Cengiz Erbas

Software development under bounded rationality and opportunism

Due to the wicked nature of software development, it is imperative to take into consideration bounded rationality and opportunism of the agents involved in, when managing software development projects. These two concepts, which are at the foundations of transaction cost economics, have not yet been studied in relation to software engineering. In this paper, we develop transaction cost economics approach to software engineering, specifically as it relates to governance. This approach enables us better understand the strengths and weaknesses of top-down and bottom-up processes, and outlines a method to be used in choosing amongst alternative governance structures given relevant project characteristics.

Aligning software configuration management with governance structures

Implementation of an effective Software Configuration Management (SCM) strategy is critical for increasing the probability of success not only in the level of individual projects but also in the level of the organization carrying out many interrelated projects. Due to its impact on the economics of shared component development and usage, an SCM strategy should be in alignment with the underlying governance structure, and should demonstrably be effective in minimizing costs of managing organizational software assets. It should specify, at a high-level, the SCM patterns to be followed for given project characteristics, and should preferably be implementable with the available toolsets. The objective of this article is to propose a simple SCM strategy that addresses these concerns. The proposed strategy leverages the common SCM patterns based on their suitability for the three main governance structures for software development. The implementability is demonstrated using IBM Rational ClearCase and IBM Rational Rhapsody, two broadly available tools in the software industry.

On a theory of software engineering a proposal based on transaction cost economics

This article leverages the findings of the transaction cost economics field, and proposes a simple theory and associated vocabulary to serve as a foundation for a unified theory of software engineering. It characterizes software engineering as a set of transactions organized under three governance structures. The theory explains the strengths and weaknesses of these governance structures in relation to asset specificity. It takes into account the recursive nature of the notions in software engineering, and applies uniformly to various contexts at different levels of granularity. The theory not only provides an explanatory framework for some of the propositions given in the software engineering literature, but also reveals the boundaries of their applicability.

Using high-level synthesis for rapid design of video processing pipes

In this work, we share our experience in using High-Level Synthesis (HLS) for rapid development of an optical flow design on FPGA. We have performed HLS using Vivado HLS as well as a HLS tool we have developed for the optical flow design at hand and similar video processing problems. The paper first describes the design problem we have and then discusses our own HLS tool. The tool we developed has turned out to be pretty general-purpose except for the ability to handle cyclic inter-iteration dependencies. It also introduces some novel concepts to HLS, such as “pipelined multiplexers”. The synthesis results show that we can achieve better timing or better area results compared to Vivado HLS. Furthermore, the Verilog RTL our HLS tool outputs is much more readable than the one from Vivado HLS. This makes it much easier for the designer to debug and modify the RTL.

Modules and transactions: Building blocks for a theory of software engineering ☆

Abstract This article leverages the findings of the transaction cost economics field, and proposes a simple theory and associated vocabulary to serve as a foundation for a unified theory of software engineering. The theory characterizes software engineering as a set of transactions organized under a spectrum of three governance structures (top–down, bottom–up and reuse), and explains the strengths and weaknesses of these governance structures in relation to asset specificity and uncertainty. It takes into account the recursive nature of the notions in software engineering, and applies uniformly to various contexts at different levels of granularity. It sheds light both on the technical and on the human aspects of software engineering through a unified explanatory framework, without requiring a need to assemble different approaches to address each. The theory not only explains some of the propositions given in the software engineering literature but also reveals the boundaries of their applicability.

Extending essence kernel to enact practices at the level of software modules

The Essence kernel provides a generic infrastructure that allows enacting different development methods which are specified as sets of practices. The practices in Essence kernel, however, are applied to the project as a whole. On the other hand, different parts of a project may require different methods indicating a need for more discipline for certain modules, whereas requiring more agility for others. In Essence kernel, it is not straightforward to assign different sets of practices to different modules of the same project. In this article, we first discuss one way of extending the kernel to support development of software using modules. We then propose another extension which can also fulfill the need to use different practices for each software module as well.

Output Domain Downscaler

This paper offers an area-efficient video downscaler hardware architecture, which we call Output Domain Downscaler (ODD). ODD is demonstrated through an implementation of the bilinear interpolation method combined with Edge Detection and Sharpening Spatial Filter. We compare ODD to a straight-forward implementation of the same combination of methods, which we call Input Domain Downscaler (IDD). IDD tries to output a new pixel of the downscaled video frame every time a new pixel of the original video frame is received. However, every once in a while, there is no downscaled pixel to produce, and hence, IDD stalls. IDD sometimes also skips a complete row of input pixels. ODD, on the other hand, spreads out the job of producing downscaled pixels almost uniformly over a frame. As a result, ODD is able to employ more resource sharing, i.e., can do the same job with fewer arithmetic units, thus offers a more area-efficient solution than IDD. In this paper, we explain how ODD and IDD work and also share their FPGA synthesis results.

Tools and Techniques for Implementation of Real-time Video Processing Algorithms

This paper describes flexible tools and techniques that can be used to efficiently design/generate quite a variety of hardware IP blocks for highly parameterized real-time video processing algorithms. The tools and techniques discussed in the paper include host software, FPGA interface IP (PCIe, USB 3.0, DRAM), high-level synthesis, RTL generation tools, synthesis automation as well as architectural concepts (e.g., nested pipelining), an architectural estimation tool, and verification methodology. The paper also discusses a specific use case to deploy the mentioned tools and techniques for hardware design of an optical flow algorithm. The paper shows that in a fairly short amount of time, we were able to implement 11 versions of the optical flow algorithm running on 3 different FPGAs (from 2 different vendors), while we generated and synthesized several thousand designs for architectural trade-off.

Open and Interoperable Maritime Surveillance Framework Set to Improve Sea-Borders Control

This study presents an open and interoperable maritime surveillance framework with multimodal sensor networks and an automated decision-making. The intention is to improve sea-border control, plugging the gaps in the maritime security with interoperability solutions and have wide-area situational awareness, thus particular reducing the number of illegal immigrants crossing sea borders in small boats, with a cost-effective approach. In this paper initial results are presented. This research is a part of a European project supported by ITEA2, Eureka Cluster Programme (RECONSURVE Project, no: ITEA2 09036).