Addressability

Abstract: The control and handling of errors arising from cross talk and unwanted interactions in multiqubit systems is an important issue in quantum information processing architectures We introduce a benchmarking protocol that provides information about the amount of addressability present in the system and implement it on coupled superconducting qubits The protocol consists of randomized benchmarking experiments run both individually and simultaneously on pairs of qubits A relevant figure of merit for the addressability is then related to the differences in the measured average gate fidelities in the two experiments We present results from two similar samples with differing cross talk and unwanted qubit-qubit interactions The results agree with predictions based on simple models of the classical cross talk and Stark shifts

Abstract: The increasing availability of customer information is giving many firms the ability to reach and customize price and other marketing efforts to the tastes of the individual consumer. This ability is labeled as consumer addressability. Consumer addressability through sophisticated databases is particularly important for direct-marketing firms, catalog retailers such as L.L Bean and Land's End, credit card-issuing banks, and firms in the long-distance telephone market. We examine the strategic implications of consumer addressability on competition between database/direct marketing firms. We address questions such as: In a competitive environment, how should firms invest in addressability? Will future improvements in the degree of addressability increase or mitigate the intensity of competition between the firms? Will greater addressability always be beneficial for firms? We model competition between two firms in a market where consumers differ on a horizontal attribute of product differentiation. The market comprises consumers located on a linear attribute space and firms located at the ends of the line. We represent the degree of addressability or the reach of a firm's database as the proportion of consumers at each point in the market who are in the firm's database. Consequently, the firm can offer these consumers customized prices. Consumer addressability creates two effects that govern the competition between firms: a "surplus extraction" effect because a firm might address a consumer who is not reached by its competitor and a "competitive" effect that is created by the set of consumers who can be addressed by both firms. The key results of the paper pertain to when the addressability decision is endogenous. When the extent of market differentiation or consumer heterogeneity in preferences for a product/brand attribute, as well as the incremental cost of addressability, are sufficiently large, firms make symmetric investments in equilibrium. Given high costs, firms choose sufficiently low levels of addressability. Low addressability and high levels of market differentiation both help reduce price competition, which facilitates symmetric choice of addressability by the firms in equilibrium. However, when market differentiation and the cost of incremental addressability become small, firms face the prospect of destructive competition. As a result, they strategically differentiate in their choice of addressability to mitigate this competition. Interestingly, even in the extreme case when incremental addressability is costless, not every firm chooses full addressability in equilibrium. This has useful implications for direct marketing. Given that the advances in information technology should improve the ability of firms to address their consumers, it might indeed not be desirable for all direct marketing firms to indefinitely pursue greater addressability as costs of doing so decline. The analysis also shows an interesting effect of market differentiation in addressable markets: Equilibrium profits can decrease with an increase in market differentiation when the marginal cost of addressability is sufficiently high. Finally, we discuss the competitive outcome that would result when firms compete with addressable as well as uniform posted prices.

Abstract: Apparatus and methods are provided for remote, automated, and secure network device provisioning over a pre-existing communications network. According to one embodiment, automated establishment of addressability of a network device is supported for a target network environment. A boot time process of a network device in a factory default configuration detects the presence of a storage device containing therein addressability data that allows the network device to communicate and be addressable within the target network environment. After detecting the presence of the storage device, the network device receives the addressability data from the storage device by using a communication protocol associated with the storage device. Finally, addressability of the network device is established to enable it to communicate with and be addressed by other nodes in the target network environment by configuring one or more address parameters of the network device based upon the addressability data.

Abstract: Computer data and procedure protection by preventing processes from intering with each other or sharing each other's address space in an unauthorized manner is accomplished in hardware/firmware by restricting addressability to a segmented memory and by a ring protection mechanism. To protect information in segments shared by several processes from misuse by one of these processes a ring protection hardware system is utilized. There are four ring classes numbered 0 through 3. Each ring represents a level of system privilege with level 0 (the innermost ring) having the most privilege and level 3 (the outermost ring) the least. Every procedure in the system has a minimum and a maximum execute ring number assigned to it which specifies who may legally call the procedure. Also maximum write and read ring numbers specify the maximum ring numbers for which a write and/or read operation is permitted. Processes use a segmented address during execution wherein segment tables isolate the address space of the various processes in the system. Hardware checks that the address used by a process is part of the address space assigned to the process, and if the address is outside the prescribed address space, an exception occurs. A process cannot refer to data within the address space of another process because the hardware uses the segment table of the referencing process.