Some pioneering innovations in computer science that have originated in CSRG include:
Some examples of projects that are currently underway at the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of Toronto are outlined in the remainder of this page.
The NUMAchine project at the University of Toronto is a major research project aimed at developing a shared-memory multiprocessor architecture and software support for easy and efficient use of this architecture. Members of both the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto are collaborating on the NUMAchine project.
A key objective of the NUMAchine project is to develop a high-performance architecture that is modular, cost-effective and scalable. At the present time, a prototype machine is being designed and built, and the system software is being developed. The NUMAchine project is under active development at this time.
Networks of workstations are becoming a feasible platform for parallel computing. With the arrival of very fast networks (e.g., ATM's) and the wide spread availability of workstations, they may soon become the most important platform for parallel computing. Parallelism On Workstations (POW) is a concerted effort to build a shared-memory computing environment to support a broad range of parallel applications.
The Database Group is an informal grouping within the Department of Computer Science and the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of Toronto. The Database Group carries out research funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grants and by the Information Technology Research Center (ITRC). At various times the database group has also been supported by the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS) Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) and by industrial grants and contracts from several companies, including IBM Canada, Bell Northern Research (Nortel), and Object Technology International (OTI).
The following two projects are currently underway by the Database Group:
The Database Group has implemented a second generation data visualization prototype, called Hy+, that embodies a visual query language called GraphLog. Hy+ and GraphLog support visual querying and manipulation of data that are well described by graphs, networks and hierarchical diagrams, such as those that occur in transportation networks, CAD/CAM, software development, and other new areas of application of database technology.
The Hy+ system provides extensive support for query visualization, visualizing the input instance, and visualizing the output instance in several different modes. The visualizations manipulated by the system are labeled graphs and hygraphs.
The Database Group is building tools for exploring and querying large global information spaces such as the World Wide Web. The WebSQL query language combines structural queries with content-based queries. It is embodied in a Java class library that can be used to facilitate development of web-based applications in the same way that SQL is used to facilitate development of conventional database applications.
One of the difficulties in building an SQL-like query language for the web is the absence of a database schema for this huge, heterogeneous repository of information; however, since only HTML documents are of interest, a virtual schema can be constructed from the implicit structure of these files. Thus, at the highest level of abstraction, every such document is identified by its Uniform Resource Locator (URL), and a title and text. Web servers also provide some additional information, such the type, length, and the last modification date of a document. So, for data mining purposes, the set of all HTML documents is considered as a relation.
The Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP) is an interdisciplinary research laboratory, which is primarily concerned with advanced research and graduate instruction. Their themes are the enhancement of human creativity through advances in human-computer interaction, user interface design, and interactive computer graphics. Their research spans input and interaction devices and techniques, computer supported cooperative work, cognitive modelling, software visualization, computer animation, multimedia, graphics modelling, and graphics rendering.
© Copyright 1997.
CSRG. All Rights Reserved.