Francis C.M. Lau - Böcker

This text discusses the software technique of load balancing in distributed memory message-passing parallel computers, also called multicomputers. It presents a comprehensive treatment of the subject using rigorous mathematical analyses and practical implementations. The focus is on nearest-neighbour load balancing methods in which every processor at every step is restricted to balancing its workload with its direct neighbours only. Nearest-neighbour methods are iterative in nature because a global balanced state can be reached through processors' successive local operations. Since nearest-neighbour methods have a relatively relaxed requirement for the spread of local load information across the system, they are flexible in terms of allowing one to control the balancing quality, effective for preserving communication locality, and can be easily scaled in parallel computers with a direct communication network. Load Balancing in Parallel Computers: Theory and Practice serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the subject.

Load Balancing in Parallel Computers: Theory and Practice is about the essential software technique of load balancing in distributed memory message-passing parallel computers, also called multicomputers. Each processor has its own address space and has to communicate with other processors by message passing. In general, a direct, point-to-point interconnection network is used for the communications. Many commercial parallel computers are of this class, including the Intel Paragon, the Thinking Machine CM-5, and the IBM SP2. Load Balancing in Parallel Computers: Theory and Practice presents a comprehensive treatment of the subject using rigorous mathematical analyses and practical implementations. The focus is on nearest-neighbor load balancing methods in which every processor at every step is restricted to balancing its workload with its direct neighbours only. Nearest-neighbor methods are iterative in nature because a global balanced state can be reached through processors' successive local operations. Since nearest-neighbor methods have a relatively relaxed requirement for the spread of local load information across the system, they are flexible in terms of allowing one to control the balancing quality, effective for preserving communication locality, and can be easily scaled in parallel computers with a direct communication network. Load Balancing in Parallel Computers: Theory and Practice serves as an excellent reference source and may be used as a text for advanced courses on the subject.

The past decade has seen heightened interest in the exploitation of chaos for useful applications in engineering systems. One application area that has attracted a great deal of attention is communications because of the potential benefits that can be gained from using chaos for communications, including robustness in multipath environments, ease of spectrum spreading, added security, etc. This book focuses on important aspects of the system operation, analysis, and performance evaluation of selected chaos-based digital communications systems. It will interest researchers, professors, graduate students, technology developers and R&D engineers who are working in the area of communication engineering. Researchers new to the field will quickly become acquainted with the necessary analytical techniques for studying chaos-based digital communication systems, while experienced researchers will find the many benchmark results useful for reference and further study.

"A Computational Approach to Digital Chinese Painting and Calligraphy" is a technical book on computer science and its applications in the arts. It focuses on Oriental digital arts, in particular Chinese arts and painting, offering a multi-disciplinary treatment from the angles of computer graphics, interactive techniques, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. The book also discusses the unique difficulties and challenges of using the computer to produce Oriental arts, including research results by the authors and their lessons and engineering experiences behind these efforts. Songhua Xu is a computer scientist of Zhejiang University and Yale University, as well as an honorary researcher of the University of Hong Kong. Francis C.M. Lau is Professor at the University of Hong Kong where he leads the Systems Research Group in the Department of Computer Science. Yunhe Pan is Professor of Computer Science at Zhejiang University as well as Deputy President of Chinese Academy of Engineering.

One of the first books in this area, this text focuses on important aspects of the system operation, analysis and performance evaluation of selected chaos-based digital communications systems -- a hot topic in communications and signal processing.

The book covers rendezvous theories, distributed rendezvous algorithms, and rendezvous applications in practical systems, presents state-of-the-art rendezvous results and highlights the latest methods of rendezvous in distributed systems.