A control circuit 30 that controls writing of data to storage devices 21-28 and reading of data from storage devices 21-28 transmits a clock signal SCK and a reset signal RST to storage devices 21-28 via a clock signal line CL and a reset signal line RL. Of the data transmitted by control circuit 30, first data SDA1, a data sequence intended for the storage devices 21, 23, 25, 27 of the first group, is supplied via a first data signal line DL1 to the storage devices 21, 23, 25, 27 of the first group. Second data SDA2, a data sequence intended for the storage devices 22, 24, 26, 28 of the second group, is supplied via a second data signal line DL2 to the storage devices 22, 24, 26, 28 of the second group.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to storage devices connected together by a bus, and more particularly to a technique for identifying a particular memory device from among a multiplicity of storage devices connected by a bus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Techniques by which a particular memory device may be selected from among a multiplicity of memory (storage) devices included in a memory module, so that data may be read therefrom or written thereto, include a technique used with a multiplicity of storage devices having bus connections to data signal lines and clock signal lines, wherein pre-established pull-up resistance or the like is utilized to assign, on the hardware level, identifying information to storage devices, so that this identifying information can be used to access a particular desired storage device. A problem with this technique, however, is that in practical terms it is not possible to rewrite the identifying information for storage devices once preset, making them unsuitable for recycled use.
Accordingly there has also been proposed a technique whereby identifying information on the software level is placed in some of the memory areas of a storage device. With this technique, identifying information stored in a storage device can be rewritten easily, which has the advantage of being suitable for recycled use.
However, a problem with this approach is that since identifying information takes the form of a data sequence stored in a memory area, as more storage devices are bus connected on a given data signal line, a larger data sequence is required, i.e., identifying information is composed of more data. This is a particular problem where a storage device assignable with identifying information has limited memory capacity. For example, where the storage device is a printer recording material receptacle (ink cartridge) used in a printing device, a greater number of items of identifying information (identifiers) will be needed for a greater number of colors of ink, whereas the use of a high-capacity storage device in such applications presents problems from a cost standpoint.
A still different technique uses, in addition to the data and clock signal lines, a chip select signal line that transmits a chip select signal to select a storage device. This has the advantage that identifying information need not be stored on individual storage devices, but requires providing chip select signal lines in a number corresponding to the number of storage devices, which creates the problem of an increasingly complicated wiring arrangement due to the greater number of signal lines. Another problem is that only one chip select signal line is used during access operations, so efficiency of signal line utilization is poor.
The present invention is directed to addressing the above problems and needs, and has as an object to increase the number of storage devices that can be identified, without increasing the data capacity needed to store identifying information. A further object is to reduce data write time of storage devices.
To solve the above problems, the invention in a first aspect thereof provides a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles, whereby, in a system comprising a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles each having a sequentially accessible storage device, and individual selected printer recording material receptacle may be identified. The system for identifying printer recording material receptacles according to the first aspect herein comprises a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacle groups, each of which comprises a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles; storage devices, provided to each said printer recording material receptacle, that store different identifying information within each said group; a multiplicity of data signal lines, said lines bus-connected on a group-by-group basis to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles that make up each said group; and information processing control means that utilizes said identifying information to select one or a multiplicity of desired printer recording material receptacles from among said printer recording material receptacles, and reads or writes information from or to the storage device of one or a multiplicity of selected printer recording material receptacles using one or a multiplicity of data signal lines selected from said multiplicity of data signal lines.
According to the storage control system pertaining to the first aspect of the invention, an individual data signal line is assigned to each group composed of a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles. This allows the number of data signal lines to be kept to the minimum required, and since the identifying information need only contain enough information to identify each storage device within a group, it is possible to hold down the data capacity needed to store the identifying information, so that a greater number of printer recording material receptacles (storage devices) that can be identified. Further, since data can be transmitted individually via data signal lines to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles making up each group, simultaneous access (read and write) of the storage devices of each group is possible using the multiplicity of data signal lines, reducing the time needed to write to and read from the storage devices.
The invention in a second aspect thereof provides a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles that identifies a particular printer recording material receptacle from among a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles comprising a multiplicity of sequentially accessible storage devices, wherein said system comprises: a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles constituting a first class, each receptacle comprising a storage device that stores different identifying information; a single printer recording material receptacle constituting a second class, the receptacle comprising a storage device that stores identifying information identical to any identifying information stored in the storage devices constituting said first class, or identifying information different from all identifying information stored in the storage devices constituting said first class; a first data signal line, said line being bus-connected to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles constituting said first class; a second data signal line, said line being bus-connected to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles constituting said second class; and information processing control means that utilizes said identifying information to select on or a multiplicity of desired printer recording material receptacles from among said printer recording material receptacles, and reads or writes information from or to the storage device of one or a multiplicity of selected printer recording material receptacles using said first data signal line and/or said second data signal line.
According to the storage control system pertaining to the second aspect of the invention, the number of identifiable storage devices can be increased without the need for greater data capacity to store identifying information. The printer recording material receptacles making up the first class may contain the frequently used printer recording materials cyan, magenta, yellow and black, while the printer recording material receptacle making up the second class may contain a specialty color printer recording material used in particular applications, such as dark yellow or black. By so doing all printer recording material receptacles can be identified, even where a printer recording material receptacle containing a specialty color printer recording material is assigned arbitrary identifying information, such as the same identifying information for all specialty colors. Data read and write operations can be executed quickly using the first data signal line and second data signal line.
In a storage control system pertaining to the second aspect of the invention, the storage device of the printer recording material receptacle constituting the second class may store the same given identifying information regardless of the printer recording material contained, and the storage device may further store, in addition to the identifying information, color information for the printer recording material contained therein. In this way, all printer recording material receptacles can be identified, even where all printer recording material receptacles containing specialty color printer recording materials are assigned the same identifying information. The first class may be composed of from 4 to 6 printer recording material receptacles. In this case the frequently used colors cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, yellow and black may be assigned to the first class, and a specialty color, namely, black for totally plain paper, assigned to the second class.
The invention in a third aspect thereof provides a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles that identifies a particular printer recording material receptacle from among a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles comprising a multiplicity of sequentially accessible storage devices. The system for identifying printer recording material receptacles according to this third aspect comprises: a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles constituting a first group, each receptacle comprising a storage device that stores different identifying information; a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles constituting a second group, different from the printer recording material receptacles constituting said first group, each receptacle comprising a storage device that stores different identifying information; a first data signal line, said line being bus-connected to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles constituting said first group; a second data signal line, said line being bus-connected to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles constituting said second group; and information processing control means that utilizes said identifying information to select one or a multiplicity of desired printer recording material receptacles from among said printer recording material receptacles, and that reads or writes information from or to the storage device of one or multiplicity of selected printer recording material receptacles using said first data signal line and/or said second data signal line.
According to the storage control system pertaining to the third aspect of the invention, data can be sent via the first data signal line to storage devices making up the first group, and data can be sent via the second data signal line to storage devices making up the second group. Accordingly, identifying information need only contain enough information to identify the storage devices within a group, allowing the number of identifiable storage devices to be increased without increasing the data capacity needed to store the identifying information. Further, since the storage devices of each group can be accessed (read or written) simultaneously using the first data signal line and second data signal line, the time required for read/write operations to the storage devices can be reduced.
The storage control system pertaining to the third aspect of the invention may additionally comprise a clock signal line connected to the printer recording material receptacles that constitute said first and second groups; and said information processing control means configured such that a data sequence containing a read/write instruction and identifying information corresponding to the storage device of said selected printer recording material receptacle is transmitted over said first data signal line and/or said second data signal line in sync with a clock signal flowing over said clock signal line, to execute reading/writing of information to the storage device of said one or multiplicity of selected printer recording material receptacles. With this arrangement, the storage devices making up the first group and second group can be accessed in a variety of modes, using the first and second data signal lines.
In the storage control system pertaining to the third aspect of the invention, the storage device of said one or multiplicity of selected printer recording material receptacles may be configured such that on the basis of said transmitted read/write instruction, it either transmits stored information over said first data signal line and/or said second data signal line, or stores information present on said first data signal line and/or said second data signal line. With this arrangement, information can be written to or read from storage devices.
The invention in a fourth aspect thereof provides a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles that identifies a particular printer recording material receptacle from among a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles comprising a multiplicity of sequentially accessible storage devices, and that performs reading/writing of information from or to the storage device of the selected printer recording material receptacle. The system for identifying printer recording material receptacles according to this fourth aspect comprises: a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles constituting a first group, each receptacle comprising a storage device that stores different identifying information; a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles constituting a second group, different from the printer recording material receptacles constituting said first group, each receptacle comprising a storage device that stores different identifying information, said storage devices; a data signal line, said line being bus-connected to the printer recording material receptacles constituting said first and second groups; a first reset signal line connected to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles constituting said first group; a second reset signal line connected to the storage devices of the printer recording material receptacles constituting said second group; and information processing control means that holds said first reset signal line or said second reset signal line in the reset state, selects a desired storage device from said storage devices using said identifying information, and that performs reading/writing of identifying information via said data signal line.
According to the storage control system pertaining to the fourth aspect of the invention, a storage device of either the first or second group can be accessed via the first reset signal line or the second reset signal line. Accordingly, identifying information need only contain enough information to identify storage devices within a group, allowing the number of identifiable storage devices to be increased without increasing the data capacity needed to store the identifying information.
The storage control system pertaining to the fourth aspect of the invention may additionally comprise a clock signal line connected to the printer recording material receptacles that constitute said first and second groups; and said information processing control means configured such that, when a printer recording material receptacle of said first group is selected, said second reset signal line is held in the reset state, and a data sequence containing a read/write instruction and identifying information corresponding to the storage device of the selected printer recording material receptacle is transmitted over said data signal line in sync with a clock signal flowing over said clock signal line, to execute reading/writing of information to the storage device of said selected printer recording material receptacle. This arrangement enables exclusive access to a storage device of the first group.
The storage control system pertaining to the fourth aspect of the invention may additionally comprise a clock signal line connected to the printer recording material receptacles that constitute said first and second groups; and said information processing control means configured such that, when a printer recording material receptacle of said second group is selected, said first reset signal line is held in the reset state, and a data sequence containing a read/write instruction and identifying information corresponding to the storage device of the selected printer recording material receptacle is transmitted over said data signal line in sync with a clock signal flowing over said clock signal line, to execute reading/writing of information to the storage device of said selected printer recording material receptacle. This arrangement enables exclusive access to a storage device of the second group.
In a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles pertaining to any of the first to fourth aspects of the invention, each said storage device may comprise:
a memory cell for storing data;
a data bus connected to said data signal line;
an address counter that counts up a counter value in sync with a clock signal input via said clock signal line, indicating a memory area of said memory cell to be accessed, and that when initialized resets the counter to an initial value;
an input/output control device, arranged between said memory cell and said data bus, that controls the direction of data transfer vis-à-vis said memory cell and the direction of data transfer over said data bus, and that when initialized sets the direction of data transfer vis-à-vis said memory cell to the data read direction, and disables connection to said data bus;
a comparator device connected to said data bus, that decides whether input identifying information input via said data bus matches identifying information stored in said memory cell read via said input/output control device; and
an access enabling device that enables access to said memory cell when it has been decided that said identifying information matches.
With this arrangement, access is enabled only to a desired storage device. Particularly where a multiplicity of storage devices are provided, it is possible to indicate and access (i.e., read, write etc.) a desired storage device from among the multiplicity of storage devices. When making a determination as to whether identifying information in a storage device matches input identifying information, writing of data to the memory cell is disabled, so the identifying information stored in the memory cell can be kept read-only.
In a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles pertaining to any of the first to fourth aspects of the invention, said storage device may additionally comprise: an instruction decoder connected to said data bus and to said comparator device, that, upon being presented by said comparator device with a decision result that said input identifying information matches identifying information stored in said memory cell, analyzes the read/write command input via said data bus, and on the basis of the result of the analysis requests said input/output control device to switch the direction of data transfer over said data bus; wherein said input/output control device maintains the data transfer direction vis-à-vis said memory cell and the disabled connection to said data bus set during said initialization, until analysis of the read/write command by said instruction decoder is completed.
In a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles pertaining to any of the first to fourth aspects of the invention, said storage devices may store different identifying information for each ink type in association with the ink types contained in said printer recording material receptacles. With this arrangement, it is possible to indicate an ink cartridge containing a particular type of ink, even when a multiplicity of ink cartridges are used.
In a system for identifying printer recording material receptacles pertaining to any of the first to fourth aspects of the invention, said information processing control means may comprise:
a clock signal generating circuit;
a reset signal generating circuit that generates a reset signal for initializing said storage devices;
an identifying information generating circuit that generates identifying information serving as identifying information for a particular storage device from among said multiplicity of storage devices; and
a data transmission circuit that in sync with said generated clock signal transmits a data sequence containing said generated identifying information and a read/write command over a said data signal line. Where first and second data signal lines are provided, one data transmission circuit may be provided for each data signal line; and where first and second reset signal lines are provided, one reset signal generating circuit may be provided for each reset signal line.
The invention in a fifth aspect thereof provides a printer recording material receptacle set composed of a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles, said receptacles comprising sequentially accessible storage devices that at a minimum store information relating to printer recording materials encapsulated therein. The printer recording material receptacle pertaining to the fifth aspect herein comprises a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles bus-connected to a clock signal line that supplies a clock signal, a reset signal line that supplies a reset signal, and a first data signal line, said receptacles constituting a first printer recording material receptacle group and each comprising a storage device that stores different identifying information; and a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles that are bus-connected to said clock signal line, to said reset signal line, and to a second data signal line, and that constitute a second printer recording material receptacle group, wherein each said receptacle comprises a storage device that stores different identifying information.
According to the printer recording material receptacle set pertaining to the fifth aspect of the invention, the number of identifiable storage devices can be increased without increasing the data capacity needed to store identifying information. Additionally, data read/write operations can be performed rapidly using the first data signal line and second data signal line.
The invention in a sixth aspect thereof provides a printer recording material receptacle set composed of a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles, said receptacles comprising sequentially accessible storage devices that at a minimum store information relating to printer recording materials encapsulated therein. The printer recording material receptacle pertaining to the sixth aspect herein comprises a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacle groups including a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles bus-connected to a clock signal line that supplies a clock signal, a single reset signal line that supplies a reset signal, and a multiplicity of data signal lines, and each having a storage device that stores different identifying information.
The sixth aspect herein can also be implemented as a printer recording material receptacle set composed of a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles bus-connected to a clock signal line that supplies a clock signal, a multiplicity of reset signal lines that supply a reset signal, and a multiplicity of data signal lines, said receptacles each having a storage device that stores different identifying information. Alternatively it may be implemented as a printer recording material receptacle set composed of a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles bus-connected to a clock signal line that supplies a clock signal, one or a multiplicity of reset signal lines that supply a reset signal, and a multiplicity of data signal lines, said receptacles each having a storage device that stores different identifying information.
According to the printer recording material receptacle set pertaining to the sixth aspect herein, the number of identifiable storage devices can be increased without increasing the data capacity needed to store identifying information.
The invention in a seventh aspect thereof provides a printer recording material receptacle set composed of a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles, said receptacles comprising sequentially accessible storage devices that at a minimum store information relating to printer recording materials encapsulated therein. The printer recording material receptacle pertaining to the seventh aspect herein comprises a multiplicity of printer recording material receptacles bus-connected to a clock signal line that supplies a clock signal, a data signal line that transmits a data signal, and a first reset signal line that supplies a first reset signal, said receptacles constituting a first printer recording material receptacle group, and each having a storage device that stores different identifying information; and a single printer recording material receptacle bus-connected to said clock signal line, said data signal line, and a second reset signal line that supplies a second reset signal, said receptacle constituting a second printer recording material receptacle group.
According to the printer recording material receptacle set pertaining to the seventh aspect herein, the number of identifiable storage devices can be increased without increasing the data capacity needed to store identifying information. Additionally, the first printer recording material receptacle group may contain the frequently used printer recording materials cyan, magenta, yellow and black, while the second printer recording material receptacle group may contain a specialty color printer recording material used in particular applications, such as dark yellow or black. By so doing all printer recording material receptacles can be identified, even where a printer recording material receptacle containing a specialty color printer recording material is assigned arbitrary identifying information, such as the same identifying information for all specialty colors. Data read and write operations can be executed quickly using the first data signal line and second data signal line.
In a printer recording material receptacle set pertaining to any of the fifth to seventh aspects of the invention, identifying information stored in a storage device of said first printer recording material receptacle group may be identical to identifying information stored in a storage device of the second printer recording material receptacle group. Since a storage device of the first printer recording material receptacle group and a storage device of the second printer recording material receptacle group can be accessed independently, it is sufficient for devices to be identifiable within their respective printer recording material receptacle groups.
The invention in an eighth aspect thereof provides a method for identifying a printer recording material receptacle to which access is desired from among a first printer recording material receptacle group comprising a multiplicity of nonvolatile, sequentially accessible storage devices bus-connected to a clock signal line, a reset signal line and a first data signal line, and having unique identifying information, and a second printer recording material receptacle group comprising a multiplicity of nonvolatile, sequentially accessible storage devices bus-connected to a clock signal line, a reset signal line and a second data signal line, and having unique identifying information. The identifying method pertaining to the eighth aspect herein comprises the steps of: outputting a reset signal to said reset signal line; and transmitting a data sequence over said first data signal line and/or said second data signal line in sync with the clock signal, said data sequence including a read/write instruction and identifying information for the storage device of said printer recording material receptacle printer recording material receptacle to which access is desired.
According to the identifying method pertaining to the eighth aspect herein, there are provided advantages analogous to those of the printer recording material receptacle system pertaining to the third aspect herein. The identifying method pertaining to the eighth aspect herein, like the printer recording material receptacle system pertaining to the third aspect herein, may assume various embodiments.
The invention in a ninth aspect thereof provides a method for identifying a printer recording material receptacle to which access is desired from among a first printer recording material receptacle group comprising a multiplicity of nonvolatile, sequentially accessible storage devices bus-connected to a clock signal line, a data signal line and a first reset signal line, and having unique identifying information, and a second printer recording material receptacle group comprising a multiplicity of nonvolatile, sequentially accessible storage devices bus-connected to a clock signal line, a data signal line, and a second reset signal line, and having unique identifying information. The identifying method pertaining to the ninth aspect herein comprises the steps of: transmitting a reset signal to said first reset signal line and said second reset signal line on the basis of an access request to said printer recording material receptacle; deciding if the printer recording material receptacle to which access has been requested belongs to said first group or said second group; in the event it is decided that said printer recording material receptacle to which access has been requested belongs to said first group, halting transmission of the reset signal to said first reset signal line; and transmitting to said data signal line, in sync with the clock signal, a data sequence that includes a read/write instruction and identifying information for the storage device of said printer recording material receptacle printer recording material receptacle to which access has been requested.
In the identifying method pertaining to the ninth aspect herein, in the event it is decided that said printer recording material receptacle to which access has been requested belongs to said second group, transmission of the reset signal to said second reset signal line is halted; and a data sequence that includes a read/write instruction and identifying information for the storage device of said printer recording material receptacle printer recording material receptacle to which access has been requested is transmitting to said data signal line, in sync with the clock signal.
According to the identifying method pertaining to the ninth aspect herein, there are provided advantages analogous to those of the printer recording material receptacle system pertaining to the fourth aspect herein. The identifying method pertaining to the ninth aspect herein, like the printer recording material receptacle system pertaining to the fourth aspect herein, may assume various embodiments.

System and method of identifying printer recording material receptacle


A new and distinct cultivar of Chrysanthemum plant named ‘Dark Bronze Cherie’, characterized by its compact, upright, spreading and uniformly mounded plant habit; freely branching and moderately vigorous growth habit; small dark green-colored foliage; uniform and early flowering habit; freely flowering habit; small daisy-type inflorescences with dark bronze-colored ray florets; and good postproduction longevity.

The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Chrysanthemum plant, botanically known as Chrysanthemum×morifolium, commercially grown as a potted Chrysanthemum and hereinafter referred to by the name 'Dark Bronze Cherie'.
The new Chrysanthemum is a naturally-occurring whole plant mutation of the Chrysanthemum×morifolium cultivar Apricot Cherie, disclosed in U.S. Plant Pat. No. 12,961. The new Chrysanthemum was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a single flowering plant within a population of plants of the cultivar Apricot Cherie in February, 2003 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. The selection of this plant was based on its unique ray floret coloration.
Asexual reproduction of the new Chrysanthemum by vegetative tip cuttings was first conducted in Brantford, Ontario, Canada in May, 2003. Asexual reproduction by cuttings has shown that the unique features of the new Chrysanthemum are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.


A method for finding the process, voltage, temperature, parasitics, and power settings (PVTPP) corner at which an electrical circuit design has the worst-case optimum simulated output performance. The method uses a global optimization process in a series of iterations that aim to uncover the PVTPP corner at which the ECD has the worst-case output value. By using the present method, a designer does not have to simulate the ECD at each and every PVTPP corner, which can same considerable time or compute effort. Examples using Model-Building Optimization are provided.

Process, voltage, temperature, parasitics, and power (PVTPP) variations are often modeled as a set of PVTPP corners. Traditionally, without considering parasitics and power variations, only a handful of corners have been necessary: with FF (fast fast) and SS (slow slow) process corners, plus extreme values for voltage and temperature. The total number of combinations in such a case is 23=8, which is the number of possible corners (PVTPP corners).
With modern processes, many more process corners are often needed to properly bracket process variation across different device types. Furthermore, transistors are smaller, performance margins are smaller, voltages are lower, and there may be multiple supply voltages. To bracket these variations, more variables with more values per variable are needed. This leads to more corners.
As shown above, a circuit with 3 variables having 2 values each gave 23=8 corners. Now, even a basic analysis of an electrical circuit design having four device types (e.g. NMOS, PMOS, resistor, capacitor) and 4 other variables (e.g. temperature, voltage, bias, load) with 3 values each results in 38=6,561 corners.
The problem gets worse with double patterning lithography (DPL), where the RC (resistor capacitor) parasitics among the masks degrade performance. To account for these, a tactic is to treat the RC parasitics as corners, leading to about a fifteen times increase in the number of model sets, and therefore a fifteen times increase in the total number of corners.
Further, power verification needs corners for each power setting (e.g. quick boot, cruising, and standby), which also increases the total number of corners. In general, there is a set of variables (power, voltage, temperature, parasitics, power setting, etc), and each variable has a set of values. The designer is interested in finding the value for each variable (the "corner") that gives the worst-case performance (minimum or maximum performance) of all possible corners. The common element among these PVTPP variables is that the design performance is judged on each combination of conditions (the whole set of possible PVTPP corners) and it is the worst-case performance among the whole set of possible PVTPP corners that is of greatest concern. In this framework, the PVTPP variables do not follow a probability distribution; the worst-case must be found in the whole space of PVTPP variables. Of note, in the context of the present disclosure, PVTPP variables exclude global process variables modeled using a distribution, and local process variables modeled using a distribution.
The problem facing circuit designers is that simulating each corner can take several seconds, minutes, or even hours for longer analyses. To simulate all possible corners could take hours or even days, which is too time-consuming. Designers may cope by guessing which corners cause the worst-case performance, but that is risky: a wrong guess could mean that the design has not accounted for the true worst-case, which means failure in testing, followed by a re-spin of the design, or worse, failure in the field.
Finding the worst-case PVTPP corners is part a design loop where the designer (circuit designer) will be changing circuit design variables such as Ws (widths) and Ls (lengths), in order to find the design with the best performance under the worst-case PVTPP conditions.
Different approaches (flows) for designing/verifying electrical circuit designs (ECDs) are shown at FIGS. 1-5. The time taken for each flow is measured and compared for an exemplary ECD, which is VCO of a PLL, from the TSMC AMS Reference Flow 2.0, on 28 nm TSMC process. The ECD in question has two output performance measures, namely duty cycle and gain, with specifications (specs) of: 48.3<duty cycle<51.7%, and 3<Gain<4.4 GHz/V. The variables of the ECD are temperature, Vah,vdd, Va,vdd, Vd,vdd, and 15 model sets (FF, TT, SS, etc.). All combinations of all values of variables lead to 3375 corners (full-factorial scenario). Since there are two output performance measures, and each output has a lower and upper bound, there are up to 2×2=4 PVTPP corners that cause worst-case performance. We used a popular commercial simulator to simulate the ECD.
Because the flows of FIGS. 1-5 include changing design variables, we need a way to compare different approaches in a fair fashion, which is independent of designer skill and how much knowledge the designer has about the circuit. We do this with a simple, reasonable approximation: in the design loop, the designer considers 50 designs. Also, since this is the age of multi-core and multi-machine parallel processing, we always consider each approach to have 10 cores running in parallel.
FIG. 1 shows a prior art flow in which a designer simply chooses to simulate all possible PVTPP corners at each iteration of the electrical circuit design (ECD). At action 50, the topology and initial sizing of the ECD are set. At action 52, the ECD goes through multiple iterations of sizing and testing at all possible PVTPP corners. At action 54, the final ECD proceeds to layout and parasitic extraction (RCX). At action 56, the ECD proceeds to fabrication and is tested at action 58. The flow of FIG. 1 is very accurate (to the extent that PVTPP variation is an accurate model of variation). However, since each of 50 design iterations takes 3375 simulations (e.g., Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) simulations), then it is very slow, taking 13.5 days even when on 10 parallel cores.
FIG. 2 shows another prior art flow where the designer guesses worst case PVTPP corners. After choosing a topology and initial sizing of the ECD at action 50, the designer uses his expertise and experience with the ECD to guess, at action 60, which PVTPP corners cause worst-case performance, without any simulations. Then, he simply designs against those corners at action 62. The advantage of this approach is its speed, because it requires no simulations to select corners, and each design iteration only has to be simulated on the four selected corners (upper and lower specification for each of two outputs). The disadvantage is accuracy or reliability: if the designer's guess of worst-case PVTPP corner was wrong, then the estimate of worst-case performance is overly optimistic. This can be an important issue. For example, in power verification, it could mean that the circuit may not hit the power budget. This in turn translates, for example, into poor battery life on mobile devices.
FIG. 3 shows another prior art flow, which is similar to that of FIG. 2 but comprises a verification action 64 that runs all combinations of PVTPP corners (full-factorial) after the design step. This ensures that the circuit is verified against the target specs (performance specifications). However, it is possible that the verification step found new worst-case PVTPP corners that make the ECD fail specs, or that made the ECD have worse performances than the performance on the current PVTPP corners. To pass against these new PVTPP corners, the design needs to be improved on these corners, and verified again. This takes more simulations and time.
Overall, the flow of FIG. 3 is more accurate than the flow of FIG. 2, but the full-factorial steps are quite slow, which make the overall runtime quite slow (15.2 hours on our example circuit). Also, the extra design round is non-ideal.
FIG. 4 shows another prior art flow that addresses an issue of the flow of FIG. 3, which needs an extra design round because the initially chosen corners likely did not represent the worst-case.
One of the concepts of the flow of FIG. 4 is to simulate, at action 66, all corner combinations (full-factorial) after the topology and initial sizing of the ECD are set, to "extract" good worst-case PVTPP corners. Then, the user designs against these corners. Subsequently, in case there were strong interactions between design variables and PVTPP variables, the user runs full-factorial PVT. Usually, PVTPP corners that were extracted earlier will remain as the worst-case corners; though if not, the user designs against the new worst-case corners and verifies again.
Overall, the flow of FIG. 4 has a comparable runtime and accuracy to the flow of FIG. 3, but typically only needs one design round (instead of two for the flow of FIG. 3) because PVTPP design is always against good corners. The flow of FIG. 4 is accurate, but still fairly slow because it has to run full-factorial PVTPP twice (14.2 hours on our example circuit).
Therefore, improvements in designing electrical circuits under process, voltage, and temperature variations are desirable.

Method and system for verification of electrical circuit designs at process, voltage, and temperature corners


A method for processing taxpayer source documents is disclosed. The method may include receiving proforma data and an electronic image of a taxpayer source document, determining a type of tax statement for the taxpayer source document from the electronic image of the taxpayer source document and using the proforma data, a database, and business rules to verify the type of the tax statement for the electronic image of the taxpayer source document. This can be done by searching for an identification code within the electronic image of the taxpayer source document to determine whether the identification code matches the proforma data. The method can also include extracting data from the electronic image of the taxpayer source document and determining if the extracted data from the electronic image of the taxpayer source document has an error. Once the data is extracted, the method can also include creating an electronic document that includes the extracted data.

Traditionally, tax preparation was done by a single accountant. A taxpayer would give the accountant all of his or her source documents and let the accountant prepare the tax returns. The taxpayer, however, would usually have numerous source documents. For example, the taxpayer may have documents such as W-2s, Brokerage Statements, 1099s, K-1s, etc. The accountant would then have to sift through and manually organize the taxpayer's source documents. The accountant would have to transfer all of the tax data from the taxpayer's source documents into the appropriate federal and state tax return forms such as 1040, 1040 E-Z, etc.
With so many taxpayer source documents and different federal and state tax filing forms, the accountant would spend a lot of time organizing, transferring data, and verifying the data. This manual process can be inefficient, error prone and expensive since the accountant has to search for specific tax data to enter into a specific line in a specific tax filing document. Oftentimes, the accountant will have to reuse the same tax data over and over again, but has to reenter the tax data each time. Furthermore, with such a large volume of tax data, the potential for error increases, especially when a single human being is involved. With federal and state penalties increasing for mistakes, this could be disastrous for the taxpayer and the accountant. This problem is compounded when the taxpayer has to file taxes in multiple states and has multiple employers. From an accountant's perspective, this large volume of tax data also presents problems because of potential staff shortages. Not every person is qualified to handle and analyze the large volume of tax data. Thus, this restriction in qualified personnel can lead to staff shortages.
One potential solution is to convert the taxpayer source documents into an electronic form. However, simply scanning the paper taxpayer source documents to be manually read as an electronic image such as a large JPEG is inadequate because the taxpayer source documents would still be unorganized and there is no verification of the tax data. Furthermore, the tax data is not in any form that is easily accessible for automated processing. The accountant would only be able to view the data on his computer, but would still have to manually transfer the tax data to the appropriate federal and state tax filing forms. Thus, there is a need for an invention that better processes a user's taxpayer source documents.

Efficient work flow system and method for processing taxpayer source documents


A piezoelectric actuator is proposed, for example for actuating a mechanical component, and has a multilayered structure of piezoelectric layers with inner electrodes interspersed between them. The inner electrodes contact the outer electrodes on alternating sides and the regions between the outer electrodes are provided with a suitable insulation. The insulation is a layer comprised of a band, for example an adhesive tape, which covers over a predetermined region between the outer electrodes. The adhesive tape is comprised of a precisely measured, prefabricated material and can be stuck, rolled, melted, vulcanized, or sintered in place in a bubble-free manner.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an improved piezoelectric actuator useful, for example, for actuating a mechanical component such as a valve or the like.
It is generally known that the so-called piezoelectric effect can be used to produce a piezoelectric element partly comprised of ceramic material with a suitable crystalline structure. When an external electrical voltage is applied, a mechanical reaction of the piezoelectric element occurs, which produces a pressure or tension in a direction that can be predetermined as a function of the crystalline structure and the regions to which the electrical voltage is applied.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The structure of these piezoelectric actuators can be laid out in a number of layers, in the form of so-called multilayered piezoelectric actuators in which the layers are respectively interspersed with the inner electrodes used to apply the electrical voltage. To this end, piezoelectric sheets are produced and stacked in alternation with printed electrode surfaces that serve as inner electrodes. In this case, a sheet has its connection only on a connection side and on the opposite side, must have an edge without an electrode and this edge must be provided with an insulating space. Then the two sides are connected on the outside by means of outer electrodes. The piezoelectric actuator is thus produced in a known way with a number of plates, much like a capacitor.
Such multilayered piezoelectric actuators are operated with field intensities that require an insulation of the open leakage paths in the outer piezoelectric ceramic between the potentials of the outer electrodes. Suitable lacquers or insulating materials with favorable adhesion and favorable breakdown and insulation characteristics can, for example, be applied over a general area in an intrinsically known way, using proven methods that involve spraying or immersion.
Piezoelectric actuators of this kind are known, for example, from DE 199 28 190 A1, in which the outer electrodes are strengthened with reinforcing materials such as corrugated sheets or gratings and are provided for connecting inner electrodes to connections.
In order to assure a reliable manufacturing process in mass production, it is important to prevent contamination of the contact zones for the connection of outer electrodes, e.g. by means of welding or soldering. An above-described application of lacquer, however, may possibly lead to a contamination of the tools used in the connecting process. The required contaminant-free contact points, however, can only be achieved with difficulty, by removing lacquer and lacquer residues.
DE 199 28 180 A1 has also disclosed that in the region between the contacts of the outer electrodes, the piezoelectric layers are recessed toward the inside by a predetermined amount to form a groove. During machining of the piezoelectric actuator surface and during attachment of the outer electrodes, this groove prevents the electrode material between the outer electrodes from becoming smeared and therefore results in a significant improvement in the resistance of the piezoelectric actuator to insulation breakthroughs.

Piezoelectric actuator and a method for producing it


Multi-threaded access to a collection is synchronized without locking the collection for long periods of time. In one implementation, a collection is locked briefly to allow safe creation of a resource entry (or a placeholder entry) in the collection and then unlocked prior to the start of the resource build operation. As such, the collection is unlocked during the potentially long period of time required to build the resource (e.g., a data object) into the collection. Furthermore, during the build operation, access attempts to the same resource in the collection by other threads are forced to wait until the resource build is completed. Nevertheless, the collection itself is not locked during the resource build operation, so that other threads can access other resources within the collection without waiting.

Certain server-based applications can be executed by multiple users on one or more servers across a network. For example, rather than running individual applications (e.g., individual spreadsheet applications) on desktop computers, multiple users can access a server over an Intranet through their desktop computers and execute a server-based application (e.g., a server-based spreadsheet application) on that server. Through this server-based application, multiple users can manipulate common functionality and data available on that server.
A typical scenario might include a server-based accounting program that is accessed by multiple accountants from various enterprise departments. The server-based application receives user requests, creates and accesses data objects, performs appropriate computations on these data objects, and renders application-specific presentations of the computation results for display on the users' desktop computers (e.g., through browsers). Furthermore, to avoid the time and resources required to build data objects for each user, once these server-based objects are created they can be shared among multiple users (e.g., in servicing multiple requests).
However, creation of certain complex data objects for a server-based application can be time-consuming and CPU-consuming. For example, in a server-based spreadsheet application, a user may request that a workbook be created for display on his or her desktop computer. In response to the request, the server-based application performs a slow process of building one or more individual worksheet objects and adding them to a "collection" that represents the workbook. The objects can then be rendered for display on the user's system. As they are being built and added to the collection, however, the worksheets objects and/or their contents may be retrieved from various, possibly remote, storage locations. Therefore, the process of building each worksheet object can take a noticeably long amount of time from a user's perspective.
When multiple users (e.g., represented by multiple threads) attempt to access data objects in the same collection, multi-threaded applications synchronize data access to the collection by the multiple threads in order to ensure that an access by one thread does not corrupt an access by another thread. One method of synchronization used in traditional multi-threaded applications is a simple locking mechanism, wherein a first thread that is accessing a data object of the collection takes control of the collection and locks out all other threads. The lock prevents access by any other thread until all of the first thread's accesses to that collection are completed. Thus, if a second thread attempts to access a different data object in the collection during the locked period, access by the second thread is blocked. As a result, the second thread waits unproductively until the collection is available. Accordingly, while simple locking mechanisms can be used in typical multi-threaded applications to synchronize multi-threaded access, these same mechanisms prove too slow for collections in many multi-threaded server-based applications.

Synchronizing shared resources in a collection


Disclosed herein is a system for providing a test environment, composed of one or more virtual machines, to a developer instantly in response to a checkout request from the developer. To do this, a sandbox service implements a smart, tiered approach to creating and provisioning virtual machines that compose the test environments. The approach is flexible and elastic in nature, so that the developers do not have to wait an extended period of time for a test environment, yet the costs associated with configuring the virtual machines (e.g., storage and compute costs) are minimized. For example, the sandbox service can use historical data to predict a number of checkout requests expected for a first time interval (e.g., one day), a second time interval (e.g., thirty minutes), and a third time interval (e.g., five minutes). The sandbox service can then configure virtual machines into different states based on the predicted numbers.

Providing an optimal user experience is an important aspect for cloud-based platforms that offer network services. As cloud computing gains popularity, more and more data and/or applications (e.g., functions, etc.) are stored and/or provided online via network connections. In many scenarios, a cloud-based platform may provide a service to thousands or millions of end-users (e.g., customers, clients, tenants, etc.) geographically dispersed around a country, or even the world. In order to provide this service, a cloud-based platform often includes different resources, such as server farms, hosted in various datacenters.
To ensure an optimal user experience, features of the service (e.g., an application feature) must continually be maintained, improved, introduced, and/or removed via updates (e.g., a code update, a program update, etc.). The update is typically configured by an individual developer, or a group of developers, tasked with managing a particular feature offered by an application of the service. An update that has not been tested before being deployed to resources that are exposed to the end-users greatly increases a likelihood of regressions or problems that can result in functionality loss and/or sub-optimal experiences for the end-users.
Consequently, many entities that operate cloud-based platforms provide a sandbox service to their developers, so that an update can be tested before the update is deployed to the resources that are exposed to the end-users. A "sandbox" is a security mechanism that enables code and/or programs to be executed in a safe environment so that failures and/or software vulnerabilities can be mitigated (e.g., prevented from spreading to, or harming, resources outside the safe environment).
Conventional approaches to implementing a sandbox service provision these safe environments for testing from scratch, which results in large configuration costs and down time due to a delay in creating the safe environments. For instance, a conventional sandbox service waits for a developer to request a safe environment to test a feature. After the request is received, a backend lab that is part of the sandbox service typically consumes storage and compute resources of a cloud-based platform, at a large cost, to create one or more virtual machines that compose one of these safe environments that can be used by the developer. In addition to costs, it often takes an extended period of time (e.g., roughly an hour) to create the one or more virtual machines, which means that the developer requesting the safe environment has to wait in order to test the feature. This can make the experience a frustrating one for the developer.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.

Adaptive resource management for instantly provisioning test environments via a sandbox service


The present invention generally relates to provide a fabrication method for forming a flash memory device provided with an adjustable sharp end structure of the floating gate. While the present invention utilizes the dielectric spacer to form the L-shaped floating gate provided with a sharp end structure, the present invention adjust the thickness of the polysilicon layer and the dielectric layer covering on the polysilicon layer surface to adjust the position of the dielectric spacer so as to change the position of the sharp end structure of the L-shaped floating gate and to enhance the ability of erasing control of the flash memory and to simultaneously form a stable and easily controlled channel length and the sharp end structure for point discharging.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a semiconductor process, and more particularly relates to a fabrication method for forming a flash memory device, which is provided with an adjustable sharp end structure of the floating gate, in the semiconductor process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In view of the prior semiconductor, first, a spacer structure is usually formed on a semiconductor substrate so as to utilize the spacer structure to define the channel length. However, the fabrication method has the disadvantage of the difficult control of the spacer profile and cannot precisely control the ion implanting position of the source and the drain resulting in the disadvantage of the difficult control of the channel length.
The spacer can further be used as the floating gate of the flash memory except for defining the channel length. Such as the U.S. Pat. No. 5,427,968 is disclosed a fabrication method for forming a split gate flash memory with a separated and self-aligned tunneling regions. The fabrication method for forming the split gate flash memory utilizing the polysilicon spacer as the floating gate has the disadvantages of the difficult control of the spacer profile and length because of the little difference of the process parameters and elements, so the channel length of the memory is difficultly controlled.
Besides, the operation method of the flash memory is using the technology of injecting in or erasing electric charge from the floating gate. At the data-erasing step, the floating gate of the polysilicon spacer requires a sharp end to point discharge so as to erase the electric charge via the tunneling effect of the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling (F-N tunneling) technology to achieve the purpose of erasing the data. However, the floating gate of the spacer of the US patent mentioned above does not provide with a good sharp end structure, so the effect of point discharging is limited when it performs the data-erasing step. The control gate should completely cover the sharp end structure of the floating gate for advantageous for data erasing. However, in the formulation of the control gate on the floating gate of the spacer of the prior process, the process window is narrower so as to easily make the control gate not completely covering the sharp end structure and the prior process could not control or adjust the position of the sharp end structure and the relative position between the control gate and the sharp end structure.
Obviously, the main spirit of the present invention is to provide a fabrication method for forming a flash memory device provided with an adjustable sharp end structure of the floating gate, and then some disadvantages of well-known technology are overcome.
The primary object of the present invention is to provide a fabrication method for forming a flash memory device provided with an adjustable position of the sharp end structure of the floating gate. The present invention can control the position of the sharp end structure to improve the size of the process window and the control gate can easily completely cover the sharp end structure of the floating gate so as to enhance the ability of erasing control of the flash memory.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a fabrication method for forming a flash memory device provided with an adjustable sharp end structure of the floating gate. The present invention can manufacture stable and easily controlled channel length, the sharp end structure for point discharging, and can achieve the repeatedly control of the fabrication of the semiconductor devices.
In order to achieve previous objects, the present invention is sequentially formed a defined patterned first dielectric layer, a polysilicon layer, and a second dielectric layer on a semiconductor substrate provided with a gate oxide layer thereon. Following, the second dielectric layer is etched to form a dielectric spacer at a salient residual portion of the polysilicon layer of the second dielectric layer, wherein a position of the dielectric spacer is changeable via adjusting a thickness of the second dielectric layer. Last, using the dielectric spacer as a mask to etch the polysilicon layer can form a polysilicon spacer with a sharp end structure at two sides of the first dielectric layer, wherein the polysilicon spacer is used as a floating gate and a position of the salient sharp end structure is depending on a position of the dielectric spacer.
Other advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein are set forth, by way of illustration and example, certain embodiments of the present invention.

Fabrication method for forming flash memory device provided with adjustable sharp end structure of the L-shaped floating gate


The invention enables creation of grammar networks that can regulate, control, and define the content and scope of human-machine interaction in natural language voice user interfaces (NLVUI). More specifically, the invention concerns a phrase-based modeling of generic structures of verbal interaction and use of these models for the purpose of automating part of the design of such grammar networks.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the creation of grammar networks that regulate, control, and define the content and scope of human-machine interaction in natural language voice user interfaces (NLVUI). More specifically, the invention concerns a phrase-based modeling of generic structures of verbal interaction and use of these models for the purpose of automating part of the design of such grammar networks.
2. Related Art
In recent years, a number of routine over-the-phone transactions such as voice dialing and collect call handling, as well as some commercial call center self-service applications, have been successfully automated with speech recognition technology. Such systems allow users to access e.g., a banking application or ticket reservation system, remotely, and to retrieve information or complete simple transactions by using voice commands.
a. Limitations and Unsolved Problems in Current Technology
Current technology limits the design of spoken dialogue systems in terms of both complexity and portability. Systems must be designed for a clearly defined task domain, and users are expected to respond to system prompts with short, fixed voice commands. Systems typically work well as long as vocabularies remain relatively small (200-500 words), choices at any point in the interaction remain limited and users interact with the system in a constrained, disciplined manner.
There are two major technological barriers that need to be overcome in order to create systems that allow for more spontaneous user interaction: (1) systems must be able to handle more complex tasks, and (2) the speech interface must become more "natural" if systems are expected to perform sophisticated functions based on unrestrained, natural speech or language input.
A major bottleneck is the complexity of the grammar network that enables the system to recognize natural language voice requests, interpret their meaning correctly, and respond appropriately. As indicated above, this network must anticipate, and thus explicitly spell out, the entire virtual space of possible user requests and/or responses to any given system prompt. To keep choices limited, the underlying recognition grammars typically process requests in a strictly predetermined, menu-driven order.
Another problem is portability. Current systems must be task specific, that is, they must be designed for a particular domain. An automated banking application cannot process requests about the weather, and, conversely, a system designed to provide weather information cannot complete banking transactions. Because recognition grammars are designed by hand and model domain specific rather than generic machine-human interaction, they cannot be easily modified or ported to another domain. Reusability is limited to certain routines that may be used in more than one system. Such routines consist of sub-grammars for yes-no questions or personal user data collection required in many commercial transactions (e.g., for collecting name, addresses, credit card information etc.). Usually, designing a system in a new domain means starting entirely from scratch.
Even though the need for generic dialogue models is widely recognized and a number of systems claim to be portable, no effective and commercially feasible technology for modeling generic aspects of conversational dialogue currently exists.
b. Current System Design and Implementation
The generated dialogue flow and the grammar network can be dauntingly complex for longer interactions. The reason is that users always manage to come up with new and unexpected ways to make even the simplest request, and all potential input variants must be anticipated in the recognition grammar. Designing such recognition grammars, usually by trained linguists, is extremely labor-intensive and costly. It typically starts with a designer's guess of what users might say and requires hours of refinement as field data is collected from real users interacting with a system simulation or a prototype.
c. Stochastic Versus Rule-Based Approaches to Natural Language Processing
Since its beginnings, speech technology has oscillated between rule-governed approaches based on human expert knowledge and those based on statistical analysis of vast amounts of data. In the realm of acoustic modeling for speech recognition, probabilistic approaches have far outperformed models based on expert knowledge. In natural language processing (NLP), on the other hand, the rule-governed, theory-driven approach continued to dominate the field throughout the 1970's and 1980's.
In recent years, the increasing availability of large electronic text corpora has led to a revival of quantitative, computational approaches to NLP in certain domains.
One such domain is large vocabulary dictation. Because dictation covers a much larger domain than interactive voice-command systems (typically a 30,000 to 50,000 word vocabulary) and does not require an interpretation of the input, these systems deploy a language model rather than a recognition grammar to constrain the recognition hypotheses generated by the signal analyzer. A language model is computationally derived from large text corpora in the target domain (e. g., news text). N-gram language models contain statistical information about recurrent word sequences (word pairs, combinations of 3, 4, or n words). They estimate the likelihood that a given word is followed by another word, thus reducing the level of uncertainty in automatic speech recognition. For example, the word sequence "A bear attacked him" will have a higher probability in Standard English usage than the sequence "A bare attacked him."
Another domain where probabilistic models are beginning to be used is automated part-of-speech analysis. Part-of-speech analysis is necessary in interactive systems that require interpretation, that is, a conceptual representation of a given natural language input. Traditional part-of-speech analysis draws on explicit syntactical rules to parse natural language input by determining the parts of an utterance and the syntactic relationships among these parts. For example, the syntactical rule S→NP VP states that a sentence S consists of a noun phrase NP and a verb phrase VP.
Rule-based parsing methods perform poorly when confronted with syntactically ambiguous input that allows for more than one possible syntactic representation. In such cases, linguistic preferences captured by probabilistic models have been found to resolve a significant portion of syntactic ambiguity.
Statistical methods have also been applied to modeling larger discourse units, such as fixed phrases and collocations (words that tend to occur next to each other, e.g. "eager to please"). Statistical phrase modeling involves techniques similar to the ones used in standard n-gram language modeling, namely, collecting frequency statistics about word sequences in large text corpora (n-grams). However, not every n-gram is a valid phrase, for example, the sequence "the court went into" is a valid 4-gram in language modeling, but only "the court went into recess" is a phrase. A number of different methods have been used to derive valid phrases from n-grams, including syntactical filtering, mutual information, and entropy. In some cases, statistical modeling of phrase sequences has been found to reduce lexical ambiguity. Others have used a phrase-based statistical modeling technique to generate knowledge bases that can help lexicographers to determine relevant linguistic usage.
Experiments in training probabilistic models of higher-level discourse units on conversational corpora have also been shown to significantly reduce the perplexity of a large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition task in the domain of spontaneous conversational speech. Others have modeled dialogue flow by using a hand-tagged corpus in which each utterance is labeled as an IFT (illocutionary force type). Probabilistic techniques have also been used to build predictive models of dialogue structures such as dialogue act sequences. The bottleneck in all of these experiments is the need for hand-tagging both training and testing corpora.
Another recent application of a probabilistic, phrase-based approach to NLP has been in the field of foreign language pedagogy, where it has been proposed as a new method of teaching foreign languages. Michael Lewis, in his book, Implementing The Lexical Approach (Howe, Engl, 1997) challenges the conventional view that learning a language involves two separate cognitive tasks: first, learning the vocabulary of the language, and second, mastering the grammatical rules for combining words into sentences. The lexical approach proposes instead that mastering a language involves knowing how to use and combine phrases in the right way (which may or may not be grammatical). Phrases, in Lewis's sense are fixed multi-word chunks of language, whose likelihood of co-occurring in natural text is more than random. Mastering a language is the ability of using these chunks in a manner that produces coherent discourse without necessarily being rule-based.


A process and an apparatus for testing the uniformity of a pneumatic tire such as a vehicle tire provide that fluctuations in tire inflation pressure are measured during a uniformity-testing measuring run in which the tire to be tested is rolled against a test surface under a given loading, with force fluctuations occurring at the contact surface therebetween, and in which a compensation value is formed from the measured fluctuations. The compensation value is combined with the measured force fluctuations thereby to eliminate force fluctuation components attributable to fluctuations in the tire inflation pressure.

For the purposes of checking the quality and in particular the degree of uniformity of a pneumatic tire such as a motor vehicle tire, a tire may be mounted on a rotary device having measuring rims. The tire can then be pressed under a given loading against a test surface which may be in the form of a rotating testing drum or an endless circulating belt. While the tire is rolled against the test surface, radial, lateral and tangential force fluctuations are measured, to provide information about the uniformity and thus the quality of the tire being tested. For example `Automobile-Industrie` 2/71, pages 85 through 90, in an article by Peter M. Gruber `Reifenungleichformigkeit--Ursache und Wirkung` [`Tire non-uniformity--cause and Effect`] describes processes and apparatuses for testing the uniformity of pneumatic tires.
However, the forel fluctuations that are detected in the above-discussed processes and apparatuses do not just result from irregularities or non-uniformities of the tire itself, but may include force fluctuation components which are to be attributed to alterations and variations in arrangement of the measuring system itself. For example, in spite of sensitive regulation of the inflation pressure of the tire being tested, it is not possible to maintain an absolutely constant inflation pressure in the tire throughout a measuring run. Although the inflation pressure of the tire being tested may be controlled or regulated, in which, for example, a reference may be made to EP 0 265 037 Al, it is not possible to provide an absolutely constant inflation pressure throughout the testing operation, if the equipment used for and expenditure incurred in regulating the tire inflation pressure is to be kept at a commercially viable level.

Pneumatic tire uniformity testing process and apparatus


A storage processor isolates and classifies file system faults and inconsistencies to produce a fault tree for inline error recovery. The storage processor isolates the metadata objects or objects that have internal inconsistencies, the storage processor creates a fault tree to map the file system; or portion of the file system with the errors or inconsistencies and the metadata objects dependent upon those objects. Once the fault having been mapped, determine the complexity of recovering the branch of the fault tree with the error. If the error is not too complex, performing recovery of the metadata objects online otherwise taking the system offline for file system recovery.

A file system is a way of organizing data for persistent storage. The file system is broken into user data, the data a user expects to see when requesting a file and metadata, the data that defines the internal hierarchy of the file system.
In file systems errors occur for a number of reasons. Software logic errors, checksum errors or media errors cause inconsistencies within the metadata responsible for describing the internal structure of the file system.
The file system will eventually attempt to process the metadata with inconsistencies or errors that will likely cause the file system to crash. When this occurs, a conventional file system recovery tool is executed to set the metadata objects within the file system to a consistent state. The length of time the conventional file system recovery runs is dependent upon the size of the file system and the number of metadata objects within the file system that must be corrected to set the file system to a consistent state.

Reducing file system data unavailability window by adapting hierarchical recovery framework