VCSEL based optoelectronic multiple chip modules

We report on optoelectronic multiple chip modules, consisting of vertical cavity surface emitting laser(VCSEL), photodetector and 1.2 mum CMOS electronic circuit, The hybrid integrated components operate at a date rate of 155Mb/s, which could be used in optical interconnects for multiple computers.

A Lifetime-based Garbage Collector for LISP Systems on General-Purpose Computers

Garbage collector performance in LISP systems on custom hardware has been substantially improved by the adoption of lifetime-based garbage collection techniques. To date, however, successful lifetime-based garbage collectors have required special-purpose hardware, or at least privileged access to data structures maintained by the virtual memory system. I present here a lifetime-based garbage collector requiring no special-purpose hardware or virtual memory system support, and discuss its performance.

Reliable Interconnection Networks for Parallel Computers

This technical report describes a new protocol, the Unique Token Protocol, for reliable message communication. This protocol eliminates the need for end-to-end acknowledgments and minimizes the communication effort when no dynamic errors occur. Various properties of end-to-end protocols are presented. The unique token protocol solves the associated problems. It eliminates source buffering by maintaining in the network at least two copies of a message. A token is used to decide if a message was delivered to the destination exactly once. This technical report also presents a possible implementation of the protocol in a worm-hole routed, 3-D mesh network.

Developing a health and wellbeing platform in a living lab setting: An action design research study

The world’s population is rapidly aging, which affects healthcare budgets, resources, pensions and social security systems. Although most older adults prefer to live independently in their own home as long as possible, smart living solutions to support elderly people at home did not reach mass adoption, yet. To support people age-in-place a Living Lab is established in one of the metropolitan areas in the Netherlands. The main goal of the Living Lab is to develop an online health and wellbeing platform that matches service providers, caretakers and users and to implement that platform in one particular city district. In this paper we describe the narrative of the action design research process that will give researchers insight how to deal with complex multi-stakeholder design projects as well as cooperation issues to develop an artifact in a real-life setting.

Chemical and biological applications of digital-microfluidic devices

The advent of digital microfluidic lab-on-a-chip (LoC) technology offers a platform for developing diagnostic applications with the advantages of portability, reduction of the volumes of the sample and reagents, faster analysis times, increased automation, low power consumption, compatibility with mass manufacturing, and high throughput. Moreover, digital microfluidics is being applied in other areas such as airborne chemical detection, DNA sequencing by synthesis, and tissue engineering. In most diagnostic and chemical-detection applications, a key challenge is the preparation of the analyte for presentation to the on-chip detection system. Thus, in diagnostics, raw physiological samples must be introduced onto the chip and then further processed by lysing blood cells and extracting DNA. For massively parallel DNA sequencing, sample preparation can be performed off chip, but the synthesis steps must be performed in a sequential on-chip format by automated control of buffers and nucleotides to extend the read lengths of DNA fragments. In airborne particulate-sampling applications, the sample collection from an air stream must be integrated into the LoC analytical component, which requires a collection droplet to scan an exposed impacted surface after its introduction into a closed analytical section. Finally, in tissue-engineering applications, the challenge for LoC technology is to build high-resolution (less than 10 microns) 3D tissue constructs with embedded cells and growth factors by manipulating and maintaining live cells in the chip platform. This article discusses these applications and their implementation in digital-microfluidic LoC platforms. © 2007 IEEE.

Guest editorial. [Computers and Artificial Intelligence. 1998. Vol. 17, No. 2-3]

Editorial

Load-balancing for mesh-based applications on heterogeneous cluster computers

This paper discusses load-balancing issues when using heterogeneous cluster computers. There is a growing trend towards the use of commodity microprocessor clusters. Although today's microprocessors have reached a theoretical peak performance in the range of one GFLOPS/s, heterogeneous clusters of commodity processors are amongst the most challenging parallel systems to programme efficiently. We will outline an approach for optimising the performance of parallel mesh-based applications for heterogeneous cluster computers and present case studies with the GeoFEM code. The focus is on application cost monitoring and load balancing using the DRAMA library.