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The Discrete Structure Manipulation System Project led by Associate Professor Shin-ichi Minato from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology has been selected as a 2009 Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). The program is an undertaking to form a new movement in science and technology and produce seeds conducive to the development of new technologies by strongly promoting the world's top-level basic research programs with the aim of achieving strategic research targets in nationally important scientific and technological fields. Computers are used for a variety of information processes such as the optimization and analysis of industrial processes, marketing, and bioinformatics. Accordingly, there is a need to further increase their processing speed and capacity. Prof. Minato's research is based on two techniques: Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs), which excel in logic function manipulation, and Zero-Suppressed BDDs (ZDDs), which are superior in the processing of sets of combinations. The research aims to systematize techniques for arithmetic processing of various discrete structures in an integrated manner with the ultimate goal of establishing a computing method for integrated, high-speed arithmetic processing for the large-scale and diverse amounts of information found in society today.
ZDDs, which represent the basis of this research, are an evolved form of BDDs (original idea presented by Minato in 1993), and show high levels of effectiveness in application to data mining and knowledge discovery. In specific fields dealing with sets of sparse combinations in particular, knowledge of ZDDs is increasing; they have been found capable of increasing speed by a factor of more than 100 compared to the performance of BDDs. Against this backdrop, Professor Minato proposed a new methodology that positions BDDs and ZDDs as basic manipulation systems. Implementation of the technologies for manipulation systems developed from this research will be made available in a manner that renders them accessible to Japanese and overseas researchers as well as industrial circles.
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