Efficiency in the use of a computer for network analysis
S. P. Chan, R. Muñoz · NASA Technical Reports Server (NASA) · 1968
u i t and system d.esign, a r e a l motivation e x i s t s f o r efficiencx.Many software packages such as SEPTRE:, ECAP, and NET 1 have proven t h e point t h a t c i r c u i t and system design engineering can be e f l e c t l v e l y aided by i n t e l l i g e n t 'us'e of t h e computer and t h i s use i s l i m i t e d not only by amilab1.e computing equipment bu-t a l s o by methods of computing, methods which vary widely i n e f f i c i e n c y .Electronl.csc i r c u i t a n a l y s i s programs of today a r e very s o p h i s t i c a t e d and capable of analyzing l a r g e networks.They veiy o f t e n r e q u i r e memory capacity and computing times t h a t t a x t h e resources of a s m 1 1 computing i n s t a l l a t i o n .The use of such programs r e p r e s e n t s a c o s t t h a t can be measured 5 y a number of f a c t o r s including computing t i m e and memory capacity and t h i s c o s t must be compared with t h e b e n e f i t derived.programs a r e l e s s c o s t l y than others when p e r f o m i n g t h e same a n a l y s i s function and some programs a r e d e f i n i t e l y unsuited t o p e r f o r x h g c e r t a i q computations, not because t h e y l a c k t h e c a p a b i l i t y , but 'because t h e c o s t of doing t h e s e computations i s too great.Some 3 i .s 7aper has been w r i t t e n i n an attempt t o discuss t h e problem -'ilk cost of a coaputation as measured by t h e time necessary for of e f f l c l e n c y of computation i n t h e d i g i t a l computer i n a conceptual.way.perfo:'xLng t n e required opera-tions and t h e memory capacity or o t h e r hard.c.r;l cz rqti;.remcn-ts.i s t r e a t e d .A method of a n a l y s i s u t i l i z i n g t h e graph zheGi-etical approach f o r eval.uatingt h e c o s t of computation i s introduced, This method i s new i n s o f a r as it makes a l o g i c a l d i s t l n c -t i o n between The l i n e a r graph of a computation and t h e 1:inear graph of a program an6 shows i n g e n e r a l i t y the importance of t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p s between, dhese l-,i.~ogi-aph models without going into any g r e a t depth t o descri-be t h e algebra of t h e s e r e l a t i o n s h i p s , s t r u c t u r e such as c y c l i c operations and v a r i a t i o n s i n t h e types of opemt:i.onssuch as deterministic or probabil.istica r e discussed.The .., optimization problem i s vieyed a s it r e l a t e s t o t h e assj.gnnent of p r i o r i t i e s among processors i n a multiprocessing hardware configuration.-.A number of dist3.nctionsi n graph