Various cryptosystems, such as elliptic curve and pairing‐based cryptosystems, in resource‐constrained security applications rely on finite field multiplication. For applications such as these, a digit‐serial multiplier has the potential features to achieve a trade‐off between space and time complexities. The authors propose an efficient decomposition of the multiplication into four independent sub‐multiplication units to facilitate parallel processing, which is additionally facilitated by the systolic structures of the sub‐multiplication units. The proposed architecture uses a four‐bit scheme to construct a novel processing element, instead of using only one bit as is currently used in similar multipliers. The results of the synthesis show that the proposed digit‐serial dual basis multiplier eliminates up to 96% of the critical path delay.

Recently in cryptography and security, the multipliers with subquadratic space complexity for trinomials and some specific pentanomials have been proposed. For such kind of multipliers, alternatively, we use double basis multiplication which combines the polynomial basis and the modified polynomial basis to develop a new efficient digit-serial systolic multiplier. The proposed multiplier depends on trinomials and almost equally space pentanomials (AESPs), and utilizes the subquadratic Toeplitz matrix-vector product scheme to derive a low-latency digit-serial systolic architecture. If the selected digit-size is$d$bits, the proposed digit-serial multiplier for both polynomials, i.e., trinomials and AESPs, requires the latency of$2\left\lceil \!{\sqrt {{m \over d}}} \right\rceil\! $, while traditional ones take at least$O\left({\left\lceil {{m \over d}} \right\rceil} \right)$clock cycles. Analytical and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) synthesis results indicate that both the area and the time$ \times $area complexities of our proposed architecture are significantly lower than the existing digit-serial systolic multipliers.

Multiplication is one important finite field arithmetic operation in cryptographic computations. Dual basis multipliers over Galois field GF(2 m ) have been widely applied in this kind of computations because of its advantage of small chip area. Nevertheless, up to date, there are only few methods that can keep balance of low space complexity and low time complexity at the same time. In order to achieve such an efficient aim, this study presents a novel digit‐serial dual basis multiplier that is different from existing ones with a modified cut‐set method using Karatsuba algorithm as well as Hankel matrix. As a result, the proposed multiplier can save much space and thus be particularly suitable for some hand held devices equipped with only limited resources. The proposed digit‐serial dual basis multiplier saves 55% space complexity as compared with existing similar studies with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggested values for elliptic curve cryptosystem.

The elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) is very attractive for the use in portable devices because of the small key size. The finite field multiplication over GF(2m) is the most important arithmetic for performing the ECC. Portable devices usually have restricted computation power and memory resources. This work will present a simple method for designing a Gaussian normal basis (GNB) multiplier over GF(2m) needing only fewer computation power whereas keeping lower cost. The proposed Gaussian NB multiplier saves ∼57% space complexity as compared with existing GNB multiplier.

Palindromic representation is generally used to reduce space and time complexities in Gaussian normal basis (GNB) multiplier with even type t. However, palindromic representation is inapplicable for a GNB multiplier with odd type t ($t \geq 2$). This study therefore develops a palindromic-like representation for a GNB multiplier with odd type t. The proposed systolic GNB multiplier with odd type t reduces space and time complexities by as much as 50% compared with conventional GNB multiplier with odd type t without palindromic representation.

A workflow management system is used to provide the automation and reengineering of a process. In an IC design cycle, several software tools are used to support different activities. These tools may be distributed on separate computers. An agent-based workflow management system is proposed in this paper to integrate these tools by using a scripting language. Relevant distributed software tools in agencies are managed by local agents to provide needed services. Mobile agents are used to access these services by following the proposed scripts.

A scalable unified multiplier for both prime fields GF(P) and binary extension fields GF(2k), where P=2m−1 and GF(2k) is generated by an irreducible all one polynomial. The proposed unified dual-field multiplier uses the LSB-first bit-serial architecture for multiplication in GF(P) and GF(2k) other than the Montgomery multiplication algorithm, which has been employed by most existing dual-field multipliers. The proposed unified dual-field multiplier costs little space and time complexities. The new multiplier is scalable for operands of any size while other existing dual-field multipliers are only scalable for operands with multiples of m. Furthermore, the proposed multiplier has simplicity, regularity, modularity and concurrency and is very suitable to be implement in VLSI.

Fault-based cryptanalysis has been developed to effectively break both private-key and public-key cryptosystems, making robust finite field multiplication a very important research topic in recent years. However, no robust normal basis multiplier has been proposed in the literature. Therefore, this investigation presents a semisystolic Gaussian normal basis multiplier. Based on the proposed Gaussian normal basis multiplier, both concurrent error detection and correction capabilities can be easily achieved using time redundancy technology with no hardware modification.

Agents could be applied on workflow system to provide automation and coordination of business process. However, multi-agent systems may be developed on an agent platform. The mental states of agents may be implemented in program codes relevant to the platform. The internal workflow of agents could be planed by using a script-like approach. By this way, users could command the agents to do task for them with less addressing on the implementation of agent codes. Therefore, a scripting approach is proposed in this paper for the internal workflow of mobile agents. All the work done by agents is abstracted to a task-level. The script could be used to handle the service access, the flow control and the cooperation among agents.

Abstract Developing software systems by integrating the existing applications/systems over the network has become an established and practical technique. The Microsoft (MS) Windows operating systems today support a huge number of software applications. If these commercial applications could be transformed to software components, this may accelerate the construction of new components. This paper proposes an architectural style to support a three‐phase process for integrating MS‐Windows applications in a distributed system using Java technologies. This style provides a solution with clear documentation and sufficient information that is helpful for the rapid integration of MS‐Windows applications. Finally, an exemplary graphical construction part management system that assembles two MS‐Windows applications was developed in this study to demonstrate the feasibility of this style. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It has been attracting attention to reconfigure a GPOS for application-specific domain. Linux is currently one of the popular candidate GPOSs. Although Linux has tools for kernel's reconfiguration by letting users add/remove desired function modules, we still lack of good schemes of reconfiguring Linux according to a specific embedded system. In this article, we are going to propose an approach to customize an application-specific Linux. This approach derives from a "call graph" based on reengineering. By analyzing a graph-structure representation of the target system, we could find the rules of removing the unnecessary codes of Linux.

One important advantage of software integration constructing a project without platform and machine boundaries. In this study, we propose a scripting mechanism to integrate UNIX tools and other software under non-UNIX systems into a new system. Based on our scripting mechanism, we assumed UNIX experts as the system users. A UNIX expert would be adaptive on this study, because the scripting language extended from a UNIX shell. In order to demonstrate this study, we then propose a multi-agent distributed scripting system (MADSS). MADSS provides a fast and a convenient way for a UNIX expert to combine the heterogeneous software distributed on a network environment. A multi-agent system was employed to be an operational environment of this study. The agents in our system could perform the distributed scripts written by UNIX users through several proposed control flows, for examples parallel, circular trip, and forth_and_back.

We propose a distributed software integration architectural style (DSIAS) to provide a blueprint and reference document that would be useful to software system designers when integrating commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products under distributed and Internet environment. DSIAS provides a framework indicating the structure topology to put lots of originally unrelated COTS products together into a COTS based system. We then successfully applied DSIAS to the design of an example, a distributed graphical parking lot management system.

The growing importance of VLSI is gaining it much attention, but the increasing complexity of VLSI also creates lots of problems for computer scientists to work on. If no other new way to help designers is developed, then the whole design process will become more difficult to maintain. That's why there is a need for an object-oriented (OO) design framework for the CAD world. Not only is it necessary to develop new methods for CAD, but the extension of reuse technology into the design process will also become a main key to success. We propose an OO-based framework with an object specification language (OSL) for reuse. In our OO design framework, CAD tools are reverse-engineered into a toolbox in a reuse library. During the design (reuse) process, toolboxes are selected automatically for the design process. Thus, tool selection, integration and adoption problems are merged into the design process, together with the OSL specification. With this OO design framework, tool reuse and design data reuse can be automatically integrated into the design process.

CORBA is becoming the most important middleware that supports the object-oriented and client/server paradigm in distributed computing systems. However, the application systems based on CORBA are still scarce. One main reason is that only a few CORBA object services have been developed. To develop a new CORBA application, a programmer should make an effort to design a program with a CORBA interface from scratch. In our previous work (Liang et al., 1997), a re-engineering approach was proposed to convert RPC-based programs to CORBA objects, which successfully speeds up the development of CORBA applications. However, the source code is required in this approach. In many cases, software designers may not get hold of the source code. It will be significant to adapt existing PC application software in binary code mode to the object services under CORBA. Our study is addressing this problem. A graphical parking lot management system, which integrates dBase III and AutoCAD V2.6i under DOS has been implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

CORBA is becoming the most important middleware that supports object oriented and client/server paradigm in distributed computing systems. However the application systems based on CORBA are still scarce to date. One main reason is that only few CORBA object services have been developed. Without added help mechanisms, to have a new CORBA application, a programmer should make efforts to design a program with a CORBA interface from scratch. In our previous work (K. Liang et al., 1997), a reengineering approach was proposed to convert RPC based programs to CORBA objects, which successfully speeded up the development of CORBA applications. However the source code is required in this approach. In many cases, software designers may not be able to get hold of the source code, so it is necessary to adapt existing PC software applications, particularly for Windows applications, in binary code mode to the object services under CORBA. Our study addresses this problem. A graphic factory temperature monitor system, which integrates MS-Excel under MS-Windows has been implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

Software integration is an important and useful approach to software reuse. Most of software integration approaches use data-integration paradigm, i.e., common data format and (or) source code are required for integration. The author proposes a functional integration approach which integrates software by functionalities. No common data format or source codes of the integrated software is required in the approach. Techniques used in the paper can be applied to integrate softwares under DOS, Windows, or even CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) based distributed environments. To make the system user friendly, the author adopts the concept of software IC and define a specification language to describe relationship among integrated software ICs. Based on this approach, a real graphical parking lot management system which integrated AutoCAD and dBase by their functionalities has been implemented successfully and demonstrated.