This book contains the edited version of lectures and selected papers presented at the NATO ADVANCED STUDY INSTITUTE ON COMPUTER AIDED OPTIMAL DESIGN: Structural and Mechanical Systems, held in Tr6ia, Portugal, 29th June to 11th July 1986, and organized by CEMUL -Center of Mechanics and Materials of the Technical University of Lisbon. The Institute was attended by 120 participants from 21 countries, including leading scientists and engineers from universities, research institutions and industry, and Ph.D. students. Some participants presented invited and contributed papers during the Institute and almost all participated actively in discussions on scientific aspects during the Institute. The Advanced Study Institute provided a forum for interaction among eminent scientists and engineers from different schools of thought and young reseachers. The Institute addressed the foundations and current state of the art of essential techniques related to computer aided optimal design of structural and mechanical systems, namely: Vari ational and Finite Element Methods in Optimal Design, Numerical Optimization Techniques, Design Sensitivity Analysis, Shape Optimal Design, Adaptive Finite Element Methods in Shape Optimization, CAD Technology, Software Development Techniques, Integrated Computer Aided Design and Knowledge Based Systems. Special topics of growing importance were also pre sented."

3D CAD is one of the most important technologies of the 90s for the engineering and manufacturing world. 3D CAD systems can provide a competitive edge in the development of new products. This book presents the development of a three-dimensional CAD system and its wide range of applications. It describes the concepts of solid models, and the theory of curves and surfaces and it illustrates these concepts through "reals world" applications.

Informationssysteme sind die Grundlage von Building Information Modelling, BIM. Vernetzte Informationen und durchgangig vernetzte Modelldaten sind die Grundlage partnerschaftlichen Bauens. Sie erlauben transparentes Controlling und zuverlassiges Risikomanagement. Multimodelle sind vernetzte Informationen. Die Grundlagen und Methoden von BIM und Multimodellen werden erlautert und es wird aufgezeigt, wie ein prozessorientiertes Management mit Multimodellen neue Qualitat in die Planung und Steuerung von Bauprozessen bringt. Die durchgehende BIM Arbeitsweise mit vernetzten Informationen erlaubt Bauablaufsimulationen in kurzester Zeit durchzufuhren. Neben dem virtuellen Bauwerk wird auch eine virtuelle Baustelle virtuelle Realitat und gibt wichtige neue Eindrucke fur das Baumanagement. Baumanagementinformationen werden auf einmal transparent, erfassbar, begreifbar. Band 1 konzentriert sich auf die Grundlagen der Modelle und ihre Erweiterung durch Linkmodelle, auf die Methoden fur BIM und Multimodelldaten wie das Filtern, das Visualisieren und auf die Prozesse, ihre schnelle Konfiguration und das prozessbasierte Planen und Managen sowie die Informationslogistik, die gerade durch Multimodelle neue Ansatze und Qualitaten erhalt, wahrend Band 2 anschauliche Anwendungen in Baustellenplanung, Bauablaufsimulation, Bauprojekt- und Risikomanagement aufzeigt.

The variational approach, including the direct methods and finite elements, is one of the main tools of engineering analysis. However, it is difficult to appreciate not only for seniors but for graduate students too. It is possible to make this subject easier to understand with the help of symbolic manipulation codes (SMC). The easiness with which these codes provide analytical results allow for a student or researcher to focus on the ideas rather than on calculational difficulties. The very process of programming with SMC encourages appreciation of the qualitative aspects of investigations. Saving time and effort, they enable undergraduates to deal with the subjects generally regarded as graduate courses. There is a habitual aspect too. These days it is more convenient for a student (researcher) to work with a keyboard than with a pencil. Moreover, semantic features of the codes may allow for generalizations of the standard techniques, which would be impossible to achieve without the computer's help.

Computer graphics as a whole is an area making very fast progress and it is not easy for anyone, including experts, to keep abreast of the frontiers of its various basic and application fields. By issuing over 100 thousand calls for papers through various journals and magazines as weil as by inviting reputed specialists, and by selecting high quality papers which present the state of the art in computer graphics out of many papers thus received, this book "Frontiers in Computer Graphics" has been compiled to present the substance of progress in this field. This volume serves also as the final version of the Proceedings of Computer Graphics Tokyo '84, Tokyo, Japan, April 24-27, 1984 which, as a whole, attracted 16 thousand participants from all over the world; about two thousand to the conference and the remaining 14 thousand to the exhibition. This book covers the following eight major frontiers of computer graphics in 29 papers: 1. geometry modelling, 2. graphie languages, 3. visualization techniques, 4. human factors, 5. interactive graphics design, 6. CAD/CAM, 7. graphie displays and peripherals, and 8. graphics standardization. Geometry modelling is most essential in displaying any objects in computer graphics. It determines the basic capabilities of computer graphics systems such as whether the surface and the inside of the object can be displayed and also how efficiently graphical processing can be done in terms of processing time and memory space.

Software Diversity is one of the fault-tolerance means to achieve dependable systems. In this volume, some experimental systems as well as real-life applications of software diversity are presented. The history, the current state-of-the-art and future perspectives are given. Although this technique is used quite successfully in industrial applications, further research is necessary to solve some open questions. We hope to report on new results and applications in another volume of this series within some years. Acknowledgements The idea of the workshop was put forward by the chairpersons of IFIP WG lOA, J. -c. Laprie, J. F. Meyer and Y. Tohma, in January 1986, and the edi tor of this volume was asked to organize the workshop. This volume was edited with the assistance of the editors of the series, A. AviZienis, H. Kopetz and J. -C. Laprie, who also had the function of reviewers. Karlsruhe, October 1987 U. Voges, Editor Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Introduction U. Voges 2. Railway Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 ERICSSON Safety System for Railway Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 G. Hagelin 3. Nuclear Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Use of Diversity in Experimental Reactor Safety Systems . 29 U. Voges The PODS Diversity Experiment . 51 P. G. Bishop 4. Flight Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 AIRBUS and ATR System Architecture and Specification. . 95 P. Traverse 5. University Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Tolerating Software Design Faults in a Command and Control System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 T. Anderson, P. A. Barrett, D. N. Halliwell, M. R. Moulding DEDIX 87 - A Supervisory System for Design Diversity Experiments at UCLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ."

by Phil Moorby The Verilog Hardware Description Language has had an amazing impact on the mod em electronics industry, considering that the essential composition of the language was developed in a surprisingly short period of time, early in 1984. Since its introduc tion, Verilog has changed very little. Over time, users have requested many improve ments to meet new methodology needs. But, it is a complex and time consuming process to add features to a language without ambiguity, and maintaining consistency. A group of Verilog enthusiasts, the IEEE 1364 Verilog committee, have broken the Verilog feature doldrums. These individuals should be applauded. They invested the time and energy, often their personal time, to understand and resolve an extensive wish-list of language enhancements. They took on the task of choosing a feature set that would stand up to the scrutiny of the standardization process. I would like to per sonally thank this group. They have shown that it is possible to evolve Verilog, rather than having to completely start over with some revolutionary new language. The Verilog 1364-2001 standard provides many of the advanced building blocks that users have requested. The enhancements include key components for verification, abstract design, and other new methodology capabilities. As designers tackle advanced issues such as automated verification, system partitioning, etc., the Verilog standard will rise to meet the continuing challenge of electronics design.

High-Level Power Analysis and Optimization presents a comprehensive description of power analysis and optimization techniques at the higher (architecture and behavior) levels of the design hierarchy, which are often the levels that yield the most power savings. This book describes power estimation and optimization techniques for use during high-level (behavioral synthesis), as well as for designs expressed at the register-transfer or architecture level. High-Level Power Analysis and Optimization surveys the state-of-the-art research on the following topics: power estimation/macromodeling techniques for architecture-level designs, high-level power management techniques, and high-level synthesis optimizations for low power. High-Level Power Analysis and Optimization will be very useful reading for students, researchers, designers, design methodology developers, and EDA tool developers who are interested in low-power VLSI design or high-level design methodologies.

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."

This fourth volume of Advances in Computer Graphics gathers together a selection of the tutorials presented at the EUROGRAPHICS annual conference in Nice, France, Septem ber 1988. The six contributions cover various disciplines in Computer Graphics, giving either an in-depth view of a specific topic or an updated overview of a large area. Chapter 1, Object-oriented Computer Graphics, introduces the concepts of object ori ented programming and shows how they can be applied in different fields of Computer Graphics, such as modelling, animation and user interface design. Finally, it provides an extensive bibliography for those who want to know more about this fast growing subject. Chapter 2, Projective Geometry and Computer Graphics, is a detailed presentation of the mathematics of projective geometry, which serves as the mathematical background for all graphic packages, including GKS, GKS-3D and PRIGS. This useful paper gives in a single document information formerly scattered throughout the literature and can be used as a reference for those who have to implement graphics and CAD systems. Chapter 3, GKS-3D and PHIGS: Theory and Practice, describes both standards for 3D graphics, and shows how each of them is better adapted in different typical applications. It provides answers to those who have to choose a basic 3D graphics library for their developments, or to people who have to define their future policy for graphics.

The second half of this century will remain as the era of proliferation of electronic computers. They did exist before, but they were mechanical. During next century they may perform other mutations to become optical or molecular or even biological. Actually, all these aspects are only fancy dresses put on mathematical machines. This was always recognized to be true in the domain of software, where "machine" or "high level" languages are more or less rigourous, but immaterial, variations of the universaly accepted mathematical language aimed at specifying elementary operations, functions, algorithms and processes. But even a mathematical machine needs a physical support, and this is what hardware is all about. The invention of hardware description languages (HDL's) in the early 60's, was an attempt to stay longer at an abstract level in the design process and to push the stage of physical implementation up to the moment when no more technology independant decisions can be taken. It was also an answer to the continuous, exponential growth of complexity of systems to be designed. This problem is common to hardware and software and may explain why the syntax of hardware description languages has followed, with a reasonable delay of ten years, the evolution of the programming languages: at the end of the 60's they were" Algol like" , a decade later "Pascal like" and now they are "C or ADA-like". They have also integrated the new concepts of advanced software specification languages.

Function Architecture Co-Design is a new paradigm for the design and implementation of embedded systems. Function/Architecture Optimization and Co-Design of Embedded Systems presents the authors' work in developing a function/architecture optimization and co-design formal methodology and framework for control-dominated embedded systems. The approach incorporates both data flow and control optimizations performed on a suitable novel intermediate design task representation. The aim is not only to enhance productivity of the designer and system developer, but also to improve quality of the final synthesis outcome. Function/Architecture Optimization and Co-Design of Embedded Systems discusses the proposed function/architecture co-design methodology, focusing on design representation, optimization, validation, and synthesis. Throughout the text, the difference between behavior specification and implementation is emphasized. The current need in co-design to move from synthesis-based technology to compiler-based technology is pointed out. The authors describe and show how performing data flow and control optimizations at the high abstraction level can lead to significant size and performance improvements in both the synthesized hardware and software. The work builds on bodies of research in the silicon and software compilation domains. The aforementioned techniques are specialized to the embedded systems domain. It is recognized that guided optimization can be applied on the internal design representation, no matter what the abstraction level, and need not be restricted to the final stages of software assembly code generation, or hardware synthesis. Function/Architecture Optimization and Co-Design of Embedded Systems will be of primary interest to researchers, developers, and professionals in the field of embedded systems design.

Computer Science Workbench is a monograph series which will provide you with an in-depth working knowledge of current developments in computer technology. Every volume in this series will deal with a topic of importance in computer science and elaborate on how you yourself can build systems related to the main theme. You will be able to develop a variety of systems, including computer software tools, computer gra phics, computer animation, database management systems, and compu ter-aided design and manufacturing systems. Computer Science Work bench represents an important new contribution in the field of practical computer technology. TOSIYASU L. KUNII Preface to the Second Edition Computer graphics is growing very rapidly; only computer animation grows faster. The first edition of the book Computer Animation: Theory and Practice was released in 1985. Four years later, computer animation has exploded. Conferences on computer animation have appeared and the topic is recognized in well-known journals as a leading theme. Computer-generated film festivals now exist in each country and several thousands of films are produced each year. From a commercial point of view, the computer animation market has grown considerably. TV logos are computer-made and more and more simulations use the technique of computer animation. What is the most fascinating is certainly the development of computer animation from a research point-of-view."

Digital Architecture Beyond Computers explores the deep history of digital architecture, tracing design concepts as far back as the Renaissance and connecting them with the latest software used by designers today. It develops a critical account of how the tools and techniques of digital design have emerged, and allows designers to deepen their understanding of the digital tools they use every day. What aesthetic, spatial, and philosophical concepts converge within the digital tools architects employ? What is their history? And what kinds of techniques and designs have they given rise to? This book explores the answers to these questions, showing how digital architecture brings together complex ideas and trajectories which span across several domains and have evolved over many centuries. It sets out to unpack these ideas, trace their origin and permeation into architecture, and re-examine their use in contemporary software. Chapters are arranged around the histories of nine 'fragments' - each a fundamental concept embedded in popular CAD applications: database, layers and fields, parametrics, pixel, programme, randomness, scanning, topology, and voxel/maxel - with each theme examined through a series of historical and contemporary case studies. The book thus connects the digital design process with architectural history and theory, allowing designers and theorists alike to develop more analytical and critical tools with which to conceptualise digital design and its software.

1 Aims and Features of This Book The contents of t. his book were originally planned t. o be included in a book en titled Geometric lIIodeling and CAD/CAM to be written by M. Hosaka and F. Kimura, but since the draft. of my part of the book was finished much earlier than Kimura's, we decided to publish this part separately at first. In it, geometrically oriented basic methods and tools used for analysis and synthesis of curves and surfaces used in CAD/CAM, various expressions and manipulations of free-form surface patches and their connection, interference as well as their qualit. y eval uation are treated. They are important elements and procedures of geometric models. And construction and utilization of geometric models which include free-form surfaces are explained in the application examples, in which the meth ods and the techniques described in this book were used. In the succeeding book which Kimura is to write, advanced topics such as data structures of geometric models, non-manifold models, geometric inference as well as tolerance problems and product models, process planning and so on are to be included. Conse quently, the title of this book is changed to Modeling of Curves and Surfaces in CAD/CAM. Features of this book are the following. Though there are excellent text books in the same field such as G. Farin's Curves and Surfaces for CAD /CAM l] and C. M."

This volume contains papers representing a comprehensive record of the contributions to the fifth workshop at EG '90 in Lausanne. The Eurographics hardware workshops have now become an established forum for the exchange of information about the latest developments in this field of growing importance. The first workshop took place during EG '86 in Lisbon. All participants considered this to be a very rewarding event to be repeated at future EG conferences. This view was reinforced at the EG '87 Hardware Workshop in Amsterdam and firmly established the need for such a colloquium in this specialist area within the annual EG conference. The third EG Hardware Workshop took place in Nice in 1988 and the fourth in Hamburg at EG '89. The first part of the book is devoted to rendering machines. The papers in this part address techniques for accelerating the rendering of images and efficient ways of improv ing their quality. The second part on ray tracing describes algorithms and architectures for producing photorealistic images, with emphasis on ways of reducing the time for this computationally intensive task. The third part on visualization systems covers a num ber of topics, including voxel-based systems, radiosity, animation and special rendering techniques. The contributions show that there is flourishing activity in the development of new algorithmic and architectural ideas and, in particular, in absorbing the impact of VLSI technology. The increasing diversity of applications encourage new solutions, and graphics hardware has become a research area of high activity and importance.

Evolutionary Algorithms for Embedded System Design describes how Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) concepts can be applied to circuit and system design - an area where time-to-market demands are critical. EAs create an interesting alternative to other approaches since they can be scaled with the problem size and can be easily run on parallel computer systems. This book presents several successful EA techniques and shows how they can be applied at different levels of the design process. Starting on a high-level abstraction, where software components are dominant, several optimization steps are demonstrated, including DSP code optimization and test generation. Throughout the book, EAs are tested on real-world applications and on large problem instances. For each application the main criteria for the successful application in the corresponding domain are discussed. In addition, contributions from leading international researchers provide the reader with a variety of perspectives, including a special focus on the combination of EAs with problem specific heuristics. Evolutionary Algorithms for Embedded System Design is an excellent reference for both practitioners working in the area of circuit and system design and for researchers in the field of evolutionary concepts.

Parallel CFD 2008, the twentieth in the high-level international series of meetings featuring different aspect of parallel computing in computational?uid dynamics and other modern scienti?c domains was held May 19?22, 2008 in Lyon, France. The themes of the 2008 meeting included the traditional emphases of this c- ference, and experiences with contemporary architectures. Around 70 presentations were included into the conference program in the following sessions: Parallel Algorithms and solvers Parallel performances with contemporary architectures Structured and unstructured grid methods, boundary methods software framework and components architecture CFD applications(Bio ?uid, environmentalproblem)Lattice Boltzmannmethodand SPH Optimisation in Aerodynamics This book presents an up-to-date overviewof the state of the art in Parallel C- putational Fluid Dynamics from Asia, Europe, and North America. This reviewed proceedingsincluded about sixty percent of the oral lectures presented at the conf- ence. The editors. VI Preface Parallel CFD 2008 was organized by the Institut Camille Jordan of the Univ- sity of Lyon 1 in collaboration with the Center for the Development of the Parallel Scienti?c Computing. The Scienti?c Committee and Local Organizers of Parallel CFD 2008 are - lighted to acknowledge the generous sponsorship of the following organizations, through ?nancial or in-kind assistance. Assistance of our sponsors allowed to - ganize scienti?c as well as social program of the conference.

Dr. Jay Liebowitz Orkand Endowed Chair in Management and Technology University of Maryland University College Graduate School of Management & Technology 3501 University Boulevard East Adelphi, Maryland 20783-8030 USA jliebowitz@umuc. edu When I first heard the general topic of this book, Marketing Intelligent Systems or what I'll refer to as Marketing Intelligence, it sounded quite intriguing. Certainly, the marketing field is laden with numeric and symbolic data, ripe for various types of mining-data, text, multimedia, and web mining. It's an open laboratory for applying numerous forms of intelligentsia-neural networks, data mining, expert systems, intelligent agents, genetic algorithms, support vector machines, hidden Markov models, fuzzy logic, hybrid intelligent systems, and other techniques. I always felt that the marketing and finance domains are wonderful application areas for intelligent systems, and this book demonstrates the synergy between marketing and intelligent systems, especially soft computing. Interactive advertising is a complementary field to marketing where intelligent systems can play a role. I had the pleasure of working on a summer faculty f- lowship with R/GA in New York City-they have been ranked as the top inter- tive advertising agency worldwide. I quickly learned that interactive advertising also takes advantage of data visualization and intelligent systems technologies to help inform the Chief Marketing Officer of various companies. Having improved ways to present information for strategic decision making through use of these technologies is a great benefit.

For the near future, the recent predictions and roadmaps of silicon semiconductor technology all agree that the number of transistors on a chip will keep growing exponentially according to Moore's Law, pushing technology towards the system-on-a-chip (SOC) era. However, we are increasingly experiencing a productivity gap where the chip complexity that can be handled by current design teams falls short of the possibilities offered by technological advances. Together with growing time-to-market pressures, this drives the need for innovative measures to increase design productivity by orders of magnitude. It is commonly agreed that the solutions for achieving such a leap in design productivity lie in a shift of the focus of the design process to higher levels of abstraction on the one hand and in the massive reuse of predesigned, complex system components (intellectual property, IP) on the other hand. In order to be successful, both concepts eventually require the adoption of new languages and methodologies for system design, backed-up by the availability of a corresponding set of system-level design automation tools. This book presents the SpecC system-level design language (SLDL) and the corresponding SpecC design methodology. The SpecC language is intended for specification and design of SOCs or embedded systems including software and hardware, whether using fixed platforms, integrating systems from different IPs, or synthesizing the system blocks from programming or hardware description languages. SpecC Specification Language and Methodology describes the SpecC methodology that leads designers from an executable specification to an RTL implementation through a well-defined sequence of steps. Each model is described and guidelines are given for generating these models from executable specifications. Finally, the SpecC methodology is demonstrated on an industrial-size example. The design community is now entering the system level of abstraction era and SpecC is the enabling element to achieve a paradigm shift in design culture needed for system/product design and manufacturing. SpecC Specification Language and Methodology will be of interest to researchers, designers, and managers dealing with system-level design, design flows and methodologies as well as students learning system specification, modeling and design.

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.

These proceedings contain lectures presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Concurrent Engineering Tools and Technologies for Mechanical System Design held in Iowa City, Iowa, 25 May -5 June, 1992. Lectures were presented by leaders from Europe and North America in disciplines contributing to the emerging international focus on Concurrent Engineering of mechanical systems. Participants in the Institute were specialists from throughout NATO in disciplines constituting Concurrent Engineering, many of whom presented contributed papers during the Institute and all of whom participated actively in discussions on technical aspects of the subject. The proceedings are organized into the following five parts: Part 1 Basic Concepts and Methods Part 2 Application Sectors Part 3 Manufacturing Part 4 Design Sensitivity Analysis and Optimization Part 5 Virtual Prototyping and Human Factors Each of the parts is comprised of papers that present state-of-the-art concepts and methods in fields contributing to Concurrent Engineering of mechanical systems. The lead-off papers in each part are based on invited lectures, followed by papers based on contributed presentations made by participants in the Institute.

"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.

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.

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