Introduction

Alexey Lastovetsky
University College, Dublin, Ireland

Copyright 2003 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN: 0-471-22982-2

Printed in the United States of America.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my wife Gulnara, my daughters Olga and Oksana, and my parents Leonid and Lyudmila.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deep appreciation to my colleagues and friends Alexey Kalinov, Ilya Ledovskih, Dmitry Arapov, and Mikhail Posypkin for the happy days when we were working together on the mpC programming language. Their skills, devotion, and creativity created the basis for its successful implementation. I am very grateful to Victor Ivannikov for his persistent support of both the mpC project and myself in good and bad times. I am also very grateful to Ted Lewis without whose support and contribution the mpC project would not be possible at all. My special thanks are to Hesham El-Rewini and Albert Zomaya for their positive and encouraging attitude to the idea of this book. I also wish to thank Ravi Reddi for his comments and valuable contribution in the material presented in Sections 8.2, 9.1.1.3, and 9.1.1.4.