August 1985 - Vol. 28 No. 8
Features
The CIRRUS banking network makes coast-to-coast automatic banking transactions possible. The system will soon be able to handle international currency transactions and point-of-sale transactions in stores.
Report on the microelectronics and computer technology corporation conference
MCC, the consortium of companies headed by Admiral B. R. Inman, that some consider America's reply to Japan's Fifth Generation initiative, invited members and nonmembers to brainstorm on software design. Also on the agenda was the announcement of LEONARDO, MCC's software research project.
Recommended curriculum for CS2, 1984: a report of the ACM curriculum task force for CS2
A Report of the ACM Curriculum Task Force for CS2
ALGLIB, a simple symbol-manipulation package
ALGLIB—a library of procedures that perform analytic differentiation and other simple symbolic manipulations—has certain advantages over existing and more comprehensive packages. It can be implemented in a high-level language of the user's choice using a pseudocode available from the authors, and it is easily interfaced with the user's programs.
Database design: composing fully normalized tables from a rigorous dependency diagram
A new simplified methodology for relational-database design overcomes the difficulties associated with nonloss decomposition. It states dependencies between data fields on a dependency list and then depicts them unambiguously as interlinked bubbles and doublebubbles on a dependency diagram. From the dependency diagram, a set of fully normalized tables is derived.
Data-flow algorithms for parallel matrix computation
In this article we develop some algorithms and tools for solving matrix problems on parallel processing computers. Operations are synchronized through data-flow alone, which makes global synchronization unnecessary and enables the algorithms to be implemented on machines with very simple operating systems and communication protocols. As examples, we present algorithms that form the main modules for solving Liapounov matrix equations. We compare this approach to wave front array processors and systolic arrays, and note its advantages in handling missized problems, in evaluating variations of algorithms or architectures, in moving algorithms from system to system, and in debugging parallel algorithms on sequential machines.
Efficient optimal pagination of scrolls
Diehr and Faaland developed an algorithm that finds the minimum sum of key length pagination of a scroll of n items, and which uses O(n log n) time, solving a problem posed by McCreight. An improved algorithm is given which uses O(n) time.
