Abstract: Assigning a building block collector agent to receive acknowledgments from other building block agents is disclosed. A memory-line request is received from a requestor agent that is one of a number of agents. Each agent has a shared memory to share among the agents, as well as a cache to temporarily store a limited number of memory lines of the shared memories of the other agents. A collector agent, which is one of the agents, is dynamically assigned for receiving acknowledgments from the agents. This dynamic assignment is based on the type of memory line-related request, and/or the global state of the caches of the agents.

Abstract: Novel designs and methods of manufacture of ink-jet printheads capable of providing ink-droplet-tail-break-off control and preventing meniscus overshoot in order to overcome the puddling, pen directionality, and ruffle problems associated with thermal-ink-jet printing are disclosed. A printhead for use in an ink-delivery system includes a substrate that has at least one ink ejector thereon. An orifice-plate member is positioned over and above the substrate. The orifice-plate member has at least one ink-transfer bore extending therethrough. The orifice-plate member further includes: a top surface that defines a top opening for the ink-transfer bore, a bottom surface that defines a bottom opening for the ink-transfer bore, and a counter-bore in the top surface that is in fluid communication with the ink-transfer bore. The counter-bore can be: concentric or non-concentric with the ink-transfer bore, a full or partial counter-bore, and symmetric or asymmetric.

Abstract: A connecting rod-piston assembly, particularly for internal combustion engines, allows to increase an intercenter distance of a connecting rod without increasing an assembly overall dimensions, reduce an angle of the connecting rod swinging and reduce a side force. Proposed assembly consists of the piston and the connecting rod. An upper end of the connecting rod has a form of a bowl-shaped element, truncated along the width of the connecting rod. Inside of said piston there is a wide partition, in which there is made inner spherical cavity with the side walls on the ends of the cavity on one side of the partition with the possibility to contact by said side walls with a rectilinear truncated edge of the bowl-shaped element witting the working angle of swinging of the connecting rod. A central channel, through which a connecting rod blade passes, is lapped by the bulkhead from a flank of the side walls.

Abstract: A method for a user process to specify a policy for allocating pages of physical memory on the nodes of a multinode multiprocessor computer system. Through means such as a system call, an application program can specify to the operating system that physical pages of memory for an application-specified portion of virtual address space are to be physically allocated upon a specified set of nodes, subject to the additional selection criteria that the pages are to be allocated at first reference upon: 1) the node upon which the reference first occurs; 2) the node which has the most free memory, or 3) that the pages should be evenly distributed across the indicated set of nodes. In effect, the operating system remembers the specified allocation policy and node set from which the physical pages can be subsequently allocated as established by a system call. Subsequent use of the virtual address space for which the allocation policy is defined results in the memory being allocated accordingly.

Abstract: The alternate use of data packet fields to convey other packet information is disclosed. A data packet is sent by a first adapter, such as a host channel adapter (HCA), to a second adapter, such as a target channel adapter (TCA), over a network, such as input/output (I/O) network like an InfiniBand I/O network. The packet is sent for routing over another network, such as a communication network like an Ethernet network. The packet has a first part intended to signify a packet type, but actually conveys other packet information. The first part may be intended to have a value greater than or equal to a predetermined number to signify the type, but actually have a value less than the predetermined number to convey other packet information. The first packet part may be a raw datagram header, and may have an Ethertype field.

Abstract: An intelligent user assistance system is disclosed. The system is constructed using a reasoning model to determine the probability of a user's intentions, goals, or informational needs in the context of a software program. This is accomplished through analysis of information about the user's actions, the program state, and spoken words. The system monitors user interaction with the software program and applies probabilistic reasoning to sense that the user may need assistance in using a particular feature or to accomplish a specific task. The inference system accesses a thorough and updateable user profile system to continually check for competencies and changes assistance that is given based on the competencies.

Abstract: A general event composing and monitoring system that allows high-level events to be created from combinations of low-level events. An event specification tool allows for rapid development of a general event processor that creates high-level events from combinations of user actions. The event system, in combination with a reasoning system, is able to monitor and perform inference about several classes of events for a variety of purposes. The various classes of events include the current context, the state of key data structures in a program, general sequences of user inputs, including actions with a mouse-controlled cursor while interacting with a graphical user interface, words typed in free-text queries for assistance, visual information about users, such as gaze and gesture information, and speech information.

Abstract: An assembly method and system for assembling components into an assembly. An assembly provides connectors through which the components can be exported and through which an external entity can be imported. An exported component can be connected to another assembly by importing that exported component into that other assembly. A connector can both expose components to be exported and expose connections through which an external entity can be imported. The assembly provides a mechanism through which the connectors can be exposed to external entities. An external entity can use the connector providing mechanism to retrieve a connector and then use the retrieved connector to export components and establish connections by importing external entities. In addition, the use of a standard connector and of a standard connector providing mechanism allows predefined components to be assembled into assemblies that can expose certain behavior of the components through the connectors in a predefined manner.

Abstract: A general event composing and monitoring system that allows high-level events to be created from combinations of low-level events. An event specification tool allows for rapid development of a general event processor that creates high-level events from combinations of user actions. The event system, in combination with a reasoning system, is able to monitor and perform inference about several classes of events for a variety of purposes. The various classes of events include the current context, the state of key data structures in a program, general sequences of user inputs, including actions with a mouse-controlled cursor while interacting with a graphical user interface, words typed in free-text queries for assistance, visual information about users, such as gaze and gesture information, and speech information.

Abstract: The present invention is directed to sharing and organizing world wide web pages using a number of distinctive characters, each having an interest. In a preferred embodiment, each distinctive character is initialized by associating with it one or more web pages that collectively characterize the interest of the character. After initialization, each web page viewed by the user is assessed for each of the distinctive characters. The assessment process involves, for a single distinctive character, determining whether the web page viewed by the user exhibits at least a threshold level of similarity to web pages already associated with the distinctive character. The assessment process further involves associating the viewed web page with the distinctive character if the viewed web page exhibits at least a threshold level of similarity to the web pages already associated with the distinctive character.