Kyoto Prize Laureate Unsnarls Electronic Networks 36
An anonymous reader writes "Electronic networks — from wireless cellular to the Internet — are often too big to simulate node-by-node, but new uses of graph theory are unsnarling them, according to former Microsoft Research fellow and electronics-guru Laszlo Lovasz, who spoke at the Kyoto Prize Symposium this week. 'We are identifying what is common to these networks—mathematically—so that even very large networks can be accurately modeled,' said Lovasz. He also showed some very cool methods that anybody can use to make any network--even simple organizational charts--easier to read. And even if you don't use them for real work, they are just fun to play with (his app, for instance, allows you to input a random network, which it then redraws right before your eyes so no connections cross over each other, making them extremely legible)."
Lovasz is better know for his mathematics... (Score:3, Interesting)
Lovasz is a famous mathematician working in areas of combinatorics at the edge of computer science, but describing him as an "electronics guru" is simply weird...
Well it sounds like ok stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
Before I studied CS (and graph theory) in university, I had gone to college and studied Electronics Engineering for 2 years, then got a job for an electronics design and manufacturing company building industrial control equipment (RTU's, SCADA controllers, magnetic amplifiers (mag amps) for very high power control for petrochemical manufacturers (5000V at 10000 Amps), etc.). One of the bigger problems when laying out a printed circuit board with many chips is where to put the chips so that you have the least number of circuit lines crossing from one side of the board to the other (so as not to short out other lines, etc). Thru holes cost money, and shorter circuit trace lines are more efficient in terms of signal time and current, especially if the fan out of one chip is very close to (but less than) the fan in of another. Some graph theory algorithms are useful for solving this problem, and I wonder if these findings can help make that process faster. Graph Theory: its not just for shortest path ambulance routing, internet packet routing, ship, rail, plane and truck routing, machine tool path efficiency, and shortest set of chemical steps to create medicine anymore!