A platform for the automatic generation of attribute evaluation hardware systems

Dimopoulos, AC; Pavlatos, C; Papakonstantinou, G

dc.contributor.author	Dimopoulos, AC	en
dc.contributor.author	Pavlatos, C	en
dc.contributor.author	Papakonstantinou, G	en
dc.date.accessioned	2014-03-01T01:32:30Z
dc.date.available	2014-03-01T01:32:30Z
dc.date.issued	2010	en
dc.identifier.issn	1477-8424	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://dspace.lib.ntua.gr/xmlui/handle/123456789/20166
dc.subject	Attribute evaluation	en
dc.subject	Attribute grammars	en
dc.subject	FPGA	en
dc.subject	Hardware	en
dc.subject	Semantic evaluation	en
dc.subject.classification	Computer Science, Software Engineering	en
dc.subject.other	Attribute evaluation	en
dc.subject.other	Attribute grammars	en
dc.subject.other	Automated tools	en
dc.subject.other	Automatic Generation	en
dc.subject.other	Compiler construction	en
dc.subject.other	Context-sensitive	en
dc.subject.other	Entire system	en
dc.subject.other	FPGA	en
dc.subject.other	Hardware architecture	en
dc.subject.other	Hardware design language	en
dc.subject.other	Hardware system	en
dc.subject.other	Input string	en
dc.subject.other	Natural language interfaces	en
dc.subject.other	On the flies	en
dc.subject.other	Parse trees	en
dc.subject.other	Parsing algorithm	en
dc.subject.other	Question Answering	en
dc.subject.other	Real-time and embedded systems	en
dc.subject.other	Semantic notation	en
dc.subject.other	Source codes	en
dc.subject.other	Structural pattern recognition	en
dc.subject.other	Text editing	en
dc.subject.other	Three orders of magnitude	en
dc.subject.other	Verilog HDL	en
dc.subject.other	Xilinx FPGA	en
dc.subject.other	Air transportation	en
dc.subject.other	Artificial intelligence	en
dc.subject.other	Character recognition	en
dc.subject.other	Combinatorial mathematics	en
dc.subject.other	Computational linguistics	en
dc.subject.other	Context free grammars	en
dc.subject.other	Context sensitive grammars	en
dc.subject.other	Embedded systems	en
dc.subject.other	Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA)	en
dc.subject.other	Formal languages	en
dc.subject.other	Hardware	en
dc.subject.other	Linguistics	en
dc.subject.other	Object recognition	en
dc.subject.other	Parallel algorithms	en
dc.subject.other	Real time systems	en
dc.subject.other	Semantics	en
dc.subject.other	Syntactics	en
dc.subject.other	Computer hardware description languages	en
dc.title	A platform for the automatic generation of attribute evaluation hardware systems	en
heal.type	journalArticle	en
heal.identifier.primary	10.1016/j.cl.2009.09.003	en
heal.identifier.secondary	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cl.2009.09.003	en
heal.language	English	en
heal.publicationDate	2010	en
heal.abstract	Attribute grammars (AG) allow the addition of context-sensitive properties into context free grammars, augmenting their expressional capabilities by using syntactic and semantic notations, making them in this way a really useful tool for a considerable number of applications. AGs have extensively been utilized in applications such as artificial intelligence, structural pattern recognition, compiler construction and even text editing. Obviously, the performance of an attribute evaluation system resides in the efficiency of the syntactic and semantic subsystems. In this paper, a hardware architecture for an attribute evaluation system is presented, which is based on an efficient combinatorial implementation of Earley's parallel parsing algorithm for the syntax part of the attribute grammar. The semantic part is managed by a special purpose module that traverses the parse tree and evaluates the attributes based on a proposed stack-based approach. The entire system is described in Verilog HDL (hardware design language), in a template form that given the specification of an arbitrary attribute grammar, the HDL synthesizable source code of the system is produced on the fly by a proposed automated tool. The generated code has been simulated for validation, synthesized and tested on an Xilinx FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) board for various AGs. Our method increases the performance up to three orders of magnitude compared to previous approaches, depending on the implementation, the size of the grammar and the input string length. This makes it particularly appealing for applications where attribute evaluation is a crucial aspect, like in real-time and embedded systems. Specifically, a natural language interface is presented, based on a question-answering application from the area of airline flights. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.	en
heal.publisher	PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD	en
heal.journalName	Computer Languages, Systems and Structures	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1016/j.cl.2009.09.003	en
dc.identifier.isi	ISI:000274520300004	en
dc.identifier.volume	36	en
dc.identifier.issue	2	en
dc.identifier.spage	203	en
dc.identifier.epage	222	en