Abstract: In an ATM network interface controller, a traffic management system is provided to allow implementation of available bit rate, or ABR, flow control by an external processor and the use of a new ABR controller within the traffic management system which provides functions that enable an external processor to control the flow control behavior of the network interface controller. The ABR controller accesses an external memory to control the flow of cells injected into the network. In one embodiment, the subject system uses a traffic shaper to control cell transmission rates, submits requests to an external memory which are processed by an external processor, and reads data from an external memory to adjust cell transmission rates and/or generates Resource Management, or RM, cells.

Abstract: A system for virtual environments in which graphical objects are depicted in a space to achieve the required high accuracy regardless of location through establishing locales or subdivisions of the global coordinate system and establishing an origin for each locale, such that the specification of position and movement of a graphical object in the locale can be made with greater precision than using a global coordinate system, thus eliminating the need for high-precision floating point processors or emulation. The system permits designers of virtual environments to work independently on their locales, with overlap being controlled through specifying distance between locale origins as well as relative orientation between the locales. The system also permits ignoring information from non-relevant distant locales to, minimize processing and network bandwidth requirements.

Abstract: A switch for digital communication networks includes a queuing system cape of implementing a broad class of scheduling algorithms for many different applications and purposes, with the queuing system including both a tag-based primary queue which contain ATM cells organized by priority and a secondary queue which contains ATM cells which are not yet scheduled for transmission and which are organized by virtual channel. A queuing decision module is provided to determine in which queue an incoming ATM cell should be deposited. A requeuing module operates when an event occurs that unblocks a particular virtual channel. The requeuing module, on occurrence of such an event, accesses the secondary queue to obtain another cell, to assign it priority and to move it to the primary queue. The queuing decision module, along with a virtual channel table, can be used easily to block virtual channels when necessary. The combination of queues also allows for round robin scheduling.

Abstract: A system for creating a constructive solid geometry (CSG) representation of bjects in bit map or voxel form iteratively creates, mutates and optimizes a population of potential CSG representations of the object. The system includes a first part which randomly generates and revises a population of CSG representations. Each CSG tree includes a random number of primitives of different types, sizes and positions. The primitives are randomly organized in a tree structure which includes randomly selected boolean operators at the nodes. The trees are modified through an evolutionary process to improve the CSG representation of the object. Trees are randomly mutated to form new trees. Mutations can include (1) changes in types of primitives, (2) changes in a subtree structure, (3) addition of new subtrees, and (4) deletions of subtrees. If the new tree better represents the object, then the old tree is replaced with the new tree. Mutations continue until no further improvements are obtained.

Abstract: A network interface using per-application free buffer lists includes a pat processor which processes an incoming message and stores packet data into free buffers designated for the application for which the message intended. The packet processor has memory storing an internal free buffer list. The internal free buffer list is loaded from an external free buffer list memory, which contains a free buffer list for each application. Each time a message arrives for a given application, the packet processor retrieves a portion of the external free buffer list for the application and loads the portion into the internal free buffer list. The portion which is loaded is a number of free buffers which is thought to be sufficient to handle an anticipated size of the incoming message. As a packet is processed, data are deposited in the buffers specified in the internal list.

Abstract: A convenient interface for a grammar checking system in which improper utilization of words in a sentence is detected and in which corrected words are suggested for insertion in the sentence including means for underlining incorrectly used words and means for providing a caret or inverted V type indicia for words which are to be inserted, with the caret indicating a missing word in the sentence.

Abstract: The speed of a hardware-software debugger is markedly increased through the use of high speed simulators which ignore all systems operations except those where design errors are expected to manifest themselves, by skipping CPU bus cycles of no interest for the simulation, by not explicitly simulating periodic clock signals and generating only schedules of clock signals, and by caching instructions when alien computers are used in the simulation process to eliminate decoding of the instructions of the target computer.

Abstract: A system is provided for spelling correction in which the context of a word n a sentence is utilized to determine which of several alternative or possible words was intended. The probability that a particular alternative was the word that was intended is determined through Bayesian analysis utilizing multiple kinds of features of the context of the target word, such as the presence of certain characteristic words within some distance of the target word, or the presence of certain characteristic patterns of words and part-of-speech tags around the target word. The system successfully combines multiple types of features via Bayesian analysis through means for resolving egregious interdependencies among features. The system first recognizes the interdependencies, and then resolves them by deleting all but the strongest feature involved in each interdependency, thereby allowing it to make its decisions based on the strongest non-conflicting set of features.

Abstract: A system for assigning part-of-speech tags to English text includes an improved contextual tagger which utilizes a deterministic finite state transducer to improve tagging speed such that large documents can have its sentences accurately tagged as to parts of speech to permit fast grammar checking, spell checking, information retrieval, text indexing and optical character recognition. The subject system performs by first acquiring a set of rules by examining a training corpus of tagged text. Then, these rules are transformed into a deterministic finite-state transducer through the utilization of non-deterministic transducers, a composer and a determiniser. In order to tag an input sentence, the sentence is initially tagged by first assigning each word in the sentence with its most likely part of speech tag regardless of the surrounding words in the sentences.

Abstract: A computer program version update system reduces storage space usage and enables calling programs to invoke any version of a program using the same name by storing only modified modules of a program for different program versions. Multiple versions of a program can thus have the same name. Any version of the program may be constructed from the modules upon command with a user issuing such a command and including a version number corresponding to the requested version as a parameter to invoke a program construction procedure.

Abstract: In a distributed file environment, a system for safely updating a file wiut risk of losing work performed at one site due to work performed on the file at another site uses a journal or log at each site which is updated after a file is modified. This log is compared with the logs from other sites before a file is used at any one site, so that new versions can be propogated automatically and safely to out-of-date sites, with the user immediately alerted if conflicting versions of the file exist at different sites. The reconciliation can be applied to collections of files, automatically updating only those files for which it is safe to and necessary do so. Since reconciliation occurs at times selected by the user, inconsistent or partially completed versions of files need not be propogated to other sites.

Abstract: A system is provided to increase the efficiency of a VLIW, Very Long Insttion Word, processor which matches its level of parallelism, LOP, to the LOP of the executable code before executing the code's fixed-length VLIW instructions, so that object-level code compatibility is kept for different processor implementations of the same VLIW architecture required for different applications. Matching is accomplished either by reducing the LOP of the processor via inactivating the processor's functional units, or by effectively reducing the LOP of the executable code via the processor executing the sequential portions of each VLIW instruction in the code, with the length of the portions equal to or less than the number of operations that the processor can handle as a VLIW instruction.

Abstract: A system for the control from a distance of machines having displays incls hand gesture detection in which the hand gesture causes movement of an on-screen hand icon over an on-screen machine control icon, with the hand icon moving the machine control icon in accordance with sensed hand movements to effectuate machine control. In one embodiment, TV control led by hand signals includes detecting a single hand gesture and providing a hand icon on the screen along with the provision of icons representing TV controls such as volume, channel, color, density, etc., in which a television camera detects the hand in a noisy background through correlation techniques based on values of local image orientation. In order to trigger the system into operation, a trigger gesture such as the "how" sign is distinguished from the background through the utilization of orientation angle differences.

Abstract: A system for unencumbered measurement of body posture or attitude utilizes on-encumbering force or proximity sensors to monitor an individual, where the individual need not be aware of the presence or action of the sensors. Outputs from these sensors are analyzed to infer body posture or attitude. In one embodiment, a set of sensors is attached to a chair, or other surroundings such as the floor, at locations where a person may be in contact with or in close proximity to one or more of the sensors or where movement of the chair could be detected. Each sensor has an output which provides a signal indicative of a response of the sensor to forces exerted by or motions of the individual. The outputs of the sensors are processed to estimate the body posture of the individual.

Abstract: Voxel-based objects are manipulated and interacted with in a physically ristic way such that during movement of the graphical objects, collisions are automatically detected and the graphical objects are prevented from penetrating each other. Applications include computer graphics and animation, CAD/CAM, and virtual reality applications that require real-time interaction between complex three-dimensional object models. When objects are represented in a voxel-based format where objects consist of clusters of regularly or irregularly spaced sampled data points, rather than a conventional graphic format where objects are represented by lists of polygons, primitive surfaces, or geometries, moving objects in virtual space involves shifting the voxel-based data in a large memory array representing the virtual space of the system and detecting collisions among moving objects by checking the new memory locations of object voxels to see if they are already occupied.

Abstract: Apparatus for determining the structure of a hypermedia document containing ext and graphics that are to be laid out on several linked pages includes a system that specifies the assignment of text and graphics to pages and the links between the pages via a reduction to graph partitioning and the use of optimization techniques for graph partitioning. In one embodiment, display items and relations between these display items are listed along with a measure of their importance. These factors are captured in terms of numeric weights for edges between nodes in the associated graph to permit the system to assign display items to pages, and determine which pages should be linked, so that a user can move between pages in the most efficient manner.