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<TITLE>2017/18 MSc Projects</TITLE>
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<H2>2017/18 MSc Projects</H2>
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<H4>Supervisor: Christian Urban</H4>
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<H4>Email: christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk, Office: Bush House N7.07</H4>
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<H4>If you are interested in a project, please send me an email and we can discuss details. Please include
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a short description about your programming skills and Computer Science background in your first email.
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Thanks.</H4>
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<H4>Note that besides being a lecturer at the theoretical end of Computer Science, I am also a passionate
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker</A> …
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defined as “a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and
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stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum
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necessary.” I am always happy to supervise like-minded students.
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</H4>
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<H4>In 2013/14, I was nominated by the students
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for the best BSc project supervisor and best MSc project supervisor awards in the NMS
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faculty. Somehow I won both. In 2014/15 I was nominated again for the best MSc
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project supervisor, but did not win it. ;o)
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</H4>
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<ul class="striped">
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<li> <H4>[CU1] Regular Expressions, Lexing and Derivatives</H4>
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<p>
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<B>Description:</b>
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">Regular expressions</A>
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are extremely useful for many text-processing tasks, such as finding patterns in hostile network traffic,
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lexing programs, syntax highlighting and so on. Given that regular expressions were
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introduced in 1950 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cole_Kleene">Stephen Kleene</A>,
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you might think regular expressions have since been studied and implemented to death. But you would definitely be
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mistaken: in fact they are still an active research area. On the top of my head, I can give
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you at least ten research papers that appeared in the last few years.
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For example
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<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/regex-parsing-derivatives.pdf">this paper</A>
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about regular expression matching and derivatives was presented in 2014 at the international
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FLOPS conference. Another <A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/Publications/posix.pdf">paper</A> by my PhD student and me was presented in 2016
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at the international ITP conference.
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The task in this project is to implement these results and use them for lexing.</p>
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<p>The background for this project is that some regular expressions are
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“<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
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and can “stab you in the back” according to
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this <A HREF="http://peterscott.github.io/2013/01/17/regular-expressions-will-stab-you-in-the-back/">blog post</A>.
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For example, if you use in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A> or
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in <A HREF="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/">Ruby</A> (or also in a number of other mainstream programming languages) the
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innocently looking regular expression <code>a?{28}a{28}</code> and match it, say, against the string
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<code>aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa</code> (that is 28 <code>a</code>s), you will soon notice that your CPU usage goes to 100%. In fact,
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Python and Ruby need approximately 30 seconds of hard work for matching this string. You can try it for yourself:
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<A HREF="http://talisker.inf.kcl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/catastrophic.py">catastrophic.py</A> (Python version) and
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<A HREF="http://talisker.inf.kcl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/catastrophic.rb">catastrophic.rb</A>
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(Ruby version). Here is a similar problem in Java: <A HREF="http://talisker.inf.kcl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/catastrophic.rb">catastrophic.java</A>
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</p>
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<p>
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You can imagine an attacker
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mounting a nice <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack">DoS attack</A> against
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your program if it contains such an “evil” regular expression. But it can also happen by accident:
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on 20 July 2016 the website <A HREF="http://stackstatus.net/post/147710624694/outage-postmortem-july-20-2016">Stack Exchange</A>
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was knocked offline because of an evil regular expression. One of their engineers talks about this in this
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<A HREF="https://vimeo.com/112065252">video</A>. A similar problem needed to be fixed in the
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<A HREF="http://davidvgalbraith.com/how-i-fixed-atom/">Atom</A> editor.
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A few implementations of regular expression matchers are almost immune from such problems.
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For example, <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> can deal with strings of up to 4,300 <code>a</code>s in less than a second. But if you scale
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the regular expression and string further to, say, 4,600 <code>a</code>s, then you get a <code>StackOverflowError</code>
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potentially crashing your program. Moreover (beside the "minor" problem of being painfully slow) according to this
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<A HREF="http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regex_Posix">report</A>
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nearly all regular expression matchers using the POSIX rules are actually buggy.
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</p>
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<p>
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On a rainy afternoon, I implemented
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<A HREF="http://talisker.inf.kcl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/re3.scala">this</A>
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regular expression matcher in Scala. It is not as fast as the official one in Scala, but
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it can match up to 11,000 <code>a</code>s in less than 5 seconds without raising any exception
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(remember Python and Ruby both need nearly 30 seconds to process 28(!) <code>a</code>s, and Scala's
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official matcher maxes out at 4,600 <code>a</code>s). My matcher is approximately
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85 lines of code and based on the concept of
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<A HREF="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2293">derivatives of regular expressions</A>.
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These derivatives were introduced in 1964 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Brzozowski_(computer_scientist)">
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Janusz Brzozowski</A>, but according to this
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<A HREF="https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/sao/documents/jfp09.pdf">paper</A> had been lost in the “sands of time”.
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The advantage of derivatives is that they side-step completely the usual
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<A HREF="http://hackingoff.com/compilers/regular-expression-to-nfa-dfa">translations</A> of regular expressions
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into NFAs or DFAs, which can introduce the exponential behaviour exhibited by the regular
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expression matchers in Python, Java and Ruby.
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</p>
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<p>
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Now the authors from the
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<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/regex-parsing-derivatives.pdf">FLOPS'14-paper</A> mentioned
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above claim they are even faster than me and can deal with even more features of regular expressions
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(for example subexpression matching, which my rainy-afternoon matcher cannot). I am sure they thought
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about the problem much longer than a single afternoon. The task
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in this project is to find out how good they actually are by implementing the results from their paper.
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Their approach to regular expression matching is also based on the concept of derivatives.
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I used derivatives very successfully once for something completely different in a
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<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/Publications/rexp.pdf">paper</A>
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about the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myhill–Nerode_theorem">Myhill-Nerode theorem</A>.
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So I know they are worth their money. Still, it would be interesting to actually compare their results
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with my simple rainy-afternoon matcher and potentially “blow away” the regular expression matchers
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in Python, Ruby and Java (and possibly in Scala too). The application would be to implement a fast lexer for
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programming languages, or improve the network traffic analysers in the tools <A HREF="https://www.snort.org">Snort</A> and
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<A HREF="https://www.bro.org">Bro</A>.
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</p>
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<p>
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<B>Literature:</B>
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The place to start with this project is obviously this
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<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/regex-parsing-derivatives.pdf">paper</A>
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and this <A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/Publications/posix.pdf">one</A>.
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Traditional methods for regular expression matching are explained
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in the Wikipedia articles
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFA_minimization">here</A> and
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerset_construction">here</A>.
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The authoritative <A HREF="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/ialc.html">book</A>
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on automata and regular expressions is by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullmann (available in the library).
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There is also an online course about this topic by Ullman at
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<A HREF="https://www.coursera.org/course/automata">Coursera</A>, though IMHO not
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done with love.
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There are millions of other pointers about regular expression
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matching on the Web. I found the chapter on Lexing in this
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<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A> very helpful. Finally, it will
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be of great help for this project to take part in my Compiler and Formal Language module (6CCS3CFL).
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Test cases for “<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
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regular expressions can be obtained from <A HREF="http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regex_Posix">here</A>.
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</p>
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<p>
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<B>Skills:</B>
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This is a project for a student with an interest in theory and with
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good programming skills. The project can be easily implemented
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in functional languages like
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<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
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<A HREF="http://fsharp.org">F#</A>,
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_ML">ML</A>,
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<A HREF="http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell">Haskell</A>, etc. Python and other non-functional languages
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can be also used, but seem much less convenient. If you do attend my Compilers and Formal Languages
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module, that would obviously give you a head-start with this project.
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</p>
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<li> <H4>[CU2] A Compiler for a small Programming Language</H4>
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<p>
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<b>Description:</b>
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Compilers translate high-level programs that humans can read and write into
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efficient machine code that can be run on a CPU or virtual machine.
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A compiler for a simple functional language generating X86 code is described
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<A HREF="https://libraries.io/github/chameco/Shade">here</A>.
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I recently implemented a very simple compiler for an even simpler functional
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programming language following this
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<A HREF="https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-toplas.pdf">paper</A>
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(also described <A HREF="https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-tr.pdf">here</A>).
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My code, written in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>, of this compiler is
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<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/compiler.scala">here</A>.
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The compiler can deal with simple programs involving natural numbers, such
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as Fibonacci numbers or factorial (but it can be easily extended - that is not the point).
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</p>
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<p>
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While the hard work has been done (understanding the two papers above),
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my compiler only produces some idealised machine code. For example I
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assume there are infinitely many registers. The goal of this
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project is to generate machine code that is more realistic and can
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run on a CPU, like X86, or run on a virtual machine, say the JVM.
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This gives probably a speedup of thousand times in comparison to
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my naive machine code and virtual machine. The project
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requires to dig into the literature about real CPUs and generating
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real machine code.
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</p>
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<p>
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An alternative is to not generate machine code, but build a compiler that compiles to
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<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">JavaScript</A>. This is the language that is supported by most
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browsers and therefore is a favourite
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vehicle for Web-programming. Some call it <B>the</B> scripting language of the Web.
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Unfortunately, JavaScript is also probably one of the worst
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languages to program in (being designed and released in a hurry). <B>But</B> it can be used as a convenient target
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for translating programs from other languages. In particular there are two
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very optimised subsets of JavaScript that can be used for this purpose:
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one is <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and the other is
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<A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>. Since
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last year there is even the official <A HREF="http://webassembly.org">Webassembly</A>
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There is a <A HREF="http://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/docs/getting_started/Tutorial.html">tutorial</A> for emscripten
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and an impressive <A HREF="https://youtu.be/c2uNDlP4RiE">demo</A> which runs the
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine">Unreal Engine 3</A>
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in a browser with spectacular speed. This was achieved by compiling the
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C-code of the Unreal Engine to the LLVM intermediate language and then translating the LLVM
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code to JavaScript.
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</p>
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<p>
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<B>Literature:</B>
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There is a lot of literature about compilers
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(for example <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/cwc.html">this book</A> -
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I can lend you my copy for the duration of the project, or this
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<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A>). A very good overview article
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about implementing compilers by
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<A HREF="http://tratt.net/laurie/">Laurie Tratt</A> is
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<A HREF="http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/how_difficult_is_it_to_write_a_compiler">here</A>.
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An online book about the Art of Assembly Language is
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<A HREF="http://flint.cs.yale.edu/cs422/doc/art-of-asm/pdf/">here</A>.
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An introduction into x86 machine code is <A HREF="http://ianseyler.github.com/easy_x86-64/">here</A>.
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Intel's official manual for the x86 instruction is
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<A HREF="http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/manuals/24319101.pdf">here</A>.
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Two assemblers for the JVM are described <A HREF="http://jasmin.sourceforge.net">here</A>
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and <A HREF="https://github.com/Storyyeller/Krakatau">here</A>.
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An interesting twist of this project is to not generate code for a CPU, but
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for the intermediate language of the <A HREF="http://llvm.org">LLVM</A> compiler
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(also described <A HREF="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html">here</A>). If you want to see
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what machine code looks like you can compile your C-program using gcc -S.
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</p>
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<p>
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If JavaScript is chosen as a target instead, then there are plenty of <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">tutorials</A> on the Web.
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<A HREF="http://jsbooks.revolunet.com">Here</A> is a list of free books on JavaScript.
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A project from which you can draw inspiration is this
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<A HREF="http://jlongster.com/Outlet--My-Lisp-to-Javascript-Experiment">Lisp-to-JavaScript</A>
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translator. <A HREF="https://bitbucket.org/ktg/parenjs/overview">Here</A> is another such project.
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And <A HREF="https://github.com/viclib/liscript">another</A> in less than 100 lines of code.
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript">Coffeescript</A> is a similar project
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except that it is already quite <A HREF="http://coffeescript.org">mature</A>. And finally not to
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forget <A HREF="http://www.typescriptlang.org">TypeScript</A> developed by Microsoft. The main
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difference between these projects and this one is that they translate into relatively high-level
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JavaScript code; none of them use the much lower levels <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and
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<A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
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</p>
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<p>
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<B>Skills:</B>
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This is a project for a student with a deep interest in programming languages and
|
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260 |
compilers. Since my compiler is implemented in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
|
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261 |
it would make sense to continue this project in this language. I can be
|
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262 |
of help with questions and books about <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>.
|
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263 |
But if Scala is a problem, my code can also be translated quickly into any other functional
|
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|
264 |
language. Again, it will be of great help for this project to take part in
|
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265 |
my Compiler and Formal Language module (6CCS3CFL).
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</p>
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267 |
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<p>
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<B>PS:</B> Compiler projects consistently received high marks in the past.
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I have supervised eight so far and most of them received a mark above 70% - one even was awarded a prize.
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</p>
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|
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<li> <H4>[CU3] Slide-Making in the Web-Age</H4>
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|
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275 |
<p>
|
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The standard technology for writing scientific papers in Computer Science is to use
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</A>, a document preparation
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278 |
system originally implemented by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth">Donald Knuth</A>
|
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279 |
and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Lamport">Leslie Lamport</A>.
|
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LaTeX produces very pleasantly looking documents, can deal nicely with mathematical
|
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281 |
formulas and is very flexible. If you are interested, <A HREF="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX">here</A>
|
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is a side-by-side comparison between Word and LaTeX (which LaTeX “wins” with 18 out of 21 points).
|
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Computer scientists not only use LaTeX for documents,
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but also for slides (really, nobody who wants to be cool uses Keynote or Powerpoint).
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</p>
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<p>
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Although used widely, LaTeX seems nowadays a bit dated for producing
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slides. Unlike documents, which are typically “static” and published in a book or journal,
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slides often contain changing contents that might first only be partially visible and
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only later be revealed as the “story” of a talk or lecture demands.
|
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Also slides often contain animated algorithms where each state in the
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calculation is best explained by highlighting the changing data.
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</p>
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295 |
|
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<p>
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297 |
It seems HTML and JavaScript are much better suited for generating
|
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|
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such animated slides. This <A HREF="http://www.impressivewebs.com/html-slidedeck-toolkits/">page</A>
|
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links to slide-generating programs using this combination of technologies.
|
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300 |
However, the problem with all of these project is that they depend heavily on the users being
|
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301 |
able to write JavaScript, CCS or HTML...not something one would like to depend on given that
|
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302 |
“normal” users likely only have a LaTeX background. The aim of this project is to invent a
|
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|
303 |
very simple language that is inspired by LaTeX and then generate from code written in this language
|
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304 |
slides that can be displayed in a web-browser. An example would be the
|
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|
305 |
<A HREF="https://www.madoko.net">Madoko</A> project.
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</p>
|
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307 |
|
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|
308 |
<p>
|
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This sounds complicated, but there is already some help available:
|
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|
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<A HREF="http://www.mathjax.org">Mathjax</A> is a JavaScript library that can
|
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311 |
be used to display mathematical text, for example</p>
|
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|
312 |
|
|
|
313 |
<blockquote>
|
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|
314 |
<p>When \(a \ne 0\), there are two solutions to \(ax^2 + bx + c = 0\) and they are
|
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|
315 |
\(x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}\).</p>
|
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|
316 |
</blockquote>
|
|
|
317 |
|
|
|
318 |
<p>
|
|
|
319 |
by writing code in the familiar LaTeX-way. This can be reused.
|
|
|
320 |
Another such library is <A HREF="http://khan.github.io/KaTeX/">KaTeX</A>.
|
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|
321 |
There are also plenty of JavaScript
|
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|
322 |
libraries for graphical animations (for example
|
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|
323 |
<A HREF="http://raphaeljs.com">Raphael</A>,
|
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|
324 |
<A HREF="http://svgjs.com">SVG.JS</A>,
|
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|
325 |
<A HREF="http://bonsaijs.org">Bonsaijs</A>,
|
|
|
326 |
<A HREF="http://jsxgraph.uni-bayreuth.de/wp/">JSXGraph</A>). The inspiration for how the user should be able to write
|
|
|
327 |
slides could come from the LaTeX packages <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX)">Beamer</A>
|
|
|
328 |
and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGF/TikZ">PGF/TikZ</A>. A slide-making project from which
|
|
|
329 |
inspiration can be drawn is <A HREF="http://maciejczyzewski.me/hyhyhy/">hyhyhy</A>.
|
|
|
330 |
</p>
|
|
|
331 |
|
|
|
332 |
<p>
|
|
|
333 |
<B>Skills:</B>
|
|
|
334 |
This is a project that requires good knowledge of JavaScript. You need to be able to
|
|
|
335 |
parse a language and translate it to a suitable part of JavaScript using
|
|
|
336 |
appropriate libraries. Tutorials for JavaScript are <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">here</A>.
|
|
|
337 |
A parser generator for JavaScript is <A HREF="http://pegjs.majda.cz">here</A>. There are probably also
|
|
|
338 |
others. If you want to avoid JavaScript there are a number of alternatives: for example the
|
|
|
339 |
<A HREF="http://elm-lang.org">Elm</A>
|
|
|
340 |
language has been especially designed for implementing interactive animations, which would be
|
|
|
341 |
very convenient for this project. A nice slide making project done by a previous student is
|
|
|
342 |
<A HREF="http://www.markslides.org">MarkSlides</A> by Oleksandr Cherednychenko.
|
|
|
343 |
</p>
|
|
|
344 |
|
|
|
345 |
<li> <H4>[CU4] Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos</H4>
|
|
|
346 |
|
|
|
347 |
<p>
|
|
|
348 |
<B>Description:</B>
|
|
|
349 |
This project is for true hackers! <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi">Raspberry Pi's</A>
|
|
|
350 |
are small Linux computers the size of a credit-card and only cost £26, the
|
|
|
351 |
simplest version even costs only £5 (see pictures on the left below). They were introduced
|
|
|
352 |
in 2012 and people went crazy...well some of them. There is a
|
|
|
353 |
<A HREF="https://plus.google.com/communities/113390432655174294208?hl=en">Google+</A>
|
|
|
354 |
community about Raspberry Pi's that has more
|
|
|
355 |
than 197k of followers. It is hard to keep up with what people do with these small computers. The possibilities
|
|
|
356 |
seem to be limitless. The main resource for Raspberry Pi's is <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org">here</A>.
|
|
|
357 |
There are <A HREF="https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/">magazines</A> dedicated to them and tons of
|
|
|
358 |
<A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=39">books</A> (not to mention
|
|
|
359 |
floods of <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=raspberry+pi">online</A> material,
|
|
|
360 |
such as the <A HREF="https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/Projects_Book_v1.pdf">RPi projects book</A>).
|
|
|
361 |
Google just released a
|
|
|
362 |
<A HREF="http://googlecreativelab.github.io/coder/">framework</A>
|
|
|
363 |
for web-programming on Raspberry Pi's turning them into webservers.
|
|
|
364 |
In my home one Raspberry Pi has the very important task of automatically filtering out
|
|
|
365 |
nearly all advertisments using the
|
|
|
366 |
<A HREF="https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole">Pi-Hole</A> software
|
|
|
367 |
(you cannot imagine what difference this does to your web experience...you just sit back and read what
|
|
|
368 |
is important).
|
|
|
369 |
</p>
|
|
|
370 |
|
|
|
371 |
<p>
|
|
|
372 |
<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino">Arduinos</A> are slightly older (from 2005) but still very cool (see picture on the right below). They
|
|
|
373 |
are small single-board micro-controllers that can talk to various external gadgets (sensors, motors, etc). Since Arduinos
|
|
|
374 |
are open-software and open-hardware there are many clones and add-on boards. Like for the Raspberry Pi, there
|
|
|
375 |
is a lot of material <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=arduino">available</A> about Arduinos.
|
|
|
376 |
The main reference is <A HREF="http://www.arduino.cc">here</A>. Like the Raspberry Pi's, the good thing about
|
|
|
377 |
Arduinos is that they can be powered with simple AA-batteries.
|
|
|
378 |
</p>
|
|
|
379 |
|
|
|
380 |
<p>
|
|
|
381 |
I have several Raspberry Pi's including wifi-connectors and two <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/camera">cameras</A>.
|
|
|
382 |
I also have two <A HREF="http://www.freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Store/Introducing-the-Freakduino-Chibi-An-Arduino-based-Board-For-Wireless-Sensor-Networking.html">Freakduino Boards</A> that are Arduinos extended with wireless communication. I can lend them to responsible
|
|
|
383 |
students for one or two projects. However, the aim is to first come up with an idea for a project. Popular projects are
|
|
|
384 |
automated temperature sensors, network servers, robots, web-cams (<A HREF="http://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/electronics/shard-rain-cam/">here</A>
|
|
|
385 |
is a <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3547">web-cam</A> directed at the Shard that can
|
|
|
386 |
<A HREF="http://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/software/shard-rain-cam-quantifying-cloudy/">tell</A>
|
|
|
387 |
you whether it is raining or cloudy). There are plenty more ideas listed
|
|
|
388 |
<A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=15">here</A> for Raspberry Pi's and
|
|
|
389 |
<A HREF="http://playground.arduino.cc/projects/ideas">here</A> for Arduinos.
|
|
|
390 |
</p>
|
|
|
391 |
|
|
|
392 |
<p>
|
|
|
393 |
There are essentially two kinds of projects: One is purely software-based. Software projects for Raspberry Pi's are often
|
|
|
394 |
written in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, but since these are Linux-capable computers any other
|
|
|
395 |
language would do as well. You can also write your own operating system as done
|
|
|
396 |
<A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/">here</A>. For example the students
|
|
|
397 |
<A HREF="http://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=4918">here</A> developed their own bare-metal OS and then implemented
|
|
|
398 |
a chess-program on top of it (have a look at their very impressive
|
|
|
399 |
<A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-03bouPsfEQ&feature=player_embedded">youtube</A> video).
|
|
|
400 |
The other kind of project is a combination of hardware and software; usually attaching some sensors
|
|
|
401 |
or motors to the Raspberry Pi or Arduino. This might require some soldering or what is called
|
|
|
402 |
a <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadboard">bread-board</A>. But be careful before choosing a project
|
|
|
403 |
involving new hardware: these devices
|
|
|
404 |
can be destroyed (if “Vin connected to GND” or “drawing more than 30mA from a GPIO”
|
|
|
405 |
does not make sense to you, you should probably stay away from such a project).
|
|
|
406 |
</p>
|
|
|
407 |
|
|
|
408 |
<center>
|
|
|
409 |
<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;"
|
|
|
410 |
src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/RaspberryPi.jpg"
|
|
|
411 |
alt="Raspberry Pi"
|
|
|
412 |
width="313" height="209">
|
|
|
413 |
|
|
|
414 |
<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;"
|
|
|
415 |
src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Raspberry-Pi-Zero-FL.jpg"
|
|
|
416 |
alt="Raspberry Pi Zero"
|
|
|
417 |
width="313" height="209">
|
|
|
418 |
|
|
|
419 |
<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;"
|
|
|
420 |
src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Arduino_Uno_-_R3.jpg"
|
|
|
421 |
alt="Arduino"
|
|
|
422 |
width="240" height="209">
|
|
|
423 |
</center>
|
|
|
424 |
|
|
|
425 |
|
|
|
426 |
<p>
|
|
|
427 |
<B>Skills:</B>
|
|
|
428 |
Well, you must be a hacker; happy to make things. Your desk might look like the photo below on the left.
|
|
|
429 |
The photo below on the middle shows an earlier student project which connects wirelessly a wearable Arduino (packaged
|
|
|
430 |
in a "self-3d-printed" watch) to a Raspberry Pi seen in the background. The Arduino in the foreground takes
|
|
|
431 |
measurements of
|
|
|
432 |
heart rate and body temperature; the Raspberry Pi collects this data and makes it accessible via a simple
|
|
|
433 |
web-service. The picture on the right is another project that implements an airmouse using an Arduino.
|
|
|
434 |
|
|
|
435 |
<center>
|
|
|
436 |
<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;"
|
|
522
|
437 |
src="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/rpi-photo.jpg"
|
|
520
|
438 |
alt="Raspberry Pi"
|
|
|
439 |
width="209" height="313">
|
|
|
440 |
|
|
|
441 |
<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;"
|
|
522
|
442 |
src="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/rpi-watch.jpg"
|
|
520
|
443 |
alt="Raspberry Pi"
|
|
|
444 |
width="450" height="254">
|
|
|
445 |
|
|
|
446 |
<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;"
|
|
522
|
447 |
src="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/rpi-airmouse.jpg"
|
|
520
|
448 |
alt="Raspberry Pi"
|
|
|
449 |
width="250" height="254">
|
|
|
450 |
</center>
|
|
|
451 |
|
|
|
452 |
|
|
|
453 |
<li> <H4>[CU5] An Infrastructure for Displaying and Animating Code in a Web-Browser</H4>
|
|
|
454 |
|
|
|
455 |
<p>
|
|
|
456 |
<B>Description:</B>
|
|
|
457 |
The project aim is to implement an infrastructure for displaying and
|
|
|
458 |
animating code in a web-browser. The infrastructure should be agnostic
|
|
|
459 |
with respect to the programming language, but should be configurable.
|
|
|
460 |
I envisage something smaller than the projects
|
|
|
461 |
<A HREF="http://www.pythontutor.com">here</A> (for Python),
|
|
|
462 |
<A HREF="http://ideone.com">here</A> (for Java),
|
|
|
463 |
<A HREF="http://codepad.org">here</A> (for multiple languages),
|
|
|
464 |
<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_intro">here</A> (for HTML)
|
|
|
465 |
<A HREF="http://repl.it/languages/JavaScript">here</A> (for JavaScript),
|
|
|
466 |
and <A HREF="http://www.scala-tour.com/#/welcome">here</A> (for Scala).
|
|
|
467 |
</p>
|
|
|
468 |
|
|
|
469 |
<p>
|
|
|
470 |
The tasks in this project are being able (1) to lex and parse languages and (2) to write an interpreter.
|
|
|
471 |
The goal is to implement this as much as possible in a language-agnostic fashion.
|
|
|
472 |
</p>
|
|
|
473 |
|
|
|
474 |
<p>
|
|
|
475 |
<B>Skills:</B>
|
|
|
476 |
Good skills in lexing and language parsing, as well as being fluent with web programming (for
|
|
|
477 |
example JavaScript).
|
|
|
478 |
</p>
|
|
|
479 |
|
|
|
480 |
|
|
|
481 |
<li> <H4>[CU6] Proving the Correctness of Programs</H4>
|
|
|
482 |
|
|
|
483 |
<p>
|
|
|
484 |
I am one of the main developers of the interactive theorem prover
|
|
|
485 |
<A HREF="http://isabelle.in.tum.de">Isabelle</A>. This theorem prover
|
|
|
486 |
has been used to establish the correctness of some quite large
|
|
|
487 |
programs (for example an <A HREF="http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/">operating system</A>).
|
|
|
488 |
Together with colleagues from Nanjing, I used this theorem prover to establish the correctness of a
|
|
|
489 |
scheduling algorithm, called
|
|
|
490 |
<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inheritance">Priority Inheritance</A>,
|
|
|
491 |
for real-time operating systems. This scheduling algorithm is part of the operating
|
|
|
492 |
system that drives, for example, the
|
|
|
493 |
<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover">Mars rovers</A>.
|
|
|
494 |
Actually, the very first Mars rover mission in 1997 did not have this
|
|
|
495 |
algorithm switched on and it almost caused a catastrophic mission failure (see
|
|
|
496 |
this youtube video <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyx7kARrGeM">here</A>
|
|
|
497 |
for an explanation what happened).
|
|
|
498 |
We were able to prove the correctness of this algorithm, but were also able to
|
|
|
499 |
establish the correctness of some optimisations in this
|
|
522
|
500 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/Publications/pip.pdf">paper</A>.
|
|
520
|
501 |
</p>
|
|
|
502 |
|
|
|
503 |
<p>On a much smaller scale, there are a few small programs and underlying algorithms where it
|
|
|
504 |
is not really understood whether they always compute a correct result (for example the
|
|
|
505 |
regular expression matcher by Sulzmann and Lu in project [CU1]). The aim of this
|
|
|
506 |
project is to completely specify an algorithm in Isabelle and then prove it correct (that is,
|
|
|
507 |
it always computes the correct result).
|
|
|
508 |
</p>
|
|
|
509 |
|
|
|
510 |
<p>
|
|
|
511 |
<B>Skills:</B>
|
|
|
512 |
This project is for a very good student with a knack for theoretical things and formal reasoning.
|
|
|
513 |
</p>
|
|
|
514 |
|
|
|
515 |
<li> <H4>[CU7] Anything Security Related that is Interesting</H4>
|
|
|
516 |
|
|
|
517 |
<p>
|
|
|
518 |
If you have your own project that is related to security (must be
|
|
|
519 |
something interesting), please propose it. We can then have a look
|
|
|
520 |
whether it would be suitable for a project.
|
|
|
521 |
</p>
|
|
|
522 |
|
|
|
523 |
<li> <H4>[CU8] Anything Interesting in the Areas</H4>
|
|
|
524 |
|
|
|
525 |
<ul>
|
|
|
526 |
<li><A HREF="http://elm-lang.org">Elm</A> (a reactive functional language for animating webpages; have a look at the cool examples, or <A HREF="http://pragmaticstudio.com/blog/2014/12/19/getting-started-with-elm">here</A> for an introduction)
|
|
|
527 |
<li><A HREF="http://www.smlserver.org/smltojs/">SMLtoJS</A> (a ML compiler to JavaScript; or anything else related to
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sane languages that compile to JavaScript)
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<li>Any statistical data related to Bitcoins (in the spirit of this
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<A HREF="http://people.csail.mit.edu/spillai/data/papers/bitcoin-transaction-graph-analysis.pdf">paper</A> or
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this <A HREF="https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf">one</A>; this will probably require some extensive C knowledge or any
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other heavy-duty programming language)
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<li>Anything related to programming languages and formal methods (like
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<A HREF="http://matt.might.net/articles/intro-static-analysis/">static program analysis</A>)
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535 |
<li>Anything related to low-cost, hands-on hardware like Raspberry Pi, Arduino,
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|
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<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubieboard">Cubieboard</A>
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|
537 |
<li>Anything related to unikernel operating systems, like
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<A HREF="http://www.xenproject.org">Xen</A> or
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|
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<A HREF="http://www.openmirage.org">Mirage OS</A>
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<li>Any kind of applied hacking, for example the Arduino-based keylogger described
|
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|
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<A HREF="http://samy.pl/keysweeper/">here</A>
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|
542 |
<li>Anything related to code books, like this
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<A HREF="http://www.joelotter.com/kajero/">one</A>
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|
544 |
</ul>
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545 |
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546 |
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547 |
|
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<li> <H4>Earlier Projects</H4>
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549 |
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I am also open to project suggestions from you. You might find some inspiration from my earlier projects:
|
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522
|
551 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/bsc-projects-12.html">BSc 2012/13</A>,
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|
552 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-12.html">MSc 2012/13</A>,
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|
553 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/bsc-projects-13.html">BSc 2013/14</A>,
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|
554 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-13.html">MSc 2013/14</A>,
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|
555 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/bsc-projects-14.html">BSc 2014/15</A>,
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|
556 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-14.html">MSc 2014/15</A>,
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|
557 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/bsc-projects-15.html">BSc 2015/16</A>,
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|
558 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-15.html">MSc 2015/16</A>,
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|
559 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/bsc-projects-16.html">BSc 2016/17</A>,
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|
560 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-16.html">MSc 2016/17</A>
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|
561 |
<A HREF="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-17.html">BSc 2017/18</A>
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520
|
562 |
</ul>
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</TD>
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</TR>
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</TABLE>
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<P>
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Time-stamp: <- 2017-09-27 12:44:13 by Christian Urban>
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<a href="https://validator.w3.org/check/referer">[Validate this page.]</a>
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</P>
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</BODY>
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</HTML>
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