We report on the development of a knowledge representation model, which is based on the SHARED object model reported in Shared Workspaces for Computer-Aided Collaborative Engineering (Wong, A. and Sriram, D., Technical Report, IESL 93-06, Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, MIT, March, 1993) and Research in Engineering Design (Wong, A. and Sriram, D., SHARED: An Information Model for Cooperative Product Development, 1993, Fall, 21-39). Our current model is implemented as a layered scheme, that incorporates both an evolving artifact and its associated design process. To represent artifacts as they evolve, we define objects recursively without a pre-defined granularity on this recursive decomposition. This eliminates the need for translations between levels of abstraction in the design process. The SHARED model extends traditional OOP in three ways: by allowing explicit relationship classes with inheritance hierarchies; by permitting constraints to be associated with objects and relationships; and by comparing `similar' objects at three different levels (form, function and behavior).

This paper presents a shaper architecture that scales to a large number of connections with diverse burstiness and bandwidth parameters. The architecture arbitrates fairly between connections with conforming cells by carefully integrating leaky-bucket traffic shaping with rate-based scheduling algorithms. Through a careful combination of per-connection queueing and approximate sorting, the shaper performs a small, bounded number of operations in response to each arrival and departure, independent of the number of connections and cells. To handle a wider range of rate parameters, a hierarchical arbitration scheme can reduce the implementation overheads and the interference between competing connections. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the architecture limits shaping delay and traffic distortions, even under heavy congestion.

Emerging broad-band switches must accommodate the diverse traffic parameters and quality-of-service requirements of voice, data, and video applications. End-to-end performance guarantees depend on connections complying with traffic contracts as their cells travel through the network. This paper presents a leaky-bucket shaper architecture that scales to a large number of connections with diverse burstiness and bandwidth parameters. In contrast to existing designs, the proposed architecture arbitrates fairly between connections with conforming cells by carefully integrating leaky-bucket traffic shaping with rate-based scheduling algorithms. Through a careful combination of per-connection queueing and approximate sorting, the shaper performs a small, bounded number of operations in response to each arrival and departure, independent of the number of connections and cells. When the shaper must handle a wide range of rate parameters, a hierarchical arbitration scheme can reduce the implementation overheads and further limit interference between competing connections. Through simulation experiments, we demonstrate that the architecture limits cell-shaping delay and traffic distortions, even in periods of heavy congestion. The efficient combination of traffic shaping and link scheduling results in an effective architecture for managing buffer and bandwidth resources in large, high-speed ATM switches.