declan Hughes's play Shiver of 2003, which dramatizes the consequences of the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s for ambitious members of the Irish middle class.