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The study presented in this paper highlights an important issue that was subject for discussions and research about a decade ago and now have gained new interest with the current advances of grid computing and desktop grids. New techniques are being invented on how to utilize desktop computers for computational tasks but no other study, to our knowledge, has explored the availability of the said resources. The general assumption has been that there are resources and that they are available. The study is based on a survey on the availability of resources in an ordinary office environment. The aim of the study was to determine if there are truly usable under-utilized networked desktop computers available for non-desktop tasks during the off-hours. We found that in more than 96% of the cases the computers in the current investigation was available for the formation of part-time (night and weekend) computer clusters. Finally we compare the performance of a full time and a metamorphosic cluster, based on one hypothetical linear scalable application and a real world welding simulation.

This paper reviews recent state-of-the-art H.264 sub-pixel motion estimation (SME) algorithms and architectures. First, H.264 SME is analyzed and the impact of its functionalities on coding performance is investigated. Then, design space of SME algorithms is explored representing design problems, approaches, and recent advanced algorithms. Besides, design challenges and strategies of SME hardware architectures are discussed and promising architectures are surveyed. Further perspectives and future prospects are also presented to highlight emerging trends and outlook of SME designs.