Computer Animation
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Gary B. Wilcox

2. Associated Investigators: John Leckenby, Francesca Talenti, Wayne Danielson

3. Technical Support Contact: Charles Soto

4. Project Abstract:

   The Animation/Interactive project will investigate new applications of computer animation in a multimedia Web environment in terms of both content creation and consumption. Following the trajectory of the price-performance curve, computer animation projects can increasingly migrate to more widely available Intel platforms. The Web provides an ideal environment for the delivery of computer generated animation as part of larger entertainment, advertising or educational content.

5. Equipment Status:

   The Digital Interactive Studio has the following equipment installed:

   • 9 Dual Pentium II/300, 512MB RAM, 4GB HD, Iomega Jaz & ZIP, 20" color monitor, flatbed color scanner, 6x9" Wacom drawing tablet, speakers
   • 1 Single Pentium II/300, 256MB RAM, 2GB HD, Iomega Jaz & ZIP, 20" color monitor, flatbed color scanner, 6x9" Wacom drawing tablet, speakers
   • One system has an Intel Smart Video Recorder III video capture card and an 800x600 dpi NTSC scan converter. This allows the digitizing and taping of media to/from an SVHS video tape recorder.
   • One system is attached to a 1024x768 dpi color LCD projector for demonstration purposes.
   • Two Quad-Pentium Pro/200 servers have been set up to support the lab. They provide basic NT file services, as well as HTTP and FTP services. One system is to be configured as a test system (with access restricted to the lab workstation IP range), while the other is for actual production/web content serving.

6. Research Progress:

   The arrival of the equipment the week before classes presented several technical challenges for the tech team as well and the investigators. Most of these problems were solved throughout the semester, but the workstations will be re-built this summer.

   In the area of content creation, Professor Talenti worked with 18 upper-division students in the course Digital Animation during the Spring. Skills developed were: working knowledge of 2-D and 3-D animation; concepts of movement, design, key frames, cycles, layering, lighting, editing, and sound. Programs used: Macromedia Director 6.0 for 2-D animation; Infini-D 4.0 for 3-D animation. Students each completed one flip-book; one 2-D cycle; one 2-D animation using a scanned image; one 3-D tutorial; and a final project, with sound.

   In the area of consumption, Professor Leckenby's Interactive Advertising Graduate Seminar focused on the following five goals:

   • To Develop an Understanding of IMPORTANT Issues in Interactive Advertising.
   • To Get a Sense of What Other "Thinkers" are Thinking about Interactive Advertising.
   • To Develop Ideas about How New Media Fit with Old Media in Advertising.
   • To Achieve Understanding of the Socio-Cultural Impact of Advertising in Computer-mediated environments.
   • To Create Knowledge about the "How to" of Interactive Advertising.

   As a part of research projects of the Seminar, each seminar participant created a Web site dealing with the issue of web audience measurement. The main objective of this project is to provide a knowledge base to those who wish to understand how to MEASURE the "audience size" of Internet Advertising and Marketing Communication for their company (profit-making enterprise) or organization (such as non-profit). This is currently one of the most perplexing and pressing issues facing Interactive Advertising planners.

   It is essentially to be a tutorial and "how to do it" with respect to audience measurement on the Web which has become an increasingly complex task. The sites explore the current measurement systems available and include such information. These Web sites aim to serve as a vehicle to express some sense of what is needed to develop our understanding of measuring advertising audiences on the Internet. This project is published at URL:

   http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~admedium/ADV391K_Spring1998_wam.html

   In addition to the above projects, Professor Wayne Danielson worked with a class of students on the redesign of the journalism department web site. Its value is that it provides a mechanism for the department to keep its web pages updated and innovative. At the same time, it gives students valuable experience in web page organization, management and design (http://www.utexas.edu/coc/journalism/).

   The purpose in the spring was to offer a good picture of what the department does. In the fall, Professor Danielson will move toward offering more supplementary materials for instruction across the department and some actual units of on-line instruction. They will also increase the amount of multimedia material-- in particular, they will feature a section called "soundbytes" to display brief audio and video clips from the work of broadcast journalism students. The Intel facility played a key role in the project.

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Digital Video Telecommunications Research and Teaching
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Al Bovik

2. Associated Investigator: Brian Evans

3. Project Progress:

   We have developed an innovative approach for achieving high quality, low bitrate video communication over computer networks and over wireless communications channels: foveated video compression. In this strategy, digital video is resampled at a nonuniform spatial density, reflecting the human eye's own foveated retinal sampling. In this way, video/image compression is multiplied by factors of 5-10. We have successfully implemented such an algorithm on H.263 / MPEG-I / MPEG-II standard-compliant video streams. Several demonstrations of the foveated compressed video algorithm can be seen at: http://pineapple.ece.utexas.edu/class/Video/demo.html, for both H.263 and MPEG-II.

4. Publications:

   [1] S. Lee and A.C. Bovik, "Rate control for foveated MPEG/H.263 video," IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Chicago, Illinois, October 4-7, 1998.

   [2] S. Lee, M.S. Pattichis and A.C. Bovik, "Foveated image/video quality assessment in curvilinear coordinates," International Workshop on Very Low Bitrate Video Coding, Urbana, Illinois, October 8-9, 1998.

   [3] S. Lee, M.S. Pattichis and A.C. Bovik, "Foveated image/video quality assessment and compression gain," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, to appear

   [4] S. Lee and A.C. Bovik, "Optimal rate control for real-time, low bitrate foveated video coding," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, to appear.

   [5] S. Lee and A.C. Bovik, "Traffic smoothing for variable bit rate video transmission," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, to appear.

   [6] J. Kim, A.C. Bovik and B.L. Evans, "Generalized predictive binary shape coding using polygonal approximation," Signal Processing: Image Communication, to appear.

   [7] T.D. Kite, B.L. Evans and A.C. Bovik, "Modeling and quality assessment of halftoning by error diffusion," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, to appear.

   [8] D. Craievich, B.S. Barnett and A.C. Bovik, "A stereo visual pattern image coding system," Image and Vision Computing, to appear.

   [9] S. Lee and A.C. Bovik, "Very low bit rate foveated video coding for H.263," IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Phoenix, Arizona, March 15-19, 1999.

   
   Biographical Sketches

   Alan C. Bovik is currently the General Dynamics Endowed Fellow and Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Computer Sciences, and the Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Associate Director of the Center for Vision and Image Sciences. During the Spring of 1992, he held a visiting position in the Division of Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. His current research interests include digital video, wavelets, and computational aspects of biological visual perception. He has published over 200 technical articles in these areas and holds U.S. patents for the image and video compression algorithms VPIC and VPISC.
   Dr. Bovik is a winner of the University of Texas Engineering Foundation Halliburton Award and a two-time Honorable Mention winner of the international Pattern Recognition Society Award for Outstanding Contribution (1988 and 1993). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and has been involved in numerous professional society activities, including: Board of Governors, IEEE Signal Processing Society; Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (present); and Founding General Chairman, First IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Austin, Texas, November 1994.

   
   Brian L. Evans is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, and the Associate Director of the Laboratory for Vision Systems within the Center for Vision and Image Sciences. His research interests include real-time software, embedded systems, heterogeneous systems, image and video processing systems, system-level design, symbolic computation, and computer-aided design. He has developed numerous computer-aided design tools to prototype and test research ideas. His B.S.E.E.C.S. (1987) degree is from the Rose- Hulman Institute of Technology, and his M.S.E.E. (1988) and Ph.D.E.E. (1993) degrees are from the Georgia Institute of Technology. From 1993 to 1996, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley with the Ptolemy Project. Ptolemy is a research project and software environment focused on design methodology for signal processing, communications, and controls systems. He is the recipient of a 1997 NSF CAREER Award.

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Multimedia Delivery Systems
April 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Harrick M. Vin

2. Associated Investigators: Jayadev Misra

3. Summary of Project's Progress since November 1998

   The main objective of this project is to create an end-to-end architecture for supporting next-generation distributed multimedia applications. Over the past four months, we accomplished the following.

   • We studied the architectural alternatives for designing file systems that can simultaneously support applications with diverse performance requirements. Our results provide guidelines for designing next-generation file systems.

   • We experimentally evaluated the effectiveness of several techniques for providing service differentiation in the next-generation Internet.

   • We proposed, implemented, and evaluated a distributed web caching architecture.

   • We designed and implemented an object-oriented toolkit that provides transparent, low-overhead fault-tolerance to distributed applications.

4. Related Publications [From November 1998 to April 1999]

   [1] J. Sahni, P. Goyal, and H.M. Vin, ``Scheduling CBR Flows: FIFO or Fair Queuing?'', Submitted for publication, March 1999

   [2] P. Shenoy, P. Goyal, and H.M. Vin, ``Architectural Considerations for Next Generation File Systems'', Submitted for publication, March 1999

   [3] S. Rao, L. Alvisi, and H.M. Vin, ``The Cost of Recovery in Message Logging Protocols'', Submitted for publication, March 1999

   [4] S. Rao, L. Alvisi, and H.M. Vin, ``Egida: An Extensible Toolkit For Low-overhead Fault-Tolerance'', In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on fault-Tolerant Computing (FTCS), June 1999 (to appear)

   [5] R. Tewari, M. Dahlin, H.M. Vin, and J. Kay, ``Design Considerations for Distributed Caching on the Internet'', In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing and Systems (ICDCS), May 1999 (to appear)

   [6] P. Shenoy and H.M. Vin. ``Efficient Support for Interactive Operations in Multi-resolution Video Servers,'' ACM Multimedia Systems Journal, 1999 (to appear)

   [7] P. Shenoy and H.M. Vin, ``Failure Recovery Algorithms for Multimedia Servers,'' ACM Multimedia Systems Journal, 1999 (to appear)

   [8] R. Tewari, H.M. Vin, A. Dan, and D. Sitaram, ``Resource-based Caching for Web Servers,'' ACM Multimedia Systems Journal, 1999 (to appear)

   [9] P. Goyal and H.M. Vin, ``Statistical Delay Guarantee of Virtual Clock,'' IEEE Real-time Systems Symposium, December 1998.

5. Related Grants

   • Novell at UTAustin Program, $183,800, 1999-2000
     
   • Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Advance Technology Program, ATP-443, $132,749, 1/1/98 - 12/31/99.
     
   • IBM University Partnership Program, $70,000, 9/1/97-8/31/99
     
   • Dell, Equipment grant (quad-processor servers), 1998
     
   • Lucent Bell Laboratories, Equipment grant (video compression hardware), 1998
     
   • AT&T Foundation, $20,000, 1997
     

6. Related Web Sites

   Distributed Multimedia Computing Laboratory URL:
   http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/dmcl

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Virtual Museum Project
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator:
   

   Timothy Rowe

2. Technical Support Contacts:
   

   Ms. Rhonda Baird
   Dr. Richard Ketcham

3. Project Overview:

   The Virtual Museum Project aims to train faculty and students in advanced instructional technologies, by developing multimedia and novel visualizations highlighting the special collections of UTžs many museums and galleries. A network of highly skilled technical staff already in place, has begun to train students, staff, and faculty as they assist them in developing state-of-the-art instructional multimedia. Our instructional materials are now being distributed via Internet and CD-ROM, and as interactive museum and gallery exhibits. The Virtual Museums Project will break new ground in multimedia development in a highly visible way, while training strategically positioned groups of faculty and students.

   Our training focus is the development of premiere instructional materials that utilize the vast holdings of the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, the Texas Memorial Museum, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The grand technical challenge for the Virtual Museum Project is in digitizing in great detail the many delicate, complex 3-D objects from art and natural history collections. We will use everything from simple scanners to high resolution X-ray CT scanning, laser surface scanning, video digitization, and other techniques will be used to build highly detailed models of the gems of UTžs special collections.

4. Equipment Status:

   All equipment received so far is in operation and has contributed directly to the publication of two new Web sites, one educational CD-ROM, and one museum exhibit. Several computers have undergone major upgrades, and we have begun operating a volumetric 3-D rendering program on our quad- processor server.

5. Progress to Date:

   We have developed a Web site entitled "The Digital Morphology Group" that serves advanced 3-D visualizations on significant fossils, corals, and modern skeletal materials from several natural history museum collections. Most of the imagery and animations on this site are based on 3-D datasets generated by our high-resolution X-ray CT scanner, and these data are already fueling secondary research by scientists in Australia, Argentina, France, Germany, and in the US.

   We have also rebuilt the Web site for the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility, a facility of unique power for digitizing in 3-D complex natural materials. The Web site demonstrates basic CT technology, along with a CT image folio of such diverse objects as natural diamond-bearing rocks, meteorites, and numerous fossils.

   In the Fall, The Texas Memorial Museum mounted a special exhibit that included a multimedia presentation for its dinosaur gallery. We CT scanned the worldžs oldest dinosaur ‚ Herrerasaurus ‚ and developed an education multimedia exhibit that demonstrated the skull being CT scanned, along with 3-D models of the skull and other novel animations that showed details of its internal and external structure. We believe that this special exhibit at the Texas Memorial Museum was the first exhibit ever held in which the audience could inspect a unique and ancient fossil from the inside out.

   We continue an industrial collaboration with Bio-Imaging Research, Inc., of Lincolnshire, Illinois, who manufactured our CT scanner, to exploit the application of this powerful new technology across a broad spectrum of natural materials and applications. Our collaboration involves hardware refinement, software refinement and development, and the development of novel visualization techniques.

   The following publications and Web sites document this work:

   • The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility
     http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/

   • The Digital Morphology Group
     http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/dmg/index.html

   • Examples of 3-D Animations
     http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/imfoframes/imfoani.html

   • Bio-Imaging Research, Inc.
     http://www.bio-imaging.com/

   CD-ROMs:

   Rowe, T., K. Kishi, J. Merck, Jr., and M. Colbert, 1998. The Age of Dinosaurs. Educational Interactive Multimedia on CD-ROM for Macintosh and PC computers. W. H. Freeman & Co. ISBN 0-7167-3378-1.

   Publications:

   Rowe, T., J. Kappelman, W. D. Carlson, R. A. Ketcham, and C. Denison, 1997. High-Resolution Computed Tomography: a breakthrough technology for Earth scientists. Geotimes, 42: 23-27.

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Multimedia Navigation Systems
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Russell Pinkston

2. Associated Investigators:
   
   

   Fritz Schwentker
   Yacov Sharir
   Darlene Wiley

3. Technical Support Contact: Russell Pinkston

4. Current Project Status and Summary:
   

   There are three ongoing research projects and several undergraduate and graduate courses currently utilizing the hardware and software provided by Intel Corporation for Project D5. The systems are also being used to house the CASA web site and for graphics rendering in various multimedia works produced at the Center. The various components of this project are summarized below:

   1. An Integrated System for Immersive VR at CASA (Pinkston/Sharir)

      The primary long-term objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive system at The University of Texas at Austin designed to facilitate the creation and performance of multi-media works which involve real-time interaction with immersive virtual environments. The system utilizes both an SGI Onyx REII and various NT systems housed at the CASA.

      Current Status:

      Peripherals necessary for immersive VR have been purchased and installed. Components include a Cybereye stereo Head Mounted Display, Polhemus FastTrak (magnetic tracking system), Very Nervous System (video tracking system), Fifth Glove (glove controller), and ICube System (multiple sensor development system).

      The MR (Minimum Reality) Toolkit has been licensed and installed on the CASA SGI Onyx. It will also be installed on the Intel systems shortly.

      An existing virtual world, "Dancing with the Virtual Dervish," originally developed at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, has been remounted on the Onyx.

      Algorithmic music software written in MAX and running on a Macintosh has been developed for real time interactive music generation. It has been used for several new multimedia works in conjunction with the Very Nervous System and the University of Texas Touch Sensitive Dance Floor. An equivalent of the MAX program called PD has just been released, which will run on NT platforms. The interactive music generation algorithms will be ported from MAX to PD this summer, and then integrated with the MR Toolkit, which is used for navigation.

      Professor Pinkston has a summer research grant to complete the development of this system. He will be assisted by ECE graduate student, Anderson Mills, who is also supported by fellowship.

   2. Automation and Control Systems for Theater (Schwentker)

      For an overall summary of this project, please see the following link:

      http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~fritzs/CasaMidi.htm

      Current Status:

      The first phase of this project has been completed culminating in a thoroughly researched guide to the selection of motor drives for theater stage machinery. Future research includes the development of an electronic control system that works as an interface between an operator and this motor drive technology. Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) control protocol will be used as the basis for developing an interface and digital language to control mechanized scenic effects. Because MIDI was first established as an entertainment industry standard in 1983, numerous protocols now exist within the MIDI architecture. Electronic signals sent with this protocol are easily recorded, edited and replayed so that control systems can easily be adapted to the changing needs of a live performance situation. Future work will focus on 1) the construction of a test-bed or small-scale mockup of a scenic device that this new system will control; 2) identification, assembly, and testing of the machine interface and control system; and 3) investigation of the computer software necessary to record, edit and reply control information.

   3. The CASA Vocal Arts Lab (Wiley)

      The CASA Vocal Arts Lab is designed to help singers, actors and instrumentalists in the College of Fine Arts. Singers, both popular and classical can model other professional artists as well as study their vibrato, registration, pitch, acoustic intensity, formants, articulation, hall influences on vocal sound, dialect and language accuracy, adduction of the vocal folds, posture and body alignment, nasality and vocal health. Actors can model professional actors, work on dialect study and modification, nasality, formants, vowel and consonant accuracy as well as understanding vocal health and abuse. Instrumentalists using the same technology can study articulation (attack clarity), pitch, acoustic intensity, modeling, embouchure, bowing noise, posture, and vibrato rate.

      Current Status:

      1. System integrated in both Vocal Pedagogy classes, 255 V and 480PB/PB. (This includes spetrography, vowel formant studies, alignment & posture, timbre, intensity, continuance and vibration.)
      2. Integration of equipment, software in applied voice study. (This involves showing the students what they are doing physically to make a certain sound, and using real-time spectrography to help them keep their sound consistent through watching their vocal spectrum as they sing.)
      3. Integration of equipment for Austin Lyric Opera German diction program. (The Kay hardware and software (Visi-pitch, Sona-match and Real-Rime Spectrogram) is used to assist singers practicing German diction with all its consonants. The duration of consonants is a major problem in German diction since most American singers over-emphasize all those consonants and forget the intrinsic duration of the vowels.)
      4. The next big projects are completing a Web tutorial with the aid of a FASTTEX grant. This will be an overview for the beginning singer of all of skills which can be practiced using the lab. It will also appear in CD ROM form so that every applied voice student will get one. This project must be finished by the Fall semester.
      5. Macros are being written using CSL and Multi-Speech. This will also be done by fall. These macros will be resources for both Web site and CD as well as for a new graduate course, Technology in Applied Voice, a new core course for the DMA in Vocal Pedagogy.

   4. CASA Web Development

      The Dell Quad Pentium Pro server has been extremely useful in the general operation of the CASA lab. It has been used as a file server, web server, and as a rendering station. It hosts the CASA web site as well as individual project web pages. The web server has been instrumental in the explorations of VRML based environments. It has also been used several times to render animations using programs such as Lightwave that take advantage of multi-processor systems.

      The CASA web site (http://casa.pac.utexas.edu) is located on the Intel Quad Pentium Pro Server. It is designed and maintained by Tyson Breaux, of the Office of Computing Technologies, who also created a number of animations for the CASA Open House, which were rendered on the Intel systems.

   5. Course Support

      In addition to the courses supported by the CASA Vocal Arts Lab, the Intel systems were instrumental this year in the teaching of MUS329J and MUS329M. These are upper division undergraduate course in computer music synthesis, taught by Professor Pinkston, which focus on Csound, a software synthesis and signal processing package from MIT. Virtually all course materials, including all examples handed out or generated in class, were posted on the web for downloading by students.

5. Related Links:

   Main CASA Web Page: http://casa.pac.utexas.edu
   Electronic Music Studio Page: http://www.utexas.edu/cofa/music/ems
   Professor Schwentker's Project: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~fritzs/CasaMidi.htm
   Vocal Pedagogy Web Page: http://www.utexas.edu/cofa/music/voice
   

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Distributed Visualization
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Chandrajit Bajaj

2. Associated Investigators: Donald Fussell, Center for Computational Visualization Equipment

3. Donations: Six Dual 400 Mhz Intel Zeon Processors PC with 512 Mbytes of RAM and Intergraph Intense 3D Pro 3410T Graphic adapters ã 16 Mbytes of video RAM ã no Geometry acceleration ã 9.1 Gybyte Ultra-2 SCSI hard drive

4. Project Summaries:

   Sub-project A is peer-to-peer collaborative visualization on the multimedia desktop. Our current collaboration architecture defines an extensible environment for developing collaborative visualization applications that support large-scale geographically dispersed interaction amongst multiple participants and systems. The architecture is connectionless, scalable, supports multi-group federation, has an adaptable data location model, supports flexible applications coupling, multiple coordination strategies, dynamic downloading of executable code and is event driven. Interoperable implementations exist in C, C++. and Java.

   

   Sub-project B is on multi-pipe, multi-projector distributed visualization on a panoramic power wall. The cluster of Intel machines shall be connected using a high-speed switch (fast, low latency). Three of the machines shall initially serve as display or graphics servers and drive a set up of three electrohome projectors in a rear projection panoramic power wall. The research challenges include dynamic resolutions visualization with guaranteed display frame rates, scalability across diverse network bandwidth, disk transfer rates and inter-processor communication latency.

   

5. Recent Papers Related to Sub-project A & B Include:

   • C. Bajaj, V. Pascucci, D. Thompson, X.Y. Zhang, "Parallel Accelerated Isocontouring for Out-Of-Core Visualization"
   • C. Bajaj, V. Pascucci, "Progressive IsoContouring"
   • C. Bajaj, I. Ihm, G-b Koo, S. Park, "Parallel Ray Casting of Visible Human on Distributed Memory Architectures"
   • C. Bajaj, V. C. Cutchin, "Web Based Collaborative Visualization of Distributed and Parallel Simulations"
   • C. Bajaj, V. Pascucci, G. Zhuang," Single Resolution Compression of Arbitrary Triangular Meshes with Properties"

6. Visit our web site for pdf or ps.gz copies of theses and other publications, as well as in depth information about CCV: http://king.ticam.utexas.edu/CCV/

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Internet City
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Dr. David Maidment (bio) (Center for Research in Water Resources)
   

2. Associated Investigators: Dr. Ken Foote (The Department of Geography) and Dr. Barbara Parmenter (Community and Regional Planning Program in The School of Architecture)
   

3. Technical Support Contact: Ty Lehman lehman@mail.utexas.edu 512-471-3111
   

4. Project Summary:
   

   We are creating and currently serving our www and ftp site on our Intel equipment. We are working with the city of Austin to serve some of the data on our ftp site as well as work with Texas natural resource and conservation commission (tnrcc) and the LCRA on web mapping projects.

5. Related Publications:
   

   Center for Research in Water Resources and CRWR ftp site

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Virtual Laboratories and Examinations
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: John Kappelman, Professor, Department of Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin

2. Associated Investigators: None

3. Technical Support Contact: John Kappelman, Greg Weiner

4. Project Summary:

   The VExams© program is in the beta-testing phase. It was used in Anthropology 301 during the fall of 1998, and is currently being used in Anthropology 348. It is anticipated that it will be used in the Austin Independent School District during the next academic year as well as in several courses at UT Austin.

   I have given presentations on the VExams© program to the following groups:

   • 1999, 23 March. "The VExams© Program." Discovery Learning Group, UT Austin
   • 1999, 14 March. "The VExams© Program." AISD Science Director
   • 1999, 28 February. "The VExams© Program." Center for Instructional Technologies, UT Austin
   • 1998, 4 December. "An Interactive Computer-Based Multimedia Program for Examinations." Invited session participant, "Anthropology Courseware: Teaching with Electronic Media: National meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, PA
   • 1998, 27 October. "An Interactive Computer-Based Multimedia Program for Examinations." National Science Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education.
   • 1998, 16 October. "Testing on the Fly: A Program for Delivering Virtual Multimedia Examinations." Department of Anthropology, The University of California Los Angeles, CA.
   • 1998, 1 October. "Virtual Multimedia Exams for the Geosciences." Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
   • 1998, 30 September. "Lasers, hi res x-ray CT, hard copy output and animations for virtual laboratories, multimedia exams and research." Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Snowbird, Utah.

5. Equipment Status:

   We were supposed to take delivery of the second shipment of computers for this grant in December 1998 but unfortunately delivery has been delayed and we have still not received these computers. We have therefore not been able to integrate the Intel computers into our teaching laboratory. We were also informed that the computers for this second shipment of computers would not include monitors.

   The Dean of Liberal Arts at UT Austin has generously agreed to supply the six monitors for the second installment.

6. Related publications

   • In press. A computer program for delivering virtual multimedia examinations across secure networks and the web. American Journal of Physical Anthropology (J. Kappelman, A. Gordon, D. Johnson, T. Ryan, R. Scott, and E. Seiffert. Abstract.
   • 1999. Virtual multimedia labs and exams in physical anthropology. Current ACITS 32, pp.3-5.
   • 1998. An interactive computer-based multimedia program for examinations. In American Anthropological Association , Abstracts of the 97th Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, p. 254. Abstract.
   • 1998. Virtual Multimedia Laboratories and Examinations in Physical Anthropology. In Computer Enhanced Learning: 100 Courses at 50 of America's Most Wired Colleges
   • Electronic publication: http://www.wfu.edu/~womack/Vignettes/Socsci/KappelmanRev..html
   • 1998. Lasers, hi res x-ray CT, hard copy output and animations for virtual laboratories, multimedia exams and research. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 18 (supp. to No.3):54A-55A.

7. Related Web Sites:
   

   http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/anthro/kappelman/kapp.html
   Virtual laboratories in physical anthropology

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ADVANCED MODELING & SIMULATION

---

Computational Fluid Dynamics and HPC

(or HYDRA: A Prototype PC Cluster System for Flow and Transport Simulation)

April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Graham F. Carey

2. Associate Investigators: R. McLay, A. Ardelea, W. Barth

3. Project Summary:

   During the past six months we have carried out research work on the cluster for three main applications areas: (1) thermocapillary microgravity flows; (2) nonlinear interactions in chemically reacting transport systems and (3) probabilistic analysis of joint failure. The first topic is related to a NASA microgravity research project and papers describing both the basic science results and parallel performance are listed below. This work was also featured recently as a lead article in the NASA Insight magazine. The nonlinear reaction system studies are being carried out in collaboration with Harry Swinney who is doing supporting experimental work in the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics. We have applied the Intel cluster for both parametric studies and for domain decomposition parallel large scale simulations. The final joint failure work has begun recently and will be described in more details in the next report.

4. Related Publications:

   G. F. Carey, H. Swinney, R. McLay, S. van Hook, A. Pehlivanov, G. Bicken and W. Barth, "Thermocapillary Surface Tension Driven Flows", presented at AIAA 37th Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, Reno, NV, Jan 11-14, 1999 and submitted to AIAA J. of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer, March 1999.

   G. F. Carey, R. McLay, G. Bicken, S. Swift, W. Barth, A. Pehlivanov and A. Ardelea, "Parallel Distributed Solution of Viscous Flow with Heat and species Transfer", to be presented at High Performance Computing '99, part of ASTC 99, San Diego, CA, April 11-15.

   G. F. Carey, R. McLay, G. Bicken, B. Barth, "Parallel Finite Element Solution of 3D Rayleigh-Benard-Marangoni Flows, Submitted to Int'l J. Numer. Meths. in Fluids, 1998.

5. Project website:

   http://www.cfdlab.ae.utexas.edu/intel_beowulf

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Deep Submicron Process and Device Modeling and Analysis
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Al F. Tasch

2. Associated Investigators: Sanjay Banerjee

3. Research Progress:

   We completed the development of the following new computationally efficient models and model enhancements that have been implemented in the numerical device simulator, UT-PISCES Version 2.5 platform.

   • Local-field mobility models for both electrons and holes in MOS accumulation layers.
   • Computationally efficient 3-subband models for quantum mechanical effects in both hole and electron MOS accumulation layers.
   • Model Enhancements:
     • Grid independent implementation of the local-field inversion layer mobility models.
       
     • The complete derivative of the effective mobility with respect to the effective field in order to make the local-field mobility model more accurate at low effective fields.
       
     • Transition local-field models to account for the transition of the local-field mobility from the inversion layer to the accumulation layer.
       
     • Transition quantum mechanical models that provide for a smooth transition of quantum mechanical effects from the inversion layer to the accumulation layer.

   In addition, we have developed the following new models and additional capabilities in UT-MiniMOS, a numerical device simulator:

   • Three-subband models for quantum mechanical effects in both electron and hole MOS accumulation layers. At the junction between the source/drain (S/D) and the channel, a "mixed" accumulation and inversion region is presented to ensure a naturally smooth transition from the accumulation layer to inversion layer. Please see Section III.1 for details. If a transition model is not used, numerical errors will occur.
   • UT-Austin accumulation layer mobility models for both electrons and holes. Effective mobility models are developed based on the experimental data and local-field mobility models are then extracted from the effective mobility models. Please see Section III.2 for details.
   • Full two-dimension model for poly-silicon gate depletion analysis. Please see Section III.3 for details.

   We present new physically-based effective mobility models for both electrons and holes in MOS accumulation layers. These models take into account carrier-carrier scattering, in addition to surface roughness scattering, phonon and fixed interface charge scattering, and screened Coulomb scattering. The newly developed effective mobility models show excellent agreement with experimental data over the range 1x10¹⁶-4x10¹⁷cm^-3 for which experimental data are available. Local-field dependent mobility models have also been developed for both electrons and holes, and they have been implemented in the 2-D device simulators, UT-PISCES and UT-MiniMOS, thus providing for more accurate prediction of the terminal characteristics in deep submicron CMOS devices. In addition, transition region mobility models have been developed to account for the transition in the mobility in going from the accumulation layer in the gate-to-source overlap region to the inversion layer region in the channel. Transition models are necessary in order to avoid un-physical discontinuities in carrier concentrations that cause errors in the calculation of electric fields and terminal currents.

   We have also developed and implemented in UT-PISCES and UT-MiniMOS, generalized physically-based, yet computationally efficient, quantum mechanical (QM) models for both electron and hole MOS accumulation layers. In our accumulation layer QM model development, the classical effective density of states as a function of bandgap widening, as well as the eigenenergy and eigenfunction for the ground state and higher subbands, are theoretically formulated and verified using self-consistent QM simulations. As a result, both the bulk-like and the quantum confined carrier densities can be calculated for a given potential profile and doping profile. This generalized QM model, which is based upon analytical solutions to Schr–dingeržs equation, has the important advantage of accurately predicting the distribution of electrons or holes in accumulation layers 2-D device simulations.

   We have proactively transferred Useržs manuals, model information, and source code (for UT-PISCES) for those models to at least 20 individuals in Intel at Hillsboro, Oregon and Santa Clara, California.

4. Relevant Publications:

   • "Models for Electron and Hole Mobilities in MOS Accumulation Layers," S. Mudanai, G. Chindalore, W.-K. Shih, H. Wang, Q. Ouyang, A.F. Tasch, C.M. Maziar, and S.K. Banerjee, submitted to IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, 1998.
   • "Temperature Dependence Characterization of Effective Electron and Hole Mobilities in Accumulation Layers of N- and P-type MOSFETs," G. Chindalore, S. Mudanai, W.-K. Shih, A.F. Tasch, and C.M. Maziar, submitted to IEEE Trans. Electron Devices.
   • "UT-PISCES, Version 2.5 Useržs Manual," S. Mudanai, H. Wang, G. Chindalore, C. Ouyang, S. Jallepalli, W. Shih, A. Khan, A.F. Tasch, and S. Banerjee, October 2, 1998. This is the useržs manual that is sent with the UT-PISCES 2.5 source code.
   • "UT-MiniMOS 5.2-4.0 Useržs Manual," H. Wang, S. Mudanai, G. Chindalore, Q. Ouyang, S. Jallepalli, W. Shih, A. Khan, S. Banerjee, C.M. Maziar, and A.F. Tasch, October 2, 1998. This is the useržs manual that is sent with the UT-MiniMOS 5.2-4.0 source code.
   • "Models for Electron and Hole Mobilities in MOS Accumulation Layers," S. Mudanai, G. Chindalore, W.-K. Shih, H. Wang, Q. Ouyang, A.F. Tasch, C.M. Maziar, and S.K. Banerjee, submitted to IEEE TED.
   • "Advanced Transport Models Development for Deep Submicron Low Power CMOS Device Design," Haihong Wang, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, May 1999.

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Reservoir Simulation
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Dr. Kamy Sepehrnoori

2. Associated Investigator: Dr. Gary A. Pope

3. Technical Support Contact: Jason Abate, abate@ticam.utexas.edu, 512-471-6947

4. Project Abstract:

   Accurate and efficient reservoir simulation is of critical importance to the economic well-being of the United States. Future oil and gas production in this country is dependent upon improved oil recovery, reservoir simulation and reservoir characterization technologies. Intense computer simulation is essential for effective reservoir management. Parallel reservoir simulators have the potential to solve larger and more realistic problems than previously possible. Our research involves development of new physical and chemical models, accurate numerical methods, new reservoir description techniques and their implementation in parallel environments. In particular, we investigate porting of reservoir simulators to a distributed memory cluster of Intel processors. By performing this task, the feasibility of using a cluster of Intel processors for solving large-scale reservoir simulations will be assessed.

5. Equipment status:

   At this time all equipment anticipated for this project has been received and assembled. This equipment includes the following:

   • Quantity 16 - Single processor Intel Pentium-II 300Mhz with MMX technology, 256 MB of memory, and 4 GB of disk.
   • Quantity 8 - Dual processor 400 MHz Intel Pentium II Xeon, 512 MB of memory and 9 GB of disk
   • Quantity 3 - Intel Ether Express PRO/100 LAN Adapter, 5 pack.
   • Quantity 3 - Intel 510T Switch.
   • Quantity 2 - Ultrascan 20T monitor.
   • Quantity 8 - 1000HS monitor

   We have ordered an additional 128 MB of memory for each of the original cluster machines, bringing the total to 384 MB per processor.

   The machines are currently setup as two separate clusters, one of the 16 300 MHz Pentium IIs and one of the 8 dual Xeon machines. Each cluster is connected by one of the 510T switches, and both switches are connected to a file server/development machine. We hope to connect the two switches with a 2.2 Gbps switch interconnect, which would allow us to utilize all of the machines as a single cluster, and make simulation runs with 750,000 gridblocks.

   Each machine runs RedHat Linux 5.1, which provides the standard development tools and utilities, including the GNU C/C++ compilers. Additionally, Portl and Group Fortran 77 and Fortran 90 compilers are being used. All parallel communication is done with MPICH, the implementation of the standard Message Passing Interface developed by Argonne National Laboratory. We also installed PBS, the Portable Batch System to handle batch queueing of parallel jobs.

   A summary of the current hardware status and individual machine software configuration may be found at http:/topeka.cpge.utexas.edu/status.html.

6. Research Progress:

   After installing the software, we have run a number of tests and benchmarks to veryify the machines were working correctly. Following that, the IPARS (Integrated Parallel Accurate Reservoir Simulator) framework [1,2,3] was ported to Linux, which required a few minor modifications to the framework. IPARS provides support for input/output, memory management, domain decomposition and message passing between the processors. The simulator is a new, fully-implicit EOS (equation of state) compositional model which uses PETSc, the Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation for solving large, sparse linear systems which arise during the simulation. The simulator is a module which was developed under the IPARS framework.

   Once the simulator results were verified through comparison with results from other machines, several test problems were run to study the range of simulation possible with a cluster of PCs. A modified Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) 5th comparative solution problem [4] which uses three-phase flow throughout the simulation was used to benchmark the cluster. A paper describing this work has been submitted for publication [5], and was also presented at the 1999 SIAM Conference on Mathematical and Computational Issues in the Geosciences, March 24-26, San Antonio.

   We have also run performance tests on the Xeon machines, and found them to exhibit excellent performance. They perform nearly twice as fast as the 300 MHz Pentium IIs, mainly due to the faster clock speed and the 100 MHz system bus. They are very competitive with the 160 Mhz P2SC nodes in the IBM SP we use at the Maui High-Performance Computing Center. The table below shows the execution time in seconds for one of our benchmark tests on each of these platforms:

   Number of Processors	300 MHz Pentium II	400 MHz Xeon	160 MHz P2SC
   1	1112	645	554
   2	483	281	242
   4	245	143	126
   8	133	74	66

   Work has also begun on development of a new Fortran 90-based framework for reservoir simulation, named STAMPEDE (the Simulation Toolbox for Advanced Modelling for Parallel Experimentation, Design and Execution), and a new simulator which uses this framework, GPAS (the General Purpose Adaptive Simulator). All development work is being done locally on our clusters, which have proven to be a very efficient, convenient resource for developing parallel programs. We expect the first version of the GPAS simulator to be ready for internal use in by the end of April, 1999. At this time, we will begin benchmarking the simulator on both of our clusters.

   This work has demonstrated that clusters of PCs are a viable platform for making large-scale simulation runs, that they perform competitively with traditional parallel machines (especially the latest PC hardware), and that they make very good development platforms for parallel simulation codes.

   Further details of these results will be reported in upcoming papers and presentations and our cluster website. The current draft of the paper Parallel Compositional Reservoir Simulation on a Cluster of PCs can be found here.

1. Peng Wang, Ivan Yotov, Mary Wheeler, Todd Arbogast, Clint Dawson, Manish Parashar and Kamy Sepehrnoori, A New Generation EOS Compositional Reservoir Simulation: Part I - Formulation and Discretization, Paper SPE 37979 presented at the 1997 SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, San Antonio, June 8-11, 1997
2. Manish Parashar, John A. Wheeler, Gary Pope, Kefei Wang and Peng Wang, A New Generation EOS Compositional Reservoir Simulation: Part II - Framework and Multiprocessing, Paper SPE 37977 presented at the 1997 SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, San Antonio, June 8-11, 1997
3. Gary Pope, Kamy Sepehrnoori, Mary Wheeler, and Tom Morgan. Advanced computational technology initiative: New generation framework for petroleum reservoir simulation first annual report. Technical report, Argonne National Laboratory and The University of Texas at Austin, 1996.
4. J. E. Killough and C. A. Kossack. Fifth Comparative Simulation Project: Evaluation of Miscible Flood Simulators, February 1-4, 1987, Paper SPE 16000 Presented at the Ninth SPE Symposium on Reservoir Simulation, San Antonio, TX
5. Jason Abate, Peng Wang and Kamy Sepehrnoori, Parallel Compositional Reservoir Simulation on a Cluster of PCs, Submitted to Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering, December, 1999.

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Real-Time Process Control
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: T. F. Edgar

2. Associated Investigators: Prof. J. Qin, Dept. of Chemical Engineering

3. Technical Support Contact: Tyler Soderstrom, 471-1046

4. Project Abstract:

   This project deals with the application of PC's for real-time modeling and control of chemical processes. The goal of the research is to demonstrate the use of Intel PC's in a real-time, computationally demanding environment where advanced optimization and control algorithms are employed. The experimental applications under study include a batch distillation column, a reactive distillation column (currently under construction) and a rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition system. In addition, we are using PC's off-line to carry out optimization and estimation with chemical dynamic simulators such as Dynaplus from Aspentech.

5. Equipment Status: So far we have received one dual Pentium PC and three single Pentiums. All computers are operational.

6. Research Progress.

   The Separations Research Program (SRP) at U.T. Austin has upgraded its large-scale distillation/extraction pilot-plan by installing a new process control system. Fisher-Rosemount has provided the SRP with a generous donation of a Delta-V control system valued at $120,000. The new system will replace the 1984 Fischer-Porter distributed control system.

   The Delta-V system utilizes two Dell 400 MHz Pentium II computers operating with a Windows NT operating system, which were obtained from the Intel Education for 2000 grant. The personal computer workstations will provide new capability of generating and transferring date directly into an Excel spreadsheet or an Access database. The new feature will provide the SRP with enhanced data handling and report processing. The Delta V control system is also 100% Y2K compliant. The enhanced tuning parameters provide advanced reflux and level control for deep bed distillation studies.

   SRP staff members Robert Montgomery and Steve Orwick installed the new hardware associated with system changeover while graduate students Tyler Soderstrom, John Schell, Mandy Whaley and Program Engineer Chris Lewis installed and configured the new software. The software team is responsible for configuring the system, installing the software, and designing graphic templates. The hardware and software team will work together in the system trouble-shooting.

   In addition to the Delta V control system, we are installing a new six-inch diameter stainless steel distillation column. This new column will allow the SRP to perform total reflux distillation, continuous feed distillation and reactive distillation.

   When all phases of the Delta-V installation are completed, we will have the capabilities to perform experiments with five different units: 18" distillation column, 18" extraction column, 6" distillation column, 4" distillation column, and an 18" air/water scrubber. The control system upgrade will propel the Separations Research Program into the 21st century, thanks to Fisher-Rosemount and Intel for their generous donations.

   A similar installation of Delta V has been completed in the Chemical Engineering Department teaching laboratories. The Fisher-Rosemount Delta V system is fully configured and is currently in use in the undergraduate unit operations laboratory. Each semester approximately 65 students in ChE 264 use the system to control and obtain operating data from a pilot scale distillation column. The configuration used in the lab makes use of displays that pictorially represent different sections of a distillation column. Pre-built faceplate and detail displays, as well as several custom ones are incorporated into the operator displays. Because data from the Delta V system can be easily accessed by Excel spreadsheets, the students can print out data or perform calculations from an application they are already familiar with. In addition to being highly visible in the undergraduate lab, the Delta V system is also used in graduate research. Many of the advanced features of the Delta V system, such as OPC, are being utilized in research projects involving model predictive control, dynamic data reconciliation, and fault detection. With the Delta V system, implementing advanced control and monitoring strategies on the distillation column has been greatly simplified.

   
   
7. Project Augmentation.

   The Intel project grant has been augmented through a donation of $118,000 of hardware and software from Fisher-Rosemount Systems (FRS). The FRS Delta V system is a new pc-based real-time process control operating system based on a browser approach, which is beginning to replace the traditional UNIX-based distributed control system commonly used in the chemical industry. The equipment is being donated to the Separations Research Program (SRP), where one of the real-time control projects will be carried out. This project is focused on multivariable control of a reactive distillation process, where reaction and separation are carried out in the same column. This column is currently under construction, and is expected to be operational in March, 1999. In addition to the SRP project, the Delta V software is being implemented on a second column, which operates in a batch distillation mode. This column is located in the unit operations laboratory of the Department of Chemical Engineering. A comparable donation of hardware and software has been made for this facility also.

   The PI for this project recently gave an invited paper at a National Academies Workshop on Computing and Communications Technology in Chemical Science and Technology. The title of the paper was "Vision 2020: Computational Needs of the Chemical Industry" (pdf version).

   On July 19 ,1999, the PI gave the following Chemical Engineering Academy Lecture at the University of Missouri-Rolla --
   Information Technology and Chemical Engineering Education: Evolution or Revolution?

   Accompanying slides are available for this lecture. Download the PDF version or the Powerpoint version.

   (Visit Adobe to get a FREE copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader needed to view the PDF documents.)

8. Related Web Sites
   • TWMCC (Texas-Wisconsin Modeling and Control Consortium)
     
   • Dr. Thomas F. Edgar's Homepage
     
   • Automatic Process Control (ChE 360) Homepage
     
   • Process Modeling and Control: A Vision of the Future
     (Visit Adobe to get a FREE copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader needed to view this document.)

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Subsurface Modeling
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Mary F. Wheeler

2. Associated Investigators: Steve Bryant, Clint Dawson, Todd Arbogast, and Joe Eaton

3. Technical Support Contact: Chris McGraw

4. Project Abstract:

   Develop parallel and accurate simulators for modeling subsurface and surface flow.

5. Equipment Status:

   16 Intel machine cluster fully operational for over one year. New cluster of 64 machines purchased and installed Q1, 1999.

6. Research Progress:

   Migration of the ParSSim code to the Intel platform has been completed. This reactive transport code has been used routinely on the 16-node cluster to study bioremediation strategies for cleaning up contaminated groundwater. Currently ParSSim is being run on the 16-node cluster in a study of diagenesis, in which chemical changes in a carbonate sediment are tracked for a period of 150 million years.

   The 16-node cluster has also become a primary development platform for the new generation parallel reservoir simulator IPARS. Recent advances include the implementation of multiblock multimodel capability, which permits the user to run different physical models and/or different numerical solution schemes in different parts of the domain simultaneously. Also, a single-well injectivity model (UTWID) was extended and linked into the IPARS framework to enable dynamic updates for injection well performance in field-scale reservoir simulations.

   Both ParSSim and IPARS are designed to be portable across a variety of single- and multiple-processor platforms, and have not been fine-tuned to any particular architecture. Continued analysis of typical cases shows performance on the 16-node cluster to be comparable with performance on traditional mainframe parallel platforms (T3E, SP). Members of CSM's Industrial Affiliates Program continue to show great interest in the implementation of reservoir simulators on the PC clusters, and the interest in the oil industry in general may be gauged from the recent announcement of Amerada Hess' decision to replace their mainframe parallel machine with a PC cluster.

   Successes with the 16-node cluster led to a decision to build a larger cluster, and the NSF-funded Center for Research on Parallel Computation supported CSM's purchase of 64 400MHz Pentium IIs and a gigabit Myrinet switch. This new cluster has yielded very promising preliminary results, both for scalability and speed.

   Related Web Site: Please visit the scientific animations — hydro B1, hydro B2, & hydro C — at http://king.ticam.utexas.edu/CCV/gallery/movies/movies.html

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Wireless & High Performance Telecommunication Networks
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Gustavo de Veciana

2. Associated Investigators:
   Takis Konstantopuolos, San-qi Li, Ed Powers, Guanghan Xu

3. Technical Support Contact:
   Gustavo de Veciana

4. Project Abstract:
   

   This project is intended to support the core of telecommunications research faculty within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. The equipment will support computer intensive research on physical layer (satellite,wireless) transmission issues, measurement-based channel and traffic modeling, and protocols for traffic management in high-speed networks.

5. Equipment Status:

   All the equipment has been delivered and is currently being used.

6. Research Progress.

   Ongoing research benefiting from the donated equipment include:
   1. Development of SMAQ, a web-based tool for statistical traffic matching and performance analysis of queues.

      This is a measurement-based tool which integrates traffic modeling and queueing analysis. The tool can be used in a variety of network design areas. For instance, it can be used as a traffic generator to generate traffic traces for network testing. It also can be used to find numerical solutions of the queue length and loss rate performance for transport of prioritized traffic subject to congestion control. Several application modules were built into the tool for evaluating statistical multiplexing, and performing buffer dimensioning and link bandwidth allocation. Other examples include the evaluation of transient performance during congestion and the modeling of wireless channel dynamics. A Web-based version of the SMAQ tool will be made available at http://www.apollo.ece.utexas.edu on trial basis.

      References:

      ``SMAQ: A Measurement-Based Tool for Traffic Modeling and Queueing Analysis: Part I - Design Methodologies and Software Architecture and Part II - Network Applications'', authored by S. Q. Li, S. K. Park and D. Arifler. IEEE Communications Magazine, August 1998.

      The challenge in telecommunications research has shifted towards finding effective and pragmatic methods to manage heterogeneous networks of tremendous complexity. Currently there is no effective mechanism to manage packet switched networks although the telecommunications infrastructure is migrating to packet switching technology. Traditional network management solutions fail to provide a dynamic environment in which new services can be added on-demand. This is mainly due to the fact that most network management solutions are static and proprietary. In our research, we are investigating different technologies which might create an open, dynamic management environment. We are focusing on the Java technology, especially Java Dynamic Management Kit (JDMK), its interoperation with the most widely deployed SNMP for internet management, and its ability to push or pull active code over the network. We are also investigating the Common Information Model (CIM) to model, and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) to represent management data. We are current in the preparation stage to connect our PCs to a Cisco ATM switch for on-line performance monitoring and networking resource management based on the JDMK/SNMP platform.

   2. Stability, Performance and Scalability of Traffic Routing for Communication Networks

      We are investigating approaches to routing traffic on large-scale communication networks. In particular we have focused on the interaction between flow/congestion control and routing and their impact on overall performance. Our theoretical models and network level simulations suggest interesting stability and performance issues will need to be addressed in designing the next generation of networks to meet quality of service specifications.

      Our current research focuses on new routing paradigms for the proposed differentiated services framework, and as well as generic multi-service network systems. We believe that routing mechanisms that differentiate about traffic types can present significant advantages when there are geographic or temporal inhomogeneities in the network traffic loads on the networks.

      References:

      G. de Veciana, T.-J. Lee, and T. Konstantopoulos. ``Stability and Performance Analysis of Networks Supporting Services with Rate Control-- Could the Internet be unstable?" in Proc. 18th IEEE Infocom'99, New York, NY, March 1999.

      S.H. Rhee and T. Konstantopoulos. ``Virtual path capacity allocation: user-optimal equilibrium," in Proc. 18th IEEE Infocom'99, New York, NY, March 1999.

   3. Vector Channel Propagation Study for Wireless Communications

      The donated Intel personal computers have been used to support our important project of Vector Channel Propagation Study for Wireless Communications. Wireless communications is perhaps one of the most important sector of the electronics industry. Although the growth of cellular subscribers is explosive nowadays, wireless communications still has several chief difficulties, including fast channel fading, capacity and coverage limitation. Smart antenna technology has been proposed to overcome those difficulties. Unfortunately, we do not have adequate understanding of the so-called vector channel propagation characteristics that are relevant to a smart antenna system. We have built several smart antenna testbeds to perform experimental studies of the vector channel propagation. Due to a huge amount of data collected with the testbed, it is important to have a fast personal computers with a large amount of DRAM and hard disk capacities. The donated Intel personal computers fit in this data processing role perfectly. They have been extensively used to process the real data and build a realistic vector channel propagation model.

      References:

      M. Torlak, S. Kim, and Guanghan Xu, "A capacity measure for space-division-multiple-access channels," Proc. IEEE Asilomar Conf. On Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov. 1-4, 1998, Pacific Grove, CA.

      A. Kavak, W. Yang and Guanghan Xu, "Characterization of Fast Fading Wireless Vector Channels," Proc. IEEE Asilomar Conf. On Signals, Systems, and Computers, Nov. 1-4, 1998, Pacific Grove, CA.

   4. An investigation of RF High Power Amplifier Linearization.

      To maximize RF high power amplifier output used in communication systems, it is necessary to operate the amplifier close to saturation. Such operation, however, results in nonlinear amplitude and phase distortion, which in turn results in an increased bit error rate. Using the computer provided by Intel's Technology for Education 2000 Grant, we have designed, tested, and demonstrated a new predistorter which effectively serves to linearize the RF high power amplifier. This results in considerably enhanced performance in terms of reduction of: (a) bit error rate, (b) adjacent channel interference and spectral spreading, and (c) total degradation.

      References:

      Chi-Hao Cheng and Edward J. Powers, "Optimal Third-Order Volterra Kernel Estimation Algorithms for Nonlinear Communication System Under PSK and QAM Inputs," Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE Digital Signal Processing Workshop, Bryce, Utah, August 9-12, 1998, 4 pages (CD ROM).

      In-Seung Park and Edward J. Powers, "Compensation of Nonlinear Distortion in OFDM Systems Using a New Predistorter," Proceedings of the Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications, Boston, Massachusetts, September 8-11, 1998, 5 pages (CD ROM).

      Chi-Hao Cheng and Edward J. Powers, "Fifth-Order Volterra Kernel Estimation for a Nonlinear Communication Channel with PSK and QAM Inputs," Proceedings of the 9th IEEE Signal Processing Workshop on Statistical Signal and Array Processing, Portland, Oregon, September 14-16, 1998, 4 pages (CD ROM).

      Chi-Hao Cheng and Edward J. Powers, "Intermodulation Distortion Estimation with Fifth-Order Volterra System," Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Signal and Image Processing, Las Vegas, Nevada, October 27-31, 1998, 4 pages.

   Industrial Interactions ---

   Southwestern Bell Corp. / Technology Resources Inc, TI Raytheon

   Related Funded Projects ---

   NSF Grant - Adaptive Resource Management for IP/ATM Hybrid Switching Systems (PI: San-qi Li)

   NSF Career Award - Analysis and Design of Hierarchical Source Routing and Embedded ATM Netowrks (PI: G. de Veciana)

   Soutwestern Bell Corp./ Technolgy Resources Inc - Traffic Control and Management (PIs: S.-Q. Li and G. de Veciana)

   National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, provide additional support for Prof. G. Xu's research.

   DoD Joint Services Electronics Program, AFOSR F-49620-95-C-0045. (PIs: E. Powers)

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Distributed Simulation
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Dr. Craig M. Chase, ECE Dept, ENS 436 (512) 471-7457 chase@ece.utexas.edu

2. Associated Investigator: Dr. Suzanne Barber, ECE Dept, ENS 240 (512) 471-6152 barber@ece.utexas.edu

3. Technical Support Contact: Dr. Craig M. Chase, ECE Dept, ENS 436 (512) 471-7457 chase@ece.utexas.edu

4. Project Abstract:

   The goal of this project is to research next-generation distributed simulation technology. Our principle foci are:

   a) Support for System Area Networks (SANs) and cluster computing. Tandem's ServerNet system is the interconnection fabric for our system. This 50MByte/second, switched network provides less than 10 microsecond hardware latency and support for shared-memory operations. This combination of features and performance should allow us to dramatically reduce simulation overhead in our prototype.

   b) Integrating multi-resolution and multi-domain simulations. Isolated, single-purpose simulation systems are no longer acceptable for manufacturing, process control or other simulations. Regrettably, there are no established architectures or universal object models for sharing the results from different simulations. We are exploring integration and multi-resolution strategies for manufacturing and design simulation. The goal of this work is to permit the impact of a design change upon the manufacture and production process to be immediately apparent.

5. Equipment Status:

   All year-one equipment received, installed and operational with the following exceptions:

   a) 20" monitor was never received (3 of 4 monitors were received)

   b) A disk failed in one of the dual-processor desktop workstations. This disk has recently been replaced and the machine has just been brought back on line at the time this report is being written.

6. Research Progress:

   Two independent clusters are up. The "stable" cluster is made up of the complete set of six quad-processor servers. This 24-processor farm is in nearly continuous use as simulation engine. Most of the research being supported by this cluster is in the area of computer design. This research is the target of a recently awarded, three-year, National Science Foundation grant "Performance Impact of Contemporary Programming Paradigms and Workloads" (with Dr. Lizy K. John) in the amount of $350,000.

   The experimental cluster is in the process of being converted over to the Intel/Compaq/Microsoft "Virtual Interface Architecture" specification. VI is a software architecture for very high-speed, very low-latency system area interconnect. We have recently (in July, 1998) entered into a research agreement with Tandem (a Compaq company) that provides access to the Tandem VI software development kit. Benchmarking of the "ServerNet I VI" has recently begun and preliminary results will be posted to the project web page (http://www.ece.utexas.edu/projects/distsim/) shortly. In conjunction with the benchmarking study, a distributed object model (analogous to CORBA or Microsoft's DCOM) from Xerox PARC is being ported to the experimental cluster. We are optimistic that we'll be able to demonstrate (by end August '98) that the combination of Tandem's ServerNet, with the VI architecture and the Intel cluster permits remote method invocation on distributed objects up to 100 times faster than current commercial CORBA or DCOM solutions.

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Computational Finance Lab
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Patrick Jaillet

2. Co-Principal Investigator: Stathis Tompaidis

3. Active Associated Investigators: Stefano Grazioli, Prabhudev Konana, Ehud Ronn, Sheridan Titman, Sergey Tsyplakov, Fei Zou.

4. Project Summary:
   • The computational finance lab - UTC 1.110 - created with the help of the Intel grant, continues to generate various resea4rch activities and educational purposes in the area of computational/mathematical finance. A latest addition to the special software and hardware available in the lab is a live financial data-feed from Bridge (installed early this spring). Research continues to be active in the area of pricing of commercial mortgages and problems in optimal capital structure (requiring finding solutions to 4 dimension PDEs), of determining the effectiveness of momentum strategies (using very large databases and simulation), matching pursuit applications to hedging large portfolios (heavy calculations), and pricing/hedging of complex derivatives in energy. In each of these areas, working papers are in progress.

5. Settings:
   • Facilities (www.utexas.edu/research/ccf) - 17 dual proc. 300 Mhz, 9Gb, 512Mb, Windows NT 4.0 OS
     - Wired lab/classroom, UTC 1.110
     - Possibility of on-screen presentation
     - Card-entry and loop-wire security system
     
   • Configuration - One filer server
     - separate domain, managed by the Business School Computer Services
     - an Informix server with a separate domain
     
   • Special Software Installed - Riskwatch (Algorithmics)
     - Scifinance (SciComp)
     - Live bridge financial data-feed
     - CPLEX (linear/nonelinear optimizer - forth-coming)
     

6. Collaboration:
   • Algorithmics: www.algorithmics.com - Full suite of software packages for portfolio tracking and risk management applications(worth $1.5 million)
   • SciComp: www.scicomp.com - SciFinance: code generating software, originally developed for fluid flow problems, geared towards generating option pricing code

7. Research:
   • Portfolio Compression
   • Derivative Pricing
   • Pricing of commercial mortgages
   • Analysis of trading strategies

8. Teaching:
   • Managing Financial Information: Use of databases - Informix
   • Computational Finance: Developing derivative pricing software
   • Financial Engineering: Use of the RiskWatch suite + Scicomp software
   • Financial Modeling and Optimization: use of the RiskWatch Suite

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Electronic Commerce Networks
April, 1999

1. Project PI: Andrew Whinston

2. Associated Investigators: None

3. Technical Support Contact: Zhangxi Lin, Center for Research in Electronic Commerce
   zlin@uts.cc.utexas.edu, 471-7962

4. Project Abstract:

   Creating and operating a digital economy is fast becoming a reality. It is expected that several hundred billion dollars per year of electronic transactions will take place by the start of the next century. The project will develop mechanisms for management of the network infrastructure that will enable effective commerce to take place and facilitate innovative applications exploiting the infrastructure. The Center for Research in Electronic Commerce has conducted pioneering activities in this area including the development of resource management mechanisms using priority pricing of network resources and estimation of response times from available data. While the ideas are based on concepts from economic theory the computational methods exploit an understanding of the transient behavior of public networks. The project seeks to extend the mechanisms previously demonstrated in simulation testing to real prototype networks. These mechanisms are characterized by their incentive compatibility and the decentralized resource management in real time. Techniques have been developed to estimate performance parameters over the network, and to update prices at each node of the network in real time based on such available information.

5. Equipment Status:

   All computers have been networked into a new domain named CRECNET. This sub-network has been hooked up to the original LAN in CREC, CISMNET. One Dimension XPS 300 was not running well for a half year and repeatedly crashed. We just figured out recently that this is caused by the malfunctioning SCSI controller. Now DHS is going to deliver a good one to replace the fault.

   Equipment	Qty	Received	Notes
   Dell Dimension XPS 300	6	Yes	1. The SCSI controller in one of the computers is bad. Dell Hardware Service promised to deliver the part this week (July 6-10). 2. Missed one mouse. (We did not find the mouse in the last computer we received.)
   Dell PowerEdge 6100/200 (Quad CPU)	2	1	IIS has been upgraded from version 2.0 to 4.0.
   Intel Express 510T Switch	1	Yes	-

6. Research Progress:

   In last half year we have made the following progress in the research of Internet traffic pricing:

   • Implemented a virtual private network (VPN) traffic pricing prototype with a small network consisting of three computers.

   • Carried out a number of experiments based with the prototype. We have been studying the time series data from the experiment.

   • We are currently testing VPN gateway traffic pricing with round robin bandwidth scheduling scheme. It is a successive effort from previous best-effort approach.

   • We are now working at a paper entitled "Improving the Performance of the Virtual Private Network (VPN) By Pricing Data Traffic". (The virtual private network is a network overlay over a public IP network infrastructure such as the Internet to provide cost-effective data transmission with higher security. To compete with the traditional dedicated line service, guaranteeing the performance of the VPN is critical, or the VPN will not be used as it was intended. The paper studies the issue of how to improve the performance of VPNs by pricing the data traffic through the VPN. An implementation model reinforced by proxy server technology and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is described. This transaction level implementation is claimed more practical in the VPN case comparing to those schemes to be implemented at IP level.)

7. Related Web Sites:

   Center for Research in Electronic Commerce
   Improving the Performance of the Virtual Private Network (MS Word Document)
   Virtual reality check

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Enterprise Systems Management
April, 1999

1. Principal Investigator: Larry Leibrock, Patrick Jaillet

2. Associated Investigators: N/A

3. Technical Support Contact: Larry Leibrock

4. Status Report:

   Over the recent quarter a significant level of progress has been made in several inter-related projects at the Business School.

   Most of these efforts are under NDA's. (Non-Disclosure-Agreements).

   • These Intel systems have now supported deployment of over 700 notebooks and 500 desktop systems.

   • The Business School is the only academic entity in Microsoft's Office 2000, Windows 2000, Exchange 6 and Polar Early Deployment Programs. We are also in SAP's academic partnership program.

   • Enterprise Digital Certificate Servers - Public Key Infrastructures -

     We created a pilot test-bed of two X509 certificate servers that provide a repository for both public and private keys.

     Student teams researched three areas-

     1. Total cost of ownership
     2. Legal aspects of the key ceremony and
     3. A proposed deployment framework for certificate servers

   • Intel Servers - Three Tier Data Models

     A Team created and validated of an industry hierarchical data storage model for three tier data servers in a fast-Ethernet client/server environment.

   • Windows 2000 - Intel Server Business Model

     An inter-disciplinary team created and validated a TCO model that assessed both the costs and benefits of Windows 2000 in an enterprise setting.

   • Firewall Total Cost of Ownership Model

     A team tested an Intel-based firewall server in three differing policy scenarios and conducted intrusion comparative analysis.

   • Information Security Knowledge Base

     A student/faculty team continues work on the information security archive located at http://niim.bus.utexas.edu

   • Office 2000 Rapid Deployment

     We have completed testing and deployment for Office 2000. All Office 2000 collaborative servers are hosted on Intel servers.

   • Directory Project

     We are designing and testing LDAP directories on Intel enterprise servers. Directory replication models are being planned.

   • Thin Client Test bed

     We have deployed three thin client test models for then clients.

   • Advanced Encryption Standard

     (AES)

     Performance testing and models for the AES on both Pentium II and Pentium III has completed and the paper was accepted by National Institute of Standards and Technology.

   • A High-School Outreach Project (AMIGOS)

     The Business School is completing the 2nd high school project in Laredo, Texas.

     The project is on an Intel server at http://amigos.bus.utexas.edu

   • Performance Testing for Intel Servers

     Both AIM and BlueCurve performance metrics are in final completion.

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