Over the past decade there has been a dramatic change in the role played by design automation for electronic systems. Ten years ago, integrated circuit (IC) designers were content to use the computer for circuit, logic, and limited amounts of high-level simulation, as well as for capturing the digitized mask layouts used for IC manufacture. The tools were only aids to design-the designer could always find a way to implement the chip or board manually if the tools failed or if they did not give acceptable results. Today, however, design technology plays an indispensable role in the design ofelectronic systems and is critical to achieving time-to-market, cost, and performance targets. In less than ten years, designers have come to rely on automatic or semi automatic CAD systems for the physical design ofcomplex ICs containing over a million transistors. In the past three years, practical logic synthesis systems that take into account both cost and performance have become a commercial reality and many designers have already relinquished control ofthe logic netlist level of design to automatic computer aids. To date, only in certain well-defined areas, especially digital signal process ing and telecommunications. have higher-level design methods and tools found significant success. However, the forces of time-to-market and growing system complexity will demand the broad-based adoption of high-level, automated methods and tools over the next few years.

Integrated circuit densities and operating speeds continue to rise at an exponential rate. Chips, however, cannot get larger and faster without a sharp decrease in power consumption beyond the current levels. Minimization of power consumption in VLSI chips has thus become an important design objective. In fact, with the explosive growth in demand for portable electronics and the usual push toward more complex functionality and higher performance, power consumption has in many cases become the limiting factor in satisfying the market demand. A new generation of power-conscious CAD tools are coming onto the market to help designers estimate, optimize and verify power consumption levels at most stages of the IC design process. These tools are especially prevalent at the register-transfer level and below. There is a great need for similar tools and capabilities at the behavioral and system levels of the design process. Many researchers and CAD tool developers are working on high-level power modeling and estimation, as well as power-constrained high-level synthesis and optimization. Techniques and tools alone are, however, insufficient to optimize VLSI circuit power dissipation - a consistent and convergent design methodology is also required. Power Optimization and Synthesis at Behavioral and System Levels Using Formal Methods was written to address some of the key problems in power analysis and optimization early in the design process. In particular, this book focuses on power macro-modeling based on regression analysis and power minimization through behavioral transformations, scheduling, resource assignment and hardware/software partitioning and mapping. What differentiates this book from other published work on the subject is the mathematical basis and formalism behind the algorithms and the optimality of these algorithms subject to the stated assumptions. From the Foreword: `This book makes an important contribution to the field of system design technologies by presenting a set of algorithms with guaranteed optimality properties, that can be readily applied to system-level design. This contribution is timely, because it fills the need of new methods for a new design tool generation, which supports the design of electronic systems with even more demanding requirements'. Giovanni De Micheli, Professor, Stanford University

Computer Graphics Tokyo, now in its fourth year, has established a world-wide reputation as an international technical conference, presenting work of high quality in the field of computer graphics. Each conference has been attended by a couple of thousand partiCipants from all over the world and tens of thousands have visited the exhibition. After strict peer review, 34 papers were accepted this year, of which about 40% were from the USA, 30% from Japan, 20% from Europe, and 10% from Canada. A good balance of papers on advanced research results, industrial/marketing surveys, and computer art technology has made Computer Graphics Tokyo an indispensable forum for researchers, engineers, and administrators working in this field. Computer graphics is a rapidly developing and expanding area and it is not easy to keep abreast of all the progress that has been made. This volume contains the proceedings of Computer Graphics Tokyo '86 and provides the reader with a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in computer graphics. Computational geometry (Chapter 1) is one of the fastest growing areas in computer graphics. This is well recognized as the basis of shape modeling. After shapes are modeled, they are displayed for visual observation. Chapter 2 on rendering presents various novel methods and technological innovations for visualizing shapes. To make display systems more acces sible to users, rich visual interfaces and languages are being designed, as shown in Chapter 3. Visual data bases for sharing graphics-and image-data are handled in Chapter 4."

Intelligent robotics has become the focus of extensive research activity. This effort has been motivated by the wide variety of applications that can benefit from the developments. These applications often involve mobile robots, multiple robots working and interacting in the same work area, and operations in hazardous environments like nuclear power plants. Applications in the consumer and service sectors are also attracting interest. These applications have highlighted the importance of performance, safety, reliability, and fault tolerance. This volume is a selection of papers from a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in July 1989 with a focus on active perception and robot vision. The papers deal with such issues as motion understanding, 3-D data analysis, error minimization, object and environment modeling, object detection and recognition, parallel and real-time vision, and data fusion. The paradigm underlying the papers is that robotic systems require repeated and hierarchical application of the perception-planning-action cycle. The primary focus of the papers is the perception part of the cycle. Issues related to complete implementations are also discussed.

This book is a collection of the best papers originally presented as state-of-the-art reports or tutorials at the EUROGRAPHICS'91 conference in Vienna. A choice has been made giving priority to information of lasting value. Another goal was to cover all aspects of computer graphics -except hardware -as completely as possible from modelling to advanced visualization and communication. The editors consider that the ten contributions by internationally renowned experts fulfil this goal perfectly. Some important problem areas are treated from different viewpoints thus enhancing and deepening the reader's perspective. Sabine Coquillart Wolfgang Strafier Peter Stucki Table of Contents l. Through the Cracks of the Solid Modeling Milestone 1 J arek R. Rossignac 2. Kinematics and Dynamics for Computer Animation 76 H. Ruder, T. Ertl, K. Gruber, M. Gunther, F. Hospach, M. Ruder, J. Subke, K. Widmayer 3. Dynamic Animation of Deformable Bodies 118 Marie-Paul Gascuel, Claude Puech 4. Stochastic Methods and Non-Fractal Applications 140 Huw Jones 5. State of the Art in Volume Visualization 166 Arie Kaufman 6. On the Theorey and Application of Stereolithographics in Scientific Visualization 178 Eric Hibbard, Michael Bauer, Margaret Bradshaw, Glenn Deardorff, Ken Hu, David Whitney 7. User Interface Management Systems: Present and Future 197 Michel Beaudouin-Lafon 8. Trends in Edge Detection Techniques 224 Eduard Antoniu 9.

"Image Synthesis: Theory and Practice" is the first book completely dedicated to the numerous techniques of image synthesis. Both theoretical and practical aspects are treated in detail. Numerous impressive computer-generated images are used to explain the most advanced techniques in image synthesis. The book contains a detailed description of the most fundamental algorithms; other less important algorithms are summarized or simply listed. This volume is also a unique handbook of mathematical formulae for image synthesis. The four first chapters of the book survey the basic techniques of computer graphics which play an important role in the design of an image: geometric models, image and viewing transformations, curves and surfaces and solid modeling techniques. In the next chapters, each major topic in image synthesis is presented. The first important problem is the detection and processing of visible surfaces, then two chapters are dedicated to the central problem of light and illumination. As aliasing is a major problem in image rendering, the fundamental antialiasing and motion blur techniques are explained. The most common shadow algorithms are then presented as well as techniques for producing soft shadows and penumbrae. In the last few years, image rendering has been strongly influenced by ray tracing techniques. For this reason, two chapters are dedicated to this important approach. Then a chapter is completely dedicated to fractals from the formal Mandelbrot theory to the recursive subdivision approaches. Natural phenomena present a particularly difficult challenge in image synthesis. For this reason, a large portion of the book is devoted to latest methods to simulate these phenomena: particle systems, scalar fields, volume density scattering models. Various techniques are also described for representing terrains, mountains, water, waves, sky, clouds, fog, fire, trees, and grass. Several techniques for combining images are also explained: adaptive rendering, montage and composite methods. The last chapter presents in detail the MIRALab image synthesis software.

This book contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Real-time Object and Environment Measurement and Classification" held in Maratea, Italy, August 31 - September 3, 1987. This workshop was organized within the activities of the NATO Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. Four major themes were discussed at this workshop: Real-time Requirements, Feature Measurement, Object Representation and Recognition, and Architecture for Measurement and Classification. A total of twenty-five technical presentations, contained in this book, cover a wide spectrum of topics including hardware implementation of specific vision algorithms, a complete vision system for object tracking and inspection, using three cameras (trinocular stereo) for feature measurement, neural network for object recognition, integration of CAD (Computer Aided Design) and vision systems, and the use of pyramid architectures for solving various computer vision problems. These papers are written by some of the very well-known researchers in the computer vision and pattern recognition community, and represent both industrial and academic viewpoints. The authors come from thirteen different countries from Europe and North America. Therefore, readers will get a first hand and current information about the status of computer vision research in various western countries. Further, this book will also be useful in understanding the current research issues in computer vision and the difficulties in designing real-time vision systems.

A Practical Guide to Analog Behavioral Modeling for IC System Design presents a methodology for abstracting an IC system so that the designer can gain a macroscopic view of how sub-systems interact, as well as verify system functionality in various applications before committing to a design. This will prevent problems that may be caused late in the design-cycle by incompatibilities between the individual blocks that comprise the overall system. This book will focus on the techniques of modelling IC systems through analog behavioral modeling and simulation. It will investigate a practical approach by which designers can put together these systems to analyze topological and architectural issues to optimize IC system performance.Highlights: * Discussions on modeling and simulation from SPICE to behavioral simulators * Comparison of various hardware description languages and a discussion on the effects of language standardization * Explanation on how to reduce time-to-market by decreasing design-cycle time through modeling and simulation * Contains more than 25 building block examples that can be used to construct mixed-signal IC system models * Analysis of 4 different IC systems using various levels of model detail This book is intended for the practicing engineer who would like to gain practical knowledge in applications of analog behavioral modelling for IC system design.

Control networks span a wide range of application areas. These networks are put into action in the `Digital Home', industrial applications, commercial buildings, transportation systems, gas stations, security systems, and they are found in most instances where smart sensors and smart actuators are used to exchange information. The authors of this volume provide an overview of various control network protocols and discuss LonTalk (R) protocol, Neuron (R) chip, programming model, network structures, network management, interoperability between nodes, application profiles, development and maintenance tools, performance analysis, and standardization activities. Open Control Networks: LonWorks/EIA 709 Technology will be an important resource for advanced students of control systems and embedded systems, engineers designing distributed networks, systems designers and architects, and others developing smart buildings and intelligent transportation systems.

Perhaps nothing characterizes the inherent heterogeneity in embedded sys tems than the ability to choose between hardware and software implementations of a given system function. Indeed, most embedded systems at their core repre sent a careful division and design of hardware and software parts of the system To do this task effectively, models and methods are necessary functionality. to capture application behavior, needs and system implementation constraints. Formal modeling can be valuable in addressing these tasks. As with most engineering domains, co-design practice defines the state of the it seeks to add new capabilities in system conceptualization, mod art, though eling, optimization and implementation. These advances -particularly those related to synthesis and verification tasks -direct1y depend upon formal under standing of system behavior and performance measures. Current practice in system modeling relies upon exploiting high-level programming frameworks, such as SystemC, EstereI, to capture design at increasingly higher levels of ab straction and attempts to reduce the system implementation task. While raising the abstraction levels for design and verification tasks, to be really useful, these approaches must also provide for reuse, adaptation of the existing intellectual property (IP) blocks."

Change is one of the most significant parameters in our society. Designers are amongst the primary change agents for any society. As a consequence design is an important research topic in engineering and architecture and related disciplines, since design is not only a means of change but is also one of the keystones to economic competitiveness and the fundamental precursor to manufacturing. The development of computational models founded on the artificial intelligence paradigm has provided an impetus for much of current design research -both computational and cognitive. These forms of design research have only been carried out in the last decade or so and in the temporal sense they are still immature. Notwithstanding this immaturity, noticeable advances have been made both in extending our understanding of design and in developing tools based on that understanding. Whilst many researchers in the field of artificial intelligence in design utilise ideas about how humans design as one source of concepts there is normally no attempt to model human designers. Rather the results of the research presented in this volume demonstrate approaches to increasing our understanding of design as a process.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies, .... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Within the control community there has been much discussion of and interest in the new Emerging Technologies and Methods. Neural networks along with Fuzzy Logic and Expert Systems is an emerging methodology which has the potential to contribute to the development of intelligent control technologies. This volume of some thirteen chapters edited by Kenneth Hunt, George Irwin and Kevin Warwick makes a useful contribution to the literature of neural network methods and applications. The chapters are arranged systematically progressing from theoretical foundations, through the training aspects of neural nets and concluding with four chapters of applications. The applications include problems as diverse as oven tempera ture control, and energy/load forecasting routines. We hope this interesting but balanced mix of material appeals to a wide range of readers from the theoretician to the industrial applications engineer.

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is the computerized handling of integrated business processes among all different functions in an enterprise. The consistent application of information technology, along with modern manufacturing techniques and new organizational procedures, opens up great potential for speeding up processes. This book discusses the current state of applications and new demands arising from the integration principle. It mainly emphasizes on strategies for realization and implementation based on the author's concrete experience. The "Y-CIM information management" model is presented as a procedural method for implementing CIM. The third edition has been supplemented by up-to-date specified examples of applied CIM solutions and transfer strategies.

Designing is one of the foundations for change in our society. It is a fundamental precursor to manufacturing, fabrication and construction. Design research aims to develop an understanding of designing and to produce models of designing that can be used to aid designing. The papers in this volume are from the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Design (AID'00) held in June 2000, in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. They represent the state of the art and the cutting edge of research and development in this field, and demonstrate both the depth and breadth of the artificial intelligence paradigm in design. They point the way for the development of advanced computer-based tools to aid designers, and describe advances in both theory and application. This volume will be of particular interest to researchers, developers, and users of advanced computer systems in design.

There is much excitement in the design and verification community about assertion-based design. The question is, who should study assertion-based design? The emphatic answer is, both design and verification engineers. What may be unintuitive to many design engineers is that adding assertions to RTL code will actually reduce design time, while better documenting design intent. Every design engineer should read this book! Design engineers that add assertions to their design will not only reduce the time needed to complete a design, they will also reduce the number of interruptions from verification engineers to answer questions about design intent and to address verification suite mistakes. With design assertions in place, the majority of the interruptions from verification engineers will be related to actual design problems and the error feedback provided will be more useful to help identify design flaws. A design engineer who does not add assertions to the RTL code will spend more time with verification engineers explaining the design functionality and intended interface requirements, knowledge that is needed by the verification engineer to complete the job of testing the design.

The success of VHDL since it has been balloted in 1987 as an IEEE standard may look incomprehensible to the large population of hardware designers, who had never heared of Hardware Description Languages before (for at least 90% of them), as well as to the few hundreds of specialists who had been working on these languages for a long time (25 years for some of them). Until 1988, only a very small subset of designers, in a few large companies, were used to describe their designs using a proprietary HDL, or sometimes a HDL inherited from a University when some software environment happened to be developped around it, allowing usability by third parties. A number of benefits were definitely recognized to this practice, such as functional verification of a specification through simulation, first performance evaluation of a tentative design, and sometimes automatic microprogram generation or even automatic high level synthesis. As there was apparently no market for HDL's, the ECAD vendors did not care about them, start-up companies were seldom able to survive in this area, and large users of proprietary tools were spending more and more people and money just to maintain their internal system.

A spline is a thin flexible strip composed of a material such as bamboo or steel that can be bent to pass through or near given points in the plane, or in 3-space in a smooth manner. Mechanical engineers and drafting specialists find such (physical) splines useful in designing and in drawing plans for a wide variety of objects, such as for hulls of boats or for the bodies of automobiles where smooth curves need to be specified. These days, physi cal splines are largely replaced by computer software that can compute the desired curves (with appropriate encouragment). The same mathematical ideas used for computing "spline" curves can be extended to allow us to compute "spline" surfaces. The application ofthese mathematical ideas is rather widespread. Spline functions are central to computer graphics disciplines. Spline curves and surfaces are used in computer graphics renderings for both real and imagi nary objects. Computer-aided-design (CAD) systems depend on algorithms for computing spline functions, and splines are used in numerical analysis and statistics. Thus the construction of movies and computer games trav els side-by-side with the art of automobile design, sail construction, and architecture; and statisticians and applied mathematicians use splines as everyday computational tools, often divorced from graphic images."

Every pioneer takes large risks, hoping that the new frontier he seeks will provide the benefits of independence and good fortune. Don Tapscott is such a pioneer in the area of office automation. He has been a true pioneer, having entered the field in its early days and taken the risk of working not in technol ogy, which was fashionable, but in the field of the problems of organizations, which was less fashionable, but in many ways more important. The utilization of computers for data processing, accounting, inventory, and other "bread and butter" applications is now well entrenched in our society and culture. The process of designing such systems tends to focus on the needs of the company and the constraints of the equipment, leading to efficient systems with little tolerance for the variety of people who must use or interface with them. Within the office automation area, these methods do not work nearly as well. The frequency and amount of human interaction in the office environment, and the wide variety of situations and reactions there in, demands a different design methodology."

The Current state of expectations is that Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) will ulti mately determine the industrial growth of world nations within the next few decades. Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), Robotics together with Knowledge and Information Based Systems (KIBS) and Com munication Networks are expected to develop to a mature state to respond effectively to the managerial requirements of the factories of the future that are becoming highly integrated and complex. CIM represents a new production approach which will allow the factories to deliver a high variety of products at a low cost and with short production cycles. The new technologies for CIM are needed to develop manufacturing environments that are smarter, faster, close-cou pled, integrated, optimized, and flexible. Sophistication and a high degree of specialization in materials science, artificial intelligence, communications technology and knowledge-information science techniques are needed among others for the development of realizable and workable CIM systems that are capable of adjusting to volatile markets. CIM factories are to allow the production of a wide variety of similar products in small batches through standard but multi mission oriented designs that accommodate flexibility with specialized software."

2 e This book describes principles, methods and tools that are common to computer applications for design tasks. CAD is considered in this book as a discipline that provides the required know-how in computer hardware and software, in systems analysis and in engineering methodology for specifying, designing, implementing, introducing, and using computer based systems for design purposes. The first chapter gives an impression of the book as a whole, and following chapters deal with the history and the components of CAD, the process aspect of CAD, CAD architecture, graphical devices and systems, CAD engineering methods, CAD data transfer, and application examples. The flood of new developments in the field and the success of the first edition of this book have led the authors to prepare this completely revised, updated and extended second edition. Extensive new material is included on computer graphics, implementation methodology and CAD data transfer; the material on graphics standards is updated. The book is aimed primarily at engineers who design or install CAD systems. It is also intended for students who seek a broad fundamental background in CAD.

This text addresses the design methodologies and CAD tools available for the systematic design and design automation of analogue integrated circuits. Two complementary approaches discussed increase analogue design productivity, demonstrated throughout using design times of the different design experiments undertaken.

Model Generation in Electronic Design covers a wide range of model applications and research. The book begins by describing a model generator to create component models. It goes on to discuss ASIC design and ASIC library generation. This section includes chapters on the requirements for developing and ASIC library, a case study in which VITAL is used to create such a library, and the analysis and description of the accuracy required in modeling interconnections in ASIC design. Other chapters describe the development of thermal models for electronic devices, the development of a set of model packages for VHDL floating point operations, a techniques for model validation and verification, and a tool for model encryption. Model Generation in Electronic Design is an essential update for users, vendors, model producers, technical managers, designers and researchers working in electronic design.

Physical Design for Multichip Modules collects together a large body of important research work that has been conducted in recent years in the area of Multichip Module (MCM) design. The material consists of a survey of published results as well as original work by the authors. All major aspects of MCM physical design are discussed, including interconnect analysis and modeling, system partitioning and placement, and multilayer routing. For readers unfamiliar with MCMs, this book presents an overview of the different MCM technologies available today. An in-depth discussion of various recent approaches to interconnect analysis are also presented. Remaining chapters discuss the problems of partitioning, placement, and multilayer routing, with an emphasis on timing performance. For the first time, data from a wide range of sources is integrated to present a clear picture of a new, challenging and very important research area. For students and researchers looking for interesting research topics, open problems and suggestions for further research are clearly stated.Points of interest include: * Clear overview of MCM technology and its relationship to physical design; * Emphasis on performance-driven design, with a chapter devoted to recent techniques for rapid performance analysis and modeling of MCM interconnects; * Different approaches to multilayer MCM routing collected together and compared for the first time; * Explanation of algorithms is not overly mathematical, yet is detailed enough to give readers a clear understanding of the approach; * Quantitative data provided wherever possible for comparison of different approaches; * A comprehensive list of references to recent literature on MCMs provided.

The rapid evolution and explosive growth of integrated circuit technology have impacted society more than any other technological development of the 20th century. Integrated circuits (ICs) are used universally and the expanding use of IC technology requires more accurate circuit analysis methods and tools, prompting the introduction of computers into the design process. The goal of this book is to build a firm foundation in the use of computer-assisted techniques for IC device and process design. Both practical and analytical viewpoints are stressed to give the reader the background necessary to appreciate CAD tools and to feel comfortable with their use. Technology CAD - Computer Simulation of IC Processes and Devices presents a unified discourse on process and device CAD as interrelated subjects, building on a wide range of experiences and applications of the SUPREM program. Chapter 1 focuses on the motivation for coupled process and device CAD. In Chapter 2 SUPREM III is introduced, and process CAD is discussed in terms of ion-implantation, impurity diffusion, and oxidation models.Chapter 3 introduces the Stanford device analysis program SEDAN III (SEmiconductor Device ANalysis). The next three chapters move into greater detail concerning device operating principles and analysis techniques. Chapter 4 reviews the classical formulation of pn junction theory and uses device analysis (SEDAN) both to evaluate some of the classical assumptions and to investigate the difficult problem of high level injection. Chapter 5 returns to MOS devices, reviews the first-order MOS theory, and introduces some important second-order effects. Chapter 6 considers the bipolar transistor. Chapter 7 considers the application of process simulation and device analysis to technology design. The BiCMOS process is selected as a useful design vehicle for two reasons. First, it allows the reader to pull together concepts from the entire book. Second, the inherent nature of BiCMOS technology offers real constraints and hence trade-offs which must be understood and accounted for.

The purpose of computer vision is to make computers capable of understanding environments from visual information. Computer vision has been an interesting theme in the field of artificial intelligence. It involves a variety of intelligent information processing: both pattern processing for extraction of meaningful symbols from visual information and symbol processing for determining what the symbols represent. The term "3D computer vision" is used if visual information has to be interpreted as three-dimensional scenes. 3D computer vision is more challenging because objects are seen from limited directions and some objects are occluded by others. In 1980, the author wrote a book "Computer Vision" in Japanese to introduce an interesting new approach to visual information processing developed so far. Since then computer vision has made remarkable progress: various rangefinders have become available, new methods have been developed to obtain 3D informa tion, knowledge representation frameworks have been proposed, geometric models which were developed in CAD/CAM have been used for computer vision, and so on. The progress in computer vision technology has made it possible to understand more complex 3 D scenes. There is an increasing demand for 3D computer vision. In factories, for example, automatic assembly and inspection can be realized with fewer con straints than conventional ones which employ two-dimensional computer vision."