Liam David Comerford

ABYSS: an architecture for software protection

ABYSS (a basic Yorktown security system) is an architecture for protecting the execution of application software. It supports a uniform security service across the range of computing systems. The use of ABYSS in solving the software protection problem, especially in the lower end of the market, is discussed. Both current and planned software distribution channels are supportable by the architecture, and the system is nearly transparent to legitimate users. A novel use-once authorization mechanism, called a token, is introduced as a solution to the problem of providing authorizations without direct communication. Software vendors may use the system to obtain technical enforcement of virtually any terms and conditions of the sale of their software, including such things as rental software. Software may be transferred between systems, and backed up to guard against loss in case of failure. The problem of protecting software on these systems is discussed, and guidelines to its solution are offered. >

Methods and apparatus for contingent transfer and execution of spoken language interfaces

A method for managing spoken language interface data structures and collections of user interface service engines in a spoken language dialog manager in a personal speech assistant. Interfaces, designed as part of applications, may by these methods be added to or removed from the set of such interfaces used by a dialog manager. Interface service engines, required by new applications, but not already present in the dialog manager, may be made available to the new and subsequently added applications.

Thermal performance and limitations of silicon–substrate packaged GaAs laser arrays

Thermal resistance and crosstalk have been investigated for a source package consisting of a monolithic, multilaser heterojunction array mounted on a single crystalline silicon substrate, which is in turn laminated to a copper heatsink. Models for 2-D and 3-D heat spreading are used to calculate the heat flow distribution and to obtain upper and lower bounds for both resistance of single devices and crosstalk in arrays. Results for experimental five-laser arrays are shown to fall within these limits. Active cooling is required to maintain junctions at safe operating temperatures prerequisite to stable, long-lived operation.

The IBM Personal Speech Assistant

We describe technology and experience with an experimental personal information manager, which interacts with the user primarily but not exclusively through speech recognition and synthesis. This device, which controls a client PDA, is known as the personal speech assistant (PSA). The PSA contains complete speech recognition, speech synthesis and dialog management systems. Packaged in a hand-sized enclosure, of size and physical design to mate with the popular Palm III personal digital assistant, the PSA includes its own battery, microphone, speaker, audio input and output amplifiers, processor and memory. The PSA supports speaker-independent English speech recognition using a 500-word vocabulary, and English speech synthesis on an arbitrary vocabulary. We survey the technical issues we encountered in building the hardware and software for this device, and the solutions we implemented, including audio system design, power and space budget, speech recognition in adverse acoustic environments with constrained processing resources, dialog management, appealing applications, and overall system architecture.

Gallium arsenide laser-array-on-silicon package.

A monolithic array of AlGaAs lasers has been packaged together with an array of fiber lightguides on a substrate of silicon. The components have been optimized for maximum lightguide output radiance consistent with reliable cw laser operation. Coupling efficiencies up to 80% have been achieved between laser and lightguide. Output powers up to 70 mW cw have been observed from a 50-microm core diameter lightguide of 0.15 numerical aperture. Eight-device array multispot packages have been fabricated with 10 mW/spot, limited by laser quality and thermoelectric cooler capacity. Fabrication tolerances and device electrical and optical crosstalk are discussed.

GaAs laser array source package.

A GaAs laser array multispot source has been fabricated in which the array is bonded to a silicon substrate, which also contains an accurately aligned collimating lens and an array of fiber lightguides. The coupling efficiency of each laser to its corresponding lightguide is greater than 50%. The package is cooled by a thermoelectric cooler, allowing cw, room-temperature operation of the array at 5 mW output per fiber. This source is useful for multichannel optical-communication applications.

Storywriter: a speech oriented editor

Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 danis@watson.ibm. com Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI), a disorder that curtails repetitive movements such as typing and poses a potentially career-ending problem for people who write for a living, motivated our development of the StoryWriter editor. This editor accepts speech and keyboard input for text creation and six types of input for application control functions (speech, keyboard, mouse, foot pedal and two novel techniques, pointer touch and point and speak). The variability of RSI symptomatology dictated that several input methods be integrated seamlessly, The system can also be used efficiently by unimpaired individuals.