A Sampler of NIST Projects

• HARDWARE, NETWORKING
  • MultiKron Performance Instrumentation for MIMD Computers
  • Modeling and Performance Evaluation of ATM Network Protocols
• SOFTWARE
  • Sensitivity Analysis Tool for Tuning Parallel Code
  • Parallel Applications Development Environment
  • Portable and Adaptable High Performance Sparse Matrix Software
  • Guide to Available Mathematical Software
• DIGITAL LIBRARIES
  • Spoken Natural Language Interface to Library Catalogs
  • New Modular Client/Server for Information Retrieval Via Z39.50
  • Segmenting Scanned Complex Scientific Documents
• MANUFACTURING
  • Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Networking Testbed
  • Application Protocols for Process Plant Industries
• SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS
  • Algorithms and Software for Condensed Phase Quantum Chemistry
  • Complete Photoassociation Spectrum of Ultracold Atoms
  • Structure of Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates
  • Ab-initio Simulation of X-ray Fluorescence Spectra

MultiKron is NIST's performance instrumentation chip for MIMD computers. Its features have been incorporated into newer, high end commercial computers to assist designers in understanding machine bottlenecks. Recently, new MultiKron chips were successfully prototyped and SBus MultiKron toolkits were developed and released, allowing researchers to obtain hands-on experience with the chip without designing and building a hardware interface for their computer.

Keywords : performance analysis
Details : http://www.multikron.nist.gov/multikron
Contact : Dr. Alan Mink (amink@nist.gov)

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NIST is participating in the development of protocols for Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks. NIST uses its network simulation and formal modeling tools to verify the completeness of protocols being developed by the ATM Forum and to evaluate the performance of the protocols. These protocols include traffic management for the Available Bit Rate service, network routing and call control for the private network-to-network interfaces.

Keywords : networks, asynchronous transfer mode
Details : http://isdn.ncsl.nist.gov/
Contact : Dr. David Su (david.su@nist.gov)

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S-Check, a new performance tool offering code-tuning information hitherto unavailable on parallel systems, has been released. S-Check includes mathematically sound estimates of program sensitivities to code changes and to code interactions. Unlike conventional means, S-Check's estimates accurately indicate where parallel code is best improved.

Keywords : software tools, performance analysis
Details : http://www.scheck.nist.gov/scheck
Contact : Dr. Gordon Lyon (gordon.lyon@nist.gov)

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The construction of parallel software applications for heterogenous virtual machines requires extensive bookkeeping that can distract the programmer from the real challenges of parallel algorithm development. To simplify these tasks, researchers at NIST have produced the Parallel Applications Development Environment (PADE). PADE provides an integrated framework for managing all phases of the development of applications based on the PVM message-passing library, including editing, file transfer, compilation, execution, and performance monitoring. The package consists of an intuitive graphical user interface, a suite of PVM utilities, and documentation.

Keywords : software tools, PVM, message passing
Details : http://math.nist.gov/pade/
Contact : Dr. Charles Clark (charles.clark@nist.gov)

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NIST researchers are exploiting object-oriented data abstraction techniques to develop software for sparse matrix computations which achieve new levels of portability, adaptability and maintainability for scientific software. The packages released this year, IML++ (iterative methods library) and SparseLib++, both written in C++, have demonstrated both good performance and portability across a wide range of machine architectures.

Keywords : mathematical software, linear algebra
Details : http://math.nist.gov/pozo/iml++.html
Contact : Dr. Roldan Pozo (roldan.pozo@nist.gov)

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The Guide to Available Mathematical Software is a successful working example of a digital library of reusable mathematical software for computational science and engineering. The system catalogs nearly 10,000 software components using a detailed tree-structured problem-oriented classification system. The WWW service attracted more than 100,000 users in the last year.

[Image] : Accessing math software using problem-oriented classification.

Keywords : digital libraries, mathematical software
Details : http://math.nist.gov/gams/
Contact : Dr. Ronald Boisvert (boisvert@nist.gov)

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A prototype system which allows a person to search for bibliographic ("card catalog") information in library systems using spoken natural language has been developed. The project demonstrates feasibility of using such interfaces for information services without reliance on keyboards and menus, and serves as a testbed for exploring issues that arise in integrating large vocabulary continuous speech recognition and understanding into information technology systems.

Keywords : digital libraries, catalogs, natural language processing
Contact : Dr. David Pallett (dpallett@nist.gov)

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NIST has released Z39.50/PRISE, a public domain network-based indexing and retrieval system. The release contains (a) a basic UNIX client and server which run over the Internet to support search and retrieval of information accessible via the Z39.50 ANSI/NISO standard protocol, and (b) an indexer and search engine (PRISE). The server architecture isolates the search engine from the details of the Z39.50 protocol thus minimizing the effort needed to interface the server to natural language search engines other than PRISE. Users input simple queries, such as a sentence or a phrase and retrieve lists of records ranked in order of likely relevance. Ranking is based on the matches between the words the user inputs and the words in the text records or documents, with appropriate statistical weighting.

[Image] : The Z39.50/PRISE GUI graphical user interface.

Keywords : digital libraries, information retrieval
Details : http://potomac.ncsl.nist.gov/~over/zp1/main.html
Contact : Donna Harman (donna.harman@nist.gov)

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A system to automatically segment scanned images of complex scientific and technical documents into text, mathematics, and graphics has been developed as an initial step in the process of converting paper archives into a digital library. The primary segmentation uses connected components to form zones, which are then classified using OCR techniques. The system is being tested on the 23,000 pages of images in NIST Special Database 20. This test sample was also prepared and released as part of the project.

[Image] : Processing stages in document segmentation : rotation correction, in which skewed text is horizontally aligned, decomposition, which demarcates text, math and graphics regions, line isolation, which marks lines of text within paragraphs, and finally, character segmentation, which breaks lines and words into distinct letters prior to computer recognition.

Keywords : digital libraries, document analysis, image processing
Details : ftp://sequoyah.ncsl.nist.gov/
Contact : Charles Wilson (charles.wilson@nist.gov)

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An Advanced Manufacturing Systems And Networking Testbed (AMSANT) for developing and demonstrating integration methods, performing remote testing with industry collaborators, and disseminating research information to US industry is now operational at NIST. AMSANT establishes an open and unbiased experimental computing and communication facility for testing draft application protocols for data exchange standards and for the integration activities for computerized systems of various manufacturing industries.

[Image] : An overview of AMSANT.
[Image] : Simulation of a virtual production facility.

Keywords : manufacturing, data exchange standards, application protocols
Details : http://elib.cme.nist.gov/fasd/projhome.html
Contact : Mark Luce (mark.luce@nist.gov)

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NIST is working with the process plant industries (e.g. pharmaceutical, chemical, power generation, engineering and construction) and related information technology vendors to develop, test, and demonstrate information exchange standards based on ISO 10303, commonly referred to as STEP, STandard for the Exchange of Product Model Data. Collaboration with the PlantSTEP consortium, for example, has lead to the first such application protocol for the process plant industries, ISO 10303-227, now under review by TC184/SC4.

Keywords : process plant industries, data exchange standards, protocols
Details : http://www.bfrl.nist.gov/pubs/sum52.html
Contact : Mark Palmer (mark.palmer@nist.gov)

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A new version of the Generalized Atomic and Molecular Software System (GAMESS) has been developed that includes special algorithms for the inclusion of discrete and continuum solvent models. GAMESS is a quantum chemistry software package distributed freely by Iowa State University. The new version, developed in collaboration with NIST, incorporates recently-developed "effective fragment potential" methods for studying chemistry in the condensed phase. This new capability, coupled to high- performance parallel computing technology, extends the applicability of quantum chemistry methods to more complex model systems.

Keywords : advanced software, quantum chemistry
Details : http://indigo15.carb.nist.gov/hpcc/hpcc.html
Contact : Dr. Walter J. Stevens (walter.stevens@nist.gov)

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Physicists at NIST are using the IBM SP2 to determine the photoassociation spectrum of ultracold sodium atoms in a laser trap. The photoassociation spectrum contains information on the long-range interaction between atoms, which is needed to understand collision processes in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. The calculations required the determination of thousands of inner eigenvectors of a matrix of order 40,000. The calculation also leads to a highly accurate value of the Na 3s-3p transition probability, supporting results of ab-initio calculations that presently disagree with experimental values inferred from lifetime measurements.

[Image] : Theoretical Na_2 spectrum below the P_(1/2)+S asymptote

Keywords : molecular structure and dynamics
Contact : Dr. Paul Julienne (paul.julienne@nist.gov)

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In mid 1995 several groups reported the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in samples of ultracold trapped atoms. This opens up possibilities for controlled production of macroscopic quantum states, with applications in quantum computing and the development of a coherent source of deBroglie radiation (the "atom laser"). Theoretical efforts at NIST, in collaboration with groups at Georgia Southern University and Oxford University, have developed techniques for computing the structure and excitation spectrum of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates using a nonlinear Schroedinger technique. These have reproduced many observed features, and have provided guidance for new experiments.

Keywords : computational quantum physics
Details : http://amo.phy.gasou.edu/bec.html
Contact : Dr. Charles Clark (charles.clark@nist.gov)

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Detailed understanding of the electronic structures of materials must be inferred from various forms of spectroscopy. One of the most powerful experimental techniques is x-ray emission spectroscopy, which provides symmetry- and site-specific information on the density of electronic states. Working in collaboration with experimentalists at the Advanced Light Source (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory), NIST theorists are developing ab initio methods for modeling x-ray emission spectra of various systems. Excellent agreement with experiment has been obtained for the first system studied in detail, graphite. Calculations involved search for an optimal basis spanning electron band states constructed from up to 3000 plane waves. A reduced basis set of size 60 enabled calculations to be performed with 100-fold speedup without loss of accuracy. Since spectra are accumulations of very many spectral features, their summation could be efficiently formed using parallel computing.

[Image] : Comparison of ab initio electronic structure calculation with recent experimental data.

Keywords : electronic structure of materials
Contact : Dr. Eric Shirley (eric.shirley@nist.gov)

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For further information about the HPCC program at NIST, contact Dr. Frederick C. Johnson (fjohnson@cam.nist.gov).

This page was developed by Dr. Ronald F. Boisvert (boisvert@nist.gov).

Last change : December 13, 1995