Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences was first conceived, published, and disseminated by the Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS)* at Purdue University in 1957, starting its coverage of theses with the academic year 1955. Beginning with Volume 13, the printing and dis semination phases of the activity were transferred to University Microfilms/Xerox of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the thought that such an arrangement would be more beneficial to the academic and general scientific and technical community. After five years of this joint undertaking we had concluded that it was in the interest of all concerned if the printing and distribution of the volumes were handled by an international publishing house to assure improved service and broader dissemination. Hence, starting with Volume 18, Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences has been disseminated on a worldwide basis by Plenum Publishing Corporation of New York, and in the same year the coverage was broadened to include Canadian universities. All back issues can also be ordered from Plenum. We have reported in Volume 39 (thesis year 1994) a total of 13,953 thesis titles from 21 Canadian and 159 United States universities. We are sure that this broader base for these titles reported will greatly enhance the value of this impor tant annual reference work. While Volume 39 reports theses submitted in 1994, on occasion, certain uni versities do report theses submitted in previous years but not reported at the time.

New design architectures in computer systems have surpassed industry expectations. Limits, which were once thought of as fundamental, have now been broken. Digital Systems and Applications details these innovations in systems design as well as cutting-edge applications that are emerging to take advantage of the fields increasingly sophisticated capabilities. This book features new chapters on parallelizing iterative heuristics, stream and wireless processors, and lightweight embedded systems. This fundamental text— Provides a clear focus on computer systems, architecture, and applications Takes a top-level view of system organization before moving on to architectural and organizational concepts such as superscalar and vector processor, VLIW architecture, as well as new trends in multithreading and multiprocessing. includes an entire section dedicated to embedded systems and their applications Discusses topics such as digital signal processing applications, circuit implementation aspects, parallel I/O algorithms, and operating systems Concludes with a look at new and future directions in computing Features articles that describe diverse aspects of computer usage and potentials for use Details implementation and performance-enhancing techniques such as branch prediction, register renaming, and virtual memory Includes a section on new directions in computing and their penetration into many new fields and aspects of our daily lives