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Marco Chirico

University of Genova, CSITA, Department Member

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Firat University

Public University of Navarre

Carlos de la Cruz Blas

Giuliano Donzellini

University of Genova

University of Genova

Matteo Pastorino

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

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Papers by Marco Chirico

The real experiment eXecution approach to networking courseware

IEEE Transactions on Education, 1997

Courseware development and delivery represent one of the main topics of present research activiti... more Courseware development and delivery represent one of the main topics of present research activities in the field of computer assisted learning (CAL). New educational technologies have been driven by the improvement in computer network capabilities that address client-server dynamics, access mechanisms and network services. Furthermore, multimedia authoring tools, the World Wide Web and the Java programming paradigm are leading to the creation of new and effective didactic environments. In this scenario, particular attention must be paid to the learning design process, since students can learn better when they are stimulated by a high level of interactivity and they can follow a personal way to learn. In this paper, a new approach to Web-based courseware development is presented: the Real Experiment eXecution (REX) approach. The proposed approach is well-suited to the development of courseware in the field of computer science. Following the REX approach, it is possible to integrate into the courseware a high degree of interaction since, instead of simulation activity, real experiments are carried out through the execution of operations. The Java programming paradigm allows the execution, control and monitoring of these operations. The authors present a courseware prototype, featuring network services and protocols, where the students are introduced to the use of the FTP service. They start a file transfer session and execute typical commands. The system traces the generated network traffic and lets the students analyze and understand the results of the ongoing software experiments

Improving automation and reuse in TLC testing through COTS-based architecture

IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, 2002

Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This me... more Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This means that both construction and testing specifications are constantly being modified; and it also means that products can change rapidly and affect the test requirements. Moreover, the devices, by themselves, are very complicated tangles of hardware and software issues; thus, the test automation is a great challenge.

RAIN: Redundant Array of Inexpensive workstations for Neurocomputing

We describe here the project RAIN, started at the beginning of 1997 and aimed to demonstrate the ... more We describe here the project RAIN, started at the beginning of 1997 and aimed to demonstrate the use of High Performance Computing and Networking technologies in neural network applications for industry and medicine. The target architecture of the demonstrators will be a cluster of workstations: this choice will allow a low-cost implementation and, at the same time, will provide some insight on the use of this relatively new (at least outside the academic world) parallel architecture. Several communication networks will be tested ranging from 10 Mb/s Ethernet to 155 Mb/s ATM.

Improving automation and reuse in TLC testing through COTS-based architecture

Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This me... more Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This means that both construction and testing specifications are constantly being modified; and it also means that products can change rapidly and affect the test requirements. Moreover, the devices, by themselves, are very complicated tangles of hardware and software issues; thus, the test automation is a great challenge.

A generalisable experience of distance education in electronics

This paper presents the proposal of setting up an environment for a standardized collection of di... more This paper presents the proposal of setting up an environment for a standardized collection of didactic multimedia material that will offer new opportunities for sharing, reusing and distributing courses on the Internet. The proposed approach is based on the EU ARIADNE Project methodology and tools. Starting from an analysis of didactic experiences in analog and digital electronics, we suggest an extension of the approach to the Faculty of Engineering to improve the definition of new courses, the continuous upgrade of documents and the exchange of expertise.

An Aglet-based Distributed Web Indexer

A new and open model to share laboratories on the Internet

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2005

A new model for sharing real laboratories on the Internet and creating a virtual on-line laborato... more A new model for sharing real laboratories on the Internet and creating a virtual on-line laboratory has been developed and validated in the field of electronic measurements. Testing theories through practice is an important approach to scientific teaching, and appropriate solutions have not yet been found to support this activity in Web-based education. The on-line laboratory addresses this issue. It allows the execution via Web of real experiments and manages concurrency among users who remotely drive instruments and carry out experiments. The experimental setup can be distributed in different real laboratories, spread on a wide-area network, and controlled by local computers. Users can practice through the network and transparently to the actual locations of the devices under test in a multiuser concurrent way. The proposed paradigm increases the possibility of practice in both academic and industrial education and enriches the current experience in e-learning.

XML data representation for testing automation

XML (extensible Markup Language) technologies seem to offer solutions for a wide range of automat... more XML (extensible Markup Language) technologies seem to offer solutions for a wide range of automated testing issues. In fact, these technologies are very promising to address scalability and interoperability among distributed software applications and to facilitate reuse ensuring data coherency, completeness and reliability. In this paper we discuss the use of XML for representing the whole set of information regarding configuration and classification data involved with a software environment for test automation. Thus we introduce a case study where the effectiveness of this approach was used to face the automated testing of telecommunication device.

A linear rotation based solution of large systems on a transputer array

Microprocessors and Microsystems, 1995

ABSTRACT The concurrent solution of large linear systems of equations on processor meshes of fixe... more ABSTRACT The concurrent solution of large linear systems of equations on processor meshes of fixed size has been considered taking into account the basic requirements of computational efficiency and stability. A linear rotation based algorithm has been studied as a robust solution of linear problems well suited to be implemented on parallel architectures because of its regular computational structure. The exploitation of the intrinsic parallelism of the algorithm and the application of partitioning techniques have addressed a locally parallel globally sequential parallelization strategy. The method has been experimentally evaluated on different sized arrays of transputers, demonstrating that high computational efficiency can be achieved.

A model for an open and flexible e-training platform to encourage companies' learning culture and meet employees' learning needs

Educational Technology & Society, 2003

Nowadays, companies carry out their activities through a distributed structure that often separat... more Nowadays, companies carry out their activities through a distributed structure that often separates management from manufacturing all over the world and faces the global market. These new scenarios require the adoption of continuous and ubiquitous learning models for both company staff and customers. From a company's standpoint, the challenge is to manage against the fast obsolescence of technical skills and to let workers acquire expertise in new topics "in time". From customers' point of view, the adoption of innovation is strategic in order to exploit new technologies and to guarantee support and assistance at an ever-increasing quality level. We are in the presence of a wide range of topics that should be available to a large learning community with different skills and learning targets. Distance education is an effective answer to this demand for flexibility in training. The target is to build up a virtual learning community on the basis of a knowledge model that adequately meets different learning needs. Classification and reusability aspects of multimedia contents play a fundamental role in improving the environment. In this paper, we analyze possible innovations in corporate training, and propose the use of a framework that integrates all information sources and offers practice skills necessary to meet new needs.

High Performance Neurocomputing: Industrial and Medical Applications of the RAIN System

We describe here the RAIN project, aimed at demonstrating the use of High Performance Computing a... more We describe here the RAIN project, aimed at demonstrating the use of High Performance Computing and Networking technologies in neural network applications for industry and medicine. The target architecture of the demonstrators is a workstation cluster: a choice suggested by the cost-effectiveness of this architecture. In order to manage both the cluster and the applications running on it, we built a Java-based interface that can be executed by any Java-enhanced browser.

Implementation of an efficient algorithm for VLSI design rule checking on a 2-D mesh of transputers

ABSTRACT This paper describes a Design Rule Checking (DRC) pro-gram for VLSI circuit layouts with... more

Data communication management in system specification

Microprocessors and Microsystems, 1999

In this paper, a powerful communication scheme is introduced to efficiently meet different commun... more

Efficient technique for partitioning and programming linear algebra algorithms on concurrent VLSI architectures

Iee Proceedings-circuits Devices and Systems, 1995

An efficient technique for partitioning and programming linear algebra algorithms on concurrent a... more An efficient technique for partitioning and programming linear algebra algorithms on concurrent architectures is described and applied to 2-D wavefront arrays. The mapping of the computational elements (processes) to processors is based on the concept of folding. The mapping pattern on the 2-D full-size mesh of processes is a composition of symmetric tiles of size 2J(N) x 2,/(N), N being the number of processors. The algorithm can be partitioned according to a globally sequential, locally parallel scheme. The code optimisation is performed by programming a few different types of tile, according to the algorithm. When the size of the problem is much larger than the size of the mesh of processors, a linear speed-up is achieved independently of the number of processors. Experimental results are presented for matrix multiplication, L U decomposition and the solution of triangular system equations on 2-D meshes of transputers programmed in Occam.

Specification and management of timing constraints in behavioral VHDL

In this paper a suitable way to specify and manage timing constraints in behavioral VHDL is descr... more In this paper a suitable way to specify and manage timing constraints in behavioral VHDL is described. The problem of timing semantics coherency is addressed and a suitable set of procedures is defined to add timing constraint specification in behavioral VHDL for system synthesis. Then, a proper semantics is described which is able to provide a powerful and flexible management of timing constraints.

Implementation issues for congestion control in ATM networks

The design of Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (B-ISDN) requires the investigation ... more The design of Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (B-ISDN) requires the investigation of specific techniques to guarantee different Quality of Services (QoS) requirements for each traffic class in the network. In this context, a unified environment for the simulation and design of an ATM node is a useful approach to test the effectiveness and the implementation aspects of the techniques mentioned above. In this paper a complete ATM node has been modelled in VHDL in a modular and flexible way and critical computational aspects are investigated

Analysis of neural algorithms for parallel architectures

The computational properties (global and local convergence, computational complexity and algorith... more The computational properties (global and local convergence, computational complexity and algorithm tuning) of neural algorithms are analyzed from a circuit perspective. Different equivalent algorithms are derived by applying various numerical techniques (multistep and relaxation methods) to the stationary and dynamic analysis of a common neural circuit model. Simulation experiments are presented for an 8-bit analog-to-digital-converter implementation of a Hopfield neural network. The implications for the simulation of these neural algorithms on parallel architectures are pointed out

Optimization strategies in symbolic compaction

Implementation of efficient strategies for cell generation in VLSI design

International Journal of Electronics, 1992

The problem of automatic layout synthesis is addressed. Given a description of the cell circuit t... more The problem of automatic layout synthesis is addressed. Given a description of the cell circuit to be synthesized and a set of constraints the layout must satisfy, the problem is to generate automatically the corresponding layout through the placement and interconnections of all the circuit elements. The resulting layout is a symbolic one, in the sense that only the relative

S-CFG: a representation model for system synthesis

In this paper, a representation model ( S-CFG , System Control Flow Graph) for system spec$cation... more In this paper, a representation model ( S-CFG , System Control Flow Graph) for system spec$cation and synthesis is described, which is organized in two levels (block and thread). The management of the control/data flow information is pe$omed through the use of control/data flow graphs owning: 1 ) hierarchical definition of control edges, 2 ) suitable management of timing constraints through timing edges, 31 definition of data communication through data edges. The use of hierarchy in control edges makes it possible to define in a powerful and compact way the execution semantics of the S-CFG t.

The real experiment eXecution approach to networking courseware

IEEE Transactions on Education, 1997

Courseware development and delivery represent one of the main topics of present research activiti... more Courseware development and delivery represent one of the main topics of present research activities in the field of computer assisted learning (CAL). New educational technologies have been driven by the improvement in computer network capabilities that address client-server dynamics, access mechanisms and network services. Furthermore, multimedia authoring tools, the World Wide Web and the Java programming paradigm are leading to the creation of new and effective didactic environments. In this scenario, particular attention must be paid to the learning design process, since students can learn better when they are stimulated by a high level of interactivity and they can follow a personal way to learn. In this paper, a new approach to Web-based courseware development is presented: the Real Experiment eXecution (REX) approach. The proposed approach is well-suited to the development of courseware in the field of computer science. Following the REX approach, it is possible to integrate into the courseware a high degree of interaction since, instead of simulation activity, real experiments are carried out through the execution of operations. The Java programming paradigm allows the execution, control and monitoring of these operations. The authors present a courseware prototype, featuring network services and protocols, where the students are introduced to the use of the FTP service. They start a file transfer session and execute typical commands. The system traces the generated network traffic and lets the students analyze and understand the results of the ongoing software experiments

Improving automation and reuse in TLC testing through COTS-based architecture

IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, 2002

Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This me... more Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This means that both construction and testing specifications are constantly being modified; and it also means that products can change rapidly and affect the test requirements. Moreover, the devices, by themselves, are very complicated tangles of hardware and software issues; thus, the test automation is a great challenge.

RAIN: Redundant Array of Inexpensive workstations for Neurocomputing

We describe here the project RAIN, started at the beginning of 1997 and aimed to demonstrate the ... more We describe here the project RAIN, started at the beginning of 1997 and aimed to demonstrate the use of High Performance Computing and Networking technologies in neural network applications for industry and medicine. The target architecture of the demonstrators will be a cluster of workstations: this choice will allow a low-cost implementation and, at the same time, will provide some insight on the use of this relatively new (at least outside the academic world) parallel architecture. Several communication networks will be tested ranging from 10 Mb/s Ethernet to 155 Mb/s ATM.

Improving automation and reuse in TLC testing through COTS-based architecture

Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This me... more Technologies involved into the context of telecommunication systems are rapidly evolving. This means that both construction and testing specifications are constantly being modified; and it also means that products can change rapidly and affect the test requirements. Moreover, the devices, by themselves, are very complicated tangles of hardware and software issues; thus, the test automation is a great challenge.

A generalisable experience of distance education in electronics

This paper presents the proposal of setting up an environment for a standardized collection of di... more This paper presents the proposal of setting up an environment for a standardized collection of didactic multimedia material that will offer new opportunities for sharing, reusing and distributing courses on the Internet. The proposed approach is based on the EU ARIADNE Project methodology and tools. Starting from an analysis of didactic experiences in analog and digital electronics, we suggest an extension of the approach to the Faculty of Engineering to improve the definition of new courses, the continuous upgrade of documents and the exchange of expertise.

An Aglet-based Distributed Web Indexer

A new and open model to share laboratories on the Internet

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2005

A new model for sharing real laboratories on the Internet and creating a virtual on-line laborato... more A new model for sharing real laboratories on the Internet and creating a virtual on-line laboratory has been developed and validated in the field of electronic measurements. Testing theories through practice is an important approach to scientific teaching, and appropriate solutions have not yet been found to support this activity in Web-based education. The on-line laboratory addresses this issue. It allows the execution via Web of real experiments and manages concurrency among users who remotely drive instruments and carry out experiments. The experimental setup can be distributed in different real laboratories, spread on a wide-area network, and controlled by local computers. Users can practice through the network and transparently to the actual locations of the devices under test in a multiuser concurrent way. The proposed paradigm increases the possibility of practice in both academic and industrial education and enriches the current experience in e-learning.

XML data representation for testing automation

XML (extensible Markup Language) technologies seem to offer solutions for a wide range of automat... more XML (extensible Markup Language) technologies seem to offer solutions for a wide range of automated testing issues. In fact, these technologies are very promising to address scalability and interoperability among distributed software applications and to facilitate reuse ensuring data coherency, completeness and reliability. In this paper we discuss the use of XML for representing the whole set of information regarding configuration and classification data involved with a software environment for test automation. Thus we introduce a case study where the effectiveness of this approach was used to face the automated testing of telecommunication device.

A linear rotation based solution of large systems on a transputer array

Microprocessors and Microsystems, 1995

ABSTRACT The concurrent solution of large linear systems of equations on processor meshes of fixe... more ABSTRACT The concurrent solution of large linear systems of equations on processor meshes of fixed size has been considered taking into account the basic requirements of computational efficiency and stability. A linear rotation based algorithm has been studied as a robust solution of linear problems well suited to be implemented on parallel architectures because of its regular computational structure. The exploitation of the intrinsic parallelism of the algorithm and the application of partitioning techniques have addressed a locally parallel globally sequential parallelization strategy. The method has been experimentally evaluated on different sized arrays of transputers, demonstrating that high computational efficiency can be achieved.

A model for an open and flexible e-training platform to encourage companies' learning culture and meet employees' learning needs

Educational Technology & Society, 2003

Nowadays, companies carry out their activities through a distributed structure that often separat... more Nowadays, companies carry out their activities through a distributed structure that often separates management from manufacturing all over the world and faces the global market. These new scenarios require the adoption of continuous and ubiquitous learning models for both company staff and customers. From a company's standpoint, the challenge is to manage against the fast obsolescence of technical skills and to let workers acquire expertise in new topics "in time". From customers' point of view, the adoption of innovation is strategic in order to exploit new technologies and to guarantee support and assistance at an ever-increasing quality level. We are in the presence of a wide range of topics that should be available to a large learning community with different skills and learning targets. Distance education is an effective answer to this demand for flexibility in training. The target is to build up a virtual learning community on the basis of a knowledge model that adequately meets different learning needs. Classification and reusability aspects of multimedia contents play a fundamental role in improving the environment. In this paper, we analyze possible innovations in corporate training, and propose the use of a framework that integrates all information sources and offers practice skills necessary to meet new needs.

High Performance Neurocomputing: Industrial and Medical Applications of the RAIN System

We describe here the RAIN project, aimed at demonstrating the use of High Performance Computing a... more We describe here the RAIN project, aimed at demonstrating the use of High Performance Computing and Networking technologies in neural network applications for industry and medicine. The target architecture of the demonstrators is a workstation cluster: a choice suggested by the cost-effectiveness of this architecture. In order to manage both the cluster and the applications running on it, we built a Java-based interface that can be executed by any Java-enhanced browser.

Implementation of an efficient algorithm for VLSI design rule checking on a 2-D mesh of transputers

ABSTRACT This paper describes a Design Rule Checking (DRC) pro-gram for VLSI circuit layouts with... more

Data communication management in system specification

Microprocessors and Microsystems, 1999

In this paper, a powerful communication scheme is introduced to efficiently meet different commun... more

Efficient technique for partitioning and programming linear algebra algorithms on concurrent VLSI architectures

Iee Proceedings-circuits Devices and Systems, 1995

An efficient technique for partitioning and programming linear algebra algorithms on concurrent a... more An efficient technique for partitioning and programming linear algebra algorithms on concurrent architectures is described and applied to 2-D wavefront arrays. The mapping of the computational elements (processes) to processors is based on the concept of folding. The mapping pattern on the 2-D full-size mesh of processes is a composition of symmetric tiles of size 2J(N) x 2,/(N), N being the number of processors. The algorithm can be partitioned according to a globally sequential, locally parallel scheme. The code optimisation is performed by programming a few different types of tile, according to the algorithm. When the size of the problem is much larger than the size of the mesh of processors, a linear speed-up is achieved independently of the number of processors. Experimental results are presented for matrix multiplication, L U decomposition and the solution of triangular system equations on 2-D meshes of transputers programmed in Occam.

Specification and management of timing constraints in behavioral VHDL

In this paper a suitable way to specify and manage timing constraints in behavioral VHDL is descr... more In this paper a suitable way to specify and manage timing constraints in behavioral VHDL is described. The problem of timing semantics coherency is addressed and a suitable set of procedures is defined to add timing constraint specification in behavioral VHDL for system synthesis. Then, a proper semantics is described which is able to provide a powerful and flexible management of timing constraints.

Implementation issues for congestion control in ATM networks

The design of Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (B-ISDN) requires the investigation ... more The design of Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (B-ISDN) requires the investigation of specific techniques to guarantee different Quality of Services (QoS) requirements for each traffic class in the network. In this context, a unified environment for the simulation and design of an ATM node is a useful approach to test the effectiveness and the implementation aspects of the techniques mentioned above. In this paper a complete ATM node has been modelled in VHDL in a modular and flexible way and critical computational aspects are investigated

Analysis of neural algorithms for parallel architectures

The computational properties (global and local convergence, computational complexity and algorith... more The computational properties (global and local convergence, computational complexity and algorithm tuning) of neural algorithms are analyzed from a circuit perspective. Different equivalent algorithms are derived by applying various numerical techniques (multistep and relaxation methods) to the stationary and dynamic analysis of a common neural circuit model. Simulation experiments are presented for an 8-bit analog-to-digital-converter implementation of a Hopfield neural network. The implications for the simulation of these neural algorithms on parallel architectures are pointed out

Optimization strategies in symbolic compaction

Implementation of efficient strategies for cell generation in VLSI design

International Journal of Electronics, 1992

The problem of automatic layout synthesis is addressed. Given a description of the cell circuit t... more The problem of automatic layout synthesis is addressed. Given a description of the cell circuit to be synthesized and a set of constraints the layout must satisfy, the problem is to generate automatically the corresponding layout through the placement and interconnections of all the circuit elements. The resulting layout is a symbolic one, in the sense that only the relative

S-CFG: a representation model for system synthesis

In this paper, a representation model ( S-CFG , System Control Flow Graph) for system spec$cation... more In this paper, a representation model ( S-CFG , System Control Flow Graph) for system spec$cation and synthesis is described, which is organized in two levels (block and thread). The management of the control/data flow information is pe$omed through the use of control/data flow graphs owning: 1 ) hierarchical definition of control edges, 2 ) suitable management of timing constraints through timing edges, 31 definition of data communication through data edges. The use of hierarchy in control edges makes it possible to define in a powerful and compact way the execution semantics of the S-CFG t.