Abstract

Abstract
This paper presents the use of LALP to implement typical industrial application kernels, ADPCM Encoder and Decoder, in FPGAs. LALP is a domain specific language and its compilation framework aims to the direct mapping of algorithms originally described in a high-level language onto FPGAs. In particular, LALP focuses on loop pipelining, a key technique for the design of hardware accelerators. While the language syntax resembles C, it contains certain constructs that allow programmer interventions to enforce or relax data dependences as needed, and so optimize the performance of the generated hardware. We present experimental results showing significant performance gains using this approach, while still keeping the language syntax and semantics close to popular high level software languages, a desirable feature when considering time to market constraints. We believe the performance gains observed for the ADPCM implementation can be extended to other industrial applications relying on algorithms spending most of their execution time on loop structures, such signal and image processing.

Abstract
Over the last decade the interest in social virtual worlds as tools to improve the teaching/learning process and to stimulate knowledge, including the development of learning to learn autonomy, has greatly increased as a result of their promising potential. In the current work we introduce a concise definition of a social virtual world and make a comparative analysis between different virtual worlds based on Mannien's matrix. For this study, Second Life, Active Worlds and There were selected as they are the virtual environments most commonly addressed by the academic community. Finally, we discuss the potential of social virtual worlds for educational purposes. © 2010 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
Nowadays there are many types of tools for the optimization of organizational information systems. In the context of these tools, we have systems like e-mail, workflow, wikis, among many others. Despite the fact that, for the planning and designing of conventional information systems, there are many techniques that enable the representation of the elements of those systems and the relationships between them, as for what collaborative systems are concerned, we cannot find specification techniques that allow the representation of the existing degrees/levels of interaction. That is a problem because it hinders the proper planning regarding the choice of this kind of systems. In this paper is proposed a matrix-representation technique, which allows the specification of degrees/levels of interaction between organizational entities and the classification of processes according to the time space taxonomy. In a information systems planning project, these technique will be useful for choosing the correct classes of cooperative tools that should be included in final system solutions.

Abstract
Parallel manipulators have attracted the attention of researchers from different areas such as: high-precision robotics, machine-tools, simulators and haptic devices. The choice of a particular structural configuration and its dimensioning is a central issue to the performance of these manipulators. A solution to the dimensioning problem, normally involves the definition of performance criteria as part of an optimization process. In this paper the kinematic design of a 6-dof parallel robotic manipulator is analyzed. Three performance criteria are formulated and optimal solutions are found through a particle swarm formulation.