Abstract: A system (1) for determining a load of a vehicle such as a HGV. The system (1) comprises a plurality of strain gauges (2) mounted on each axle (3, 4) of the HGV. Each strain gauge (2) is arranged parallel to the longitudinal axis A-A of the axles (3, 4) to measure the strain exerted on each axle (3, 4) in a direction substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis A-A of each axle (3, 4). The strain gauges (2) are mounted on the axles (3, 4) at locations on the axles (3, 4) at which the axles (3, 4) exhibit a substantially linear strain-load relationship. These locations are determined, by performing a finite element analysis of the axles (3, 4). The system (1) also comprises a master control unit (5), carried on-board the HGV5 for calculating the HGV load responsive to the longitudinal strain measured by the strain gauges (2). The load exerted by the HGV on the road surface may then be calculated responsive to the calculated HGV load.

Abstract: A matrix by vector multiplication processing system (1) comprises a compression engine (2) for receiving and dynamically compressing a stream of elements of a matrix; in which the matrix elements are clustered, and in which the matrix elements are in numerical floating point format, and a memory (SDRAM, 3) for storing the compressed matrix. It also comprises a decompression engine (4) for dynamically decompressing elements retrieved from the memory (3), and a processor (10) for dynamically receiving decompressed elements from the decompression engine (3), and comprising a vector cache (13, 19), and multiplication logic (12, 21) for dynamically multiplying elements of the vector cache with the matrix elements. There is a cache (13) for vector elements to be multiplied by matrix elements to one side of a diagonal, and a separate cache or register (19) for vector elements to be multiplied by matrix elements to the other side of the diagonal.