CGL Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, April 12, 1995

Location:: DC 1304
Time:: 1:30 PM
Chair:: Jay Steele

1. Adoption of the agenda - additions/deletions thereto.

2. Coffee Hour and Next Meeting:

Coffee hour this week:

???

Coffee hour next week:

???

Next Meeting

Time:: April 19, 1995
Location:: DC 1304
Chair:: Riston Tapp
Tech Presentation:: Andrew Park

Forthcoming: (list next 4 and trades)

Chairs:: Greg Veres; Bill Wallace; Julie Waterhouse; Yanchun Zhao
Tech presentations:: Glenn Paulley; Randall Reid; Haroon Sheikh; Riston Tapp

3. Technical Presentation:

Presenter:: Stephen Mereu
Title: Using Sound to Provide Depth Cues in 3D Interfaces: Preliminary Results
Abstract: One of the most difficult aspects of 3D interfaces is the lack of depth information. There are many ways to enhance the depth cues but most are costly. Sound is an inexpensive alternative that has great potential. During this talk, three possible sound environments will be discussed along with some preliminary experimental results.

4. General Discussion Items:

5. Action List (remember to update AL_active)

6. Directors Meeting:

7. Seminar(s):


                   The University of Waterloo
                      200 University Avenue
                        Waterloo, Ontario


           The Institute for Computer Research (ICR)

                    Presents a Colloquium on

                     Uncheatable Benchmarks


by:     Dr. Jin-yi Cai

of:     Department of  Computer  Science          
	SUNY Buffalo
        Buffalo, New York


Date:   Wednesday,  April 12, 1995   
Time:	3:30 pm.
Place:  William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, Room 1302


Abstract:

Benchmarks have been used to test everything from the speed of  a
processor,  to the accuracy of computations, to the capacity of a
memory system. The computing community relies heavily on the  use
of  benchmarks  to  assess  how well a given hardware or software
system operates. The recent fiasco involving the Pentium chips is
an  excellent  reminder  that while certain computations may seem
elementary, adequate testing using good benchmarks is  indispens-
able.

Up until now, the study of the art of designing a good  benchmark
has  focused  on making the benchmark ``realistic'' in predicting
how well it will perform for the intended applications; the issue
of  making  benchmark  results  trustworthy has been relegated to
``trusted'' or third party agents,  and little attention has been
paid  to  the question of making benchmarks themselves ``uncheat-
able''.

We wish to study the problem  of  how  one  can  make  benchmarks
resistant  to  tampering and hence more trustworthy. We propose a
framework based on modern  cryptography  and  complexity  theory.
Concrete  schemes are proposed for different benchmarks: speed of
the processor, memory capacity, sorting,  etc.   They  are  ``un-
cheatable'',  if  certain  complexity theory assumptions are true
based on the hardness of factoring and discrete logarithm.

We also present a scheme for matrix multiplication which  depends
on  the numerical instability of certain floating point arithmet-
ic.  If time permits we will present a  new  scheme  which  could
have captured the errors in the Pentium chip.

Part of this talk will be based on joint work with R. Lipton,  R.
Sedgewick  and A. Yao, and also joint work with my students S. Ar
and  A.  Nerurkar.  Supported  by  NSF   grant   CCR9319393   and
CCR9057486, and a Sloan fellowship.


Everyone is welcome.  Refreshments served.

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

FORMAL SPECIFICATION AND VERIFICATION SEMINAR

                    -Monday, April 17, 1995

Graham  Birtwistle,  Computer  Science,  University  of
Calgary, will speak on "Specifying and Verifying AMULET
in CCS".

TIME:                11:00-12:00 noon

ROOM:                DC 1304

ABSTRACT

Asynchronous  hardware  design  is  attracting  renewed
research   and   industrial  interest  because  of  its
compositional  properties  and  potential for low power
consumption (much of today's hardware is battery driven
and  asynchronous  circuits  only do work when there is
work to do).

AMULET  is an (already working) asynchronous version of
the  ARM  micro  designed  by  Steve  Furber's  team at
Manchester  University.  ARM is now a standard TI cell,
used  by IBM to control disks, and in the Apple Newton.
Its  outstanding characteristic is perhaps its very low
power consumption (132 MIPS per watt).  The medium term
expectation is that AMULET will fare even better.

The  talk  will  present work in progress at Calgary on
specifying and verifying the major subsystems of AMULET
(address  interface, register bank, execution pipeline,
data interface) in CCS and modal mu respectively and at
the  RTL.  CCS  does  not  handle  data well, so we are
concentrating   our   efforts   on   the   way   blocks
(a)synchronise. Once the major subsystems are specified
they   are   tested  for  deadlock  and  livelock,  bus
contention, etc. using modal mu.

So far we have completed work on the address interface,
and  are  well  on the way towards specifying the other
major  subsystems,  and  a  more abstract specification
which  will be useful when we come to consider embedded
systems  centered on AMULET.  The work is being carried
out  with  Ms  Ying Liu (PhD student) and with the full
cooperation of the Manchester AMULET team.

CGL Meeting Agenda

Wednesday, April 12, 1995

1. Adoption of the agenda - additions/deletions thereto.

2. Coffee Hour and Next Meeting:

3. Technical Presentation:

4. General Discussion Items:

5. Action List (remember to update AL_active)

6. Directors Meeting:

7. Seminar(s):

8. Lab Cleanup (till 2:30pm or 5 minutes, whichever is longer)