Analytic cost estimation is a valuable aid to assess the eeect of various machine and mapping parameters on program performance. Cost estimation is either based on a model of the parallel algorithm or on a model of the actually generated machine code. Especially in case of a distributed-memory system the diierence in abstraction is large. In this paper we study the trade-oo between analytic cos...

Caching is an effective mechanism for reducing bandwidth usage and alleviating server load. However, the use of caching entails a compromise between content freshness and refresh cost. An excessive refresh allows a high degree of content freshness at a greater cost of system resource. Conversely, a deficient refresh inhibits content freshness but saves the cost of resource usages. To address th...

Today’s mobile terminals have several access network interfaces. New protocols have been proposed during the last few years to enable the concurrent use of multiple access paths for data transmission. In practice, the use of different access technologies is subject to different interconnection costs, and mobile users have preferences on interfaces jointly depending on performance and cost facto...

Would slightly better performance be significantly more valuable from a market perspective? Would significantly better performance be just slightly more expensive to implement? When dealing with quality requirements, we often end up in a difficult trade-off analysis. Aspects such as release targets, end-user experience, and business opportunities must be taken into consideration. But when is th...

In today's fast marketing over the Internet or online, many retailers want to trade at the same time and change their marketing strategy to attract more customers. Some of the customers may decide to cancel their orders partially with a retailer due to various reasons such as increase in customer's waiting time, loss of customer's goodwill on retailer's business, and attractive promotional sche...

A buyer and seller alternate making offers until an offer is accepted or someone terminates negotiations. The seller's valuation is common knowledge, but the buyer's valuation is known only by the buyer. Impatience to reach an agreement comes from two sources: the traders discount future payoffs and there are transaction costs of bargaining. Equilibrium behavior involves either immediate trade,...

A CCORDING TO RECENT POLLS, MANY AMERICANS CONsider health care reform the No. 1 domestic issue. 1 Presidential candidates, other politicians, health policy experts, labor leaders, business groups, and others have responded with numerous reform proposals. And somehow in the clamoring, health care reform has become equated exclusively with expanding coverage to the 47 million uninsured Americans...

Trade credit represents a substantial portion of short-term credit for most firms. A trade credit decision is usually limited to a comparison of the effective cost of trade credit with the annual cost of borrowing. If the cost of not taking the cash discount exceeds the firm’s borrowing cost, the decision is to take the cash discount. This article examines traditional trade credit analysis, and...