You have reached Will Naylor's home page. This page contains information about me and my personal life, my research interests, free public domain software which I have written and which you may download, links to sites that I find useful, funny links, how to contact me, and last but not least, my photo.
I work at Synopsys, an electronic design automation software firm, where I have the title "technology fellow".
I am currently spending most of my time working on a new electronic circuit placement algorithm which I invented (patents are pending) and which seems to work substantially better than previous placement algorithms. This placement algorithm not only yields better placements that previous methods, but is able to simultaneously optimize circuit placement, timing, buffering, and some other synthesis operations. The algorithm should help designers produce significantly faster and cheaper integrated circuits (chips) than was possible previously.
My longer term research interests are NP-completeness and P-space completeness, boolean satisfiability, non-linear optimization by computer, combinatorial optimization by computer, computer-directed optimization of physical systems (these systems have noisy results and simultaneous experiments, so the classical techniques do not work), and computer perception.
To view my patents, click here.
This web page gives you access to the WNLIB subroutine library, which is a free, unrestricted ANSI C subroutine library which includes numerical routines such as conjugate-gradient and conjugate-directions, simplex method, transportation problem, fast-Fourier transform, matrix and vector operations; data structure packages such as linked list, balanced binary tree, completely general hash table with common hash functions, dd tree, sorting for lists and arrays; very good pseudo-random number generator, also a true random number generator; improved memory allocator with memory debugger; parsing package; much more.
During the past 15 years of C programming, the authors (Will Naylor and Bill Chapman) have accumulated a large library of subroutines which we have found most useful in quickly writing fast, portable, clean C programs. We call this library "WNLIB", and we are now making it available to everybody, free of charge or restrictions.
The system includes:
UNIX-style man-page documentation is included for all subroutines.
If you want to download or you want more information, click here.
I cannot imagine life without books on tape. I spend about 7 hours every week commuting in my car, and every time I climb into my car, I pop a cassette tape into my tape player and listen to a good reader reading me some great literary work. This way, I use time that would otherwise be wasted to both educate and entertain myself. I have read hundreds of great books this way, and I think it has changed my life and opened my mind. I heartily recommend the books-on-tape habit to all people. For only about $15 you can rent a box of cassette tapes which contains a complete unabridged book. You get to keep it for a month. The selection of available titles is quite large and ordering and return is very convenient. You order by phone from the rental company's catalog using your credit card, or from their web site. To return, you just tape the tape box shut and drop it in a postal mail box.
Some good books on tape rental companies are:
Click here to view my contact details.