Standard-Cell Placement from Functional Descriptions

This paper presents a functional language for the unambiguous description of digital circuits,a me- thod and algorithms to obtain a standard-cell layout,and a comparative evaluation of the developed func- tional standard-cell placement technique.The presented placement scheme is different from traditional methods because the complete layout geometry is specified and constructed automatically from a function- al description.The construction relies on a translation that combines the simplicity of standard-cells with the elegance of functional programming.An evaluation of the method introduced shows that the quality of the resulting placement is close to the results achieved with simulated annealing while the computation time is significantly less.Furthermore,the evaluation suggests to employ the functional placement me- thod in conjunction with low-temperature simulated annealing for running-time reduction and improved- results.

TOPOLOGY DESCRIPTION FUNCTION BASED METHOD FOR MATERIAL DESIGN

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the application of topology description function （TDF） in material design. Using TDF to describe the topology of the microstructure, the formulation and the solving technique of the design problem of materials with prescribed mechanical properties are presented. By presenting the TDF as the sum of a series of basis functions determined by parameters, the topology optimization of material microstructure is formulated as a size optimization problem whose design variables are parameters of TDF basis functions and independent of the mesh of the design domain. By this method, high quality topologies for describing the distribution of constituent material in design domain can be obtained and checkerboard problem often met in the variable density method is avoided. Compared with the conventional level set method, the optimization problem can be solved simply by existing optimization techniques without the process to solve the ＇Hamilton-Jacobi-type＇ equation by the difference method. The method proposed is illustrated with two 2D examples. One gives the unit cell with positive Poisson＇s ratio, the other with negative Poisson＇s ratio. The examples show the method based on TDF is effective for material design.

＂Eye Caught by Another Eye＂： Locating Experience in Nadine Gordimer＇ s The Lying Days

In one of the first pages and crucial scenes of The Lying Days （1953）, we soon associate the narrating voice with that of a bright, inquisitive child of Scottish descent immersed in the harsh Witwatersrand scenario of a mining estate outskirts in the 1930s, along a path crammed with Jews＇ concession stores and exotic-looking natives. The unruly little girl is Helen Shaw, the late Nadine Gordimer＇s fictional double in her still somewhat neglected first novel, a Bildungsroman where the South African writer coming from Springs admirably capitalized on the ＂camera-eye＂ perspectives and zooming-in on details which had already informed much of her masterly short fiction. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on Helen＇s difficult growth towards sociopolitical and ethical awakening--in a country finding itself more and more trapped in the apartheid grip--by pointing out the earliest, embryonic stages of such a progressive knocking down of epistemic barriers. The author will thus focus on ＂The Mine＂, the first and most concise of the three parts making up the novel, and show how Gordimer＇s acute prose, incisive style, and descriptive strategies prove to be a fitting tool for recording and weighing the experience of an indefatigable observer, a hungry mind in search of erased features, meaningful connections, revealing contexts and subjects

GENERALIZED BOCHNER THEOREM ON LOCALLY CONVEX SPACES

The purpose of this paper is to generalize the (classical) Bochner theorem to the case where Radon probability measures are defined on the weak dual spaces of locally convex spaces. We also compare our result with other topological descriptions of characteristic functionals of probability measures on other infinite dimensional spaces.