These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2012 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC). They reflect the breadth and diversity of research interests showcased at the conference, at which over 130 researchers from Salford, the North West and other UK universities presented their work. 21 papers are collated here from the humanities, arts, social sciences, health, engineering, environment and life sciences, built environment and business.
SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is the industry's only openly defined and evolved RISC architecture. Version 9 is the new 64-bit incarnation of SPARC - the most significant change since SPARC's introduction in 1987! Unlike other RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) designs, SPARC specifies not a hardware implementation ("chip"), but an open, standard architecture belonging to the community of SPARC vendors and users. The SPARC specification is defined by the SPARC Architecture Committee, a technical arm of the computer-maker consortium, SPARC International. Version 9 provides 64-bit data and addressing, support for fault tolerance, fast context switching, support for advanced compiler optimizations, efficient design for Superscalar processors, and a clean structure for modern operating systems. The V9 architecture supplements, rather than replaces, the 32-bit Version 8 architecture. The non-privileged features of Version 9 are upward-compatible from Version 8, so 32-bit application software can execute natively, without modification, on Version 9 systems - no special "compatibility mode" is required. Publication of the Version 9 architecture marks a three-year development effort by SPARC International member companies from a broad cross-section of disciplines.
This in-depth guide to Version 8 SPARC, a high-speed RISC computer chip, provides the reader with the background, design philosophy, high-level features and implementations of this new model. Includes an expanded index of terms for easy reference and a table of synthetic instructions added to the suggested assembly language syntax.
The papers in this volume reflect the most recent research findings in cybernetics and systems research. They were selected from 298 draft final papers which were submitted to the conference by authors from more than 30 different countries from five continents.
This volume contains 64 papers from contributors around the world on a wide range of topics in database systems research. Of special mention are the papers describing the practical experiences of developing and implementing some of the many useful database systems on the market. Readers should find useful new ideas from the proceedings of this international symposium.
