Ptolemy 0.7.1 Features

Ptolemy 0.7.1 was released on June 12, 1998

The primary reasons for Ptolemy 0.7.1 are:

Support for the Adaptive Computing Systems (ACS) domain.

Support for the egcs-1.x compiler.

Provide new domains and stars.

Preliminary port to Windows NT.

What's in Ptolemy 0.7.1?

New work

Adaptive Computing Systems (ACS) domain.
James Lundblad of the Ptolemy group is developing the ACS domain with Sanders, a Lockheed Martin company.
A key feature of the ACS domain is to make it easier to generate different implementations of a simulation. The ACS domain uses the Corona/Core approach, which was created by Jose Pino and Tom Parks while they were at UC Berkeley. In the Corona/Core design, a star has one Interface, named the Corona, and one or more implementations, named Cores.
The ACS domain will help in automating the FPGA design process; it will help in transforming an SDF graph into a reasonable FPGA implementation. Initially, an Annapolis Microsystems Wildforce board will be the target.
Sanders has a web page describing the project at: http://www.sanders.com/spard/acs_env/acs_env.html

Mutating Topologies Within DE - Jens Voigt, John Davis II
Jens Voigt of Dresden University of Technology and John S. Davis II of the Ptolemy Group have worked jointly to support dynamic higher order functions within the discrete event domain of Ptolemy 0.7.1.

Dynamic Higher Order Functions within the DE domain facilitate the creation of simulations which have star/graph topologies that can mutate during simulation runtime. The Dynamic HOF interface, which was created by Jens Voigt, employs a style that is similar to the (static) higher order functions introduced in earlier versions of Ptolemy. Dynamic HOF stars allow for runtime deletion and creation of a master block. The master blocks can themselves contain dynamic HOF stars so that cascaded mutations are supported. The master blocks can be specified both graphically and textually.
Runtime deletion of blocks requires removal of pending events that are destined for the block in question. The storage and retrieval of pending events has played a critical role in discrete event modelling and a great deal of effort has been taken to maximize the efficiency of this process. In particular, the calendar queue of the DE domain has made the "pending event problem" less of a bottle neck than it otherwise would be. To maintain this level of efficiency within the setting of dynamic higher order functions, John Davis extended and modified the calendar queue so that it could support runtime mutations efficiently. Mutability is also supported for Ptolemy users who prefer the FIFO queue-based DE scheduler.

HOF fixes - Tom Lane

C50 domain changes: Professor Brian Evans and his students

The C50 stars no longer generate assembly code with assembly directives so that different targets that support different assembly directives can be used. The new stars work for both the C50 DSK target and the new SimC50Target.
The new SimC50Target invokes the standard (commercial) C50 simulator written by Texas Instruments. TI will generally donate this simulator to universities. This new target sets the stage for a C50 Evaluation Module Board target.

Synchronous/Reactive C Code Generation (SRCGC) domain - Frederic Boulanger, Supélec

Java version of pxgraph, Ptplot, - Edward A. Lee, Christopher Hylands - We will not ship the X11 pxgraph sources, but they are available on our website, along with binaries.

Preliminary port to Windows NT - Christopher Hylands - Ptolemy 0.7.1 runs under Windows NT using the Cygwin32 compiler and the Cygwin32 X11R6 binaries. To run pigi under NT, you will need a NT X server. For more information, see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cxh/ptpub/nt/index.html

Support for the EGCS C++ Compiler - Christopher Hylands

Support for the gcc-2.8 C++ Compiler - Christopher Hylands - Currently gcc-2.8.0 crashes under Solaris2.5.1 when compiling certain c++ files with -O -fPIC. As a result, we are planning on shipping using EGCS instead of FSF gcc.

Ptolemy interfaces to Matlab and Mathematica - Brian Evans, Guy Maor, and Wade Schwartzkopf

upgrade to work with Matlab 5 and Mathematica 3 by default but allow it to be recompiled with Matlab 4 and Mathematica 2.2
dynamically link the interface to Matlab
remove dependence of the PTcl class on the interfaces to Matlab and Mathematica Tcl commands, and instead, have the Matlab and Mathematica Tcl commands be registered.

We cannot ship binaries built with the current Matlab 5 interface, since they will not work on machines that do not have Matlab installed.

Tycho 0.2.1

New package system - John Reekie, Christopher Hylands

Emacs-style search and file open - Cliff Cordeiro

HTTP, FTP, and mailto support - Kevin Chang, John Reekie

New documentation viewer (idoc) - Cliff Cordeiro

Minor changes

Vem/pigiRpc interlocks to prevent the dreaded "RPC Protocol Error" - Tom Lane

Custom display of universe parameters in run control panels. It is now possible to add parameters to the Run Control panel by checking check boxes in the Edit Parameters Window. - Tom Lane

Support for using the ddd debugger from pigi -debug - Jens Voigt

Support for compiling Ptolemy under Solaris 2.5 for the PC using PTARCH=sol2.5pc - Dominique Ragot

Support for the Process Network (PN) domain under Linux - Wolfgang Reimer

Various bug fixes from Wolfgang Reimer, including:

Create 2 new Ptolemy targets for Linux (linux.static, linux.debug)

Work around to allow to use Complex class of GNU libg++

matlab.mk and mathematica.mk now allow predefinition of MATLABDIR and MATHEMATICADIR

For complete details, see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ptolemy0.7/patches/reimer/index.html

New Stars and Demos

HOFBusInterleave3 star - Tom Lane

SDF SunVideo and VideoEdgeDetect - Luis Gutierrez

DEXYgraph star - Jens Voigt

60GHz DE demo - Jens Voigt

SDF contrib AIFF stars that read and play AIFF Audio files on SGI machines - Charles B. Owen

SDF and CGC neural network stars, galaxies, and demos - Biao Lu and Brian Evans

SDF smart antenna wireless communications demonstration using the constant modulus algorithm - Srikanth Gummadi and Brian Evans

SDF galaxies ITUDTMFGenerator and ITUDTMFplusNoiseGenerator for testing Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (touchtone) detectors for ITU compliance - Matt Felder, Jimmy Mason, and Brian Evans

Features that are unlikely to ship in 0.7.1

The Ptolemy II Java Kernel will not ship with Ptolemy 0.7.1.

Support for Itcl3.0/Tcl8.0/Tk8.0
Itcl3.0 probably won't be out in final release form until summer. Currently, we plan on releasing Ptolemy 0.7.1 with the older Itcl2.2. However, if Itcl3.0 comes out and is reasonably stable, we hope to release a patch for 0.7.1 shortly after Itcl3.0 is out.

Tycho 0.2.1 is not likely to include any sort of replacement for vem. We are concentrating on using Tycho for the Ptolemy II graphical user interface.

Last update: 06/14/98,

cxh@eecs.berkeley.edu