Mobile network traffic is set to explode in our near future, driven by the growth of bandwidth-hungry media applications. Current capacity solutions, including buying spectrum, WiFi offloading, and LTE picocells, are unlikely to supply the orders-of-magnitude bandwidth increase we need. In this paper, we explore a dramatically different alternative in the form of 60GHz mmwave picocells with highly directional links. While industry is investigating other mmwave bands (e.g. 28GHz to avoid oxygen absorption), we prefer the unlicensed 60GHz band with highly directional, short-range links (~100m). 60GHz links truly reap the spatial reuse benefits of small cells while delivering high per-user data rates and leveraging efforts on indoor 60GHz PHY technology and standards. Using extensive measurements on off-the-shelf 60GHz radios and system-level simulations, we explore the feasibility of 60GHz picocells by characterizing range, attenuation due to reflections, sensitivity to movement and blockage, and interference in typical urban environments. Our results dispel some common myths, and show that there are no fundamental physical barriers to high-capacity 60GHz outdoor picocells. We conclude by identifying open challenges and associated research opportunities.

While software construction was a science, the design and construction of software was viewed as the central activity. Standards, middleware, and mature software development methodologies has moved this to one of several co-equal application development activities. To effectively bring this approach to the IT classroom, a partnership and academia is required. The Shared Software Initiative community fills this role.

The Internet has spawned an insatiable appetite for information. This appetite cannot be satisfied without useful search tools. These tools rely on metadata in order to give targeted and meaningful results to searches, and the Internet world is realising that metadata, its management, and the means to search these metadata, are an integral part of the Internet world. The EC 5th Framework project COSMOS aims to demonstrate the use of metadata in this way by building a common model for describing a statistical data set in terms of metadata, populating a metadata registry with descriptions consistent with the model, and searching the registry to find the data sets, and finally to access the data sets in the relevant repository.

This paper describes the architecture, functionality, and design of a Talisman-compatible multimedia processor (TM-PC) from Philips Semiconductors. "Talisman" is the code name of a new graphics and multimedia hardware architecture (from Microsoft Corp.) that aims at achieving the performance of high-end three-dimensional graphics workstations at consumer price points. The TM-PC is a programmable processor with a high-performance, very long instruction word central processing unit (CPU) core. The CPU core, aided by an array of peripheral devices (multimedia coprocessors and input-output units), facilitates concurrent processing of audio, video, graphics, and communication data. Designed specifically for the Microsoft Talisman project, TM-PC is a derivative of Philips' TM-1 media processor and is tailored to be used in a variety of PC-based functions as a plug-in board on the peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus. In the design of the TM-PC, the functionality of most of the blocks from the TM-1 has been kept unchanged; the primary changes in the existing blocks have been in the main memory and the PCI interfaces, and a new block, called VPB, has been added to support virtual frame buffer functionality as well as video graphics adapter and Soundblaster emulation capability. The major emphasis of this paper is on the design details of the new VPB module and an explanation of how it fits with the rest of the TM-1 design.