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<TITLE>2012/13 BSc Projects</TITLE>
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<H2>2012/13 BSc 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: Strand Building S1.27</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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I will also need your King's username in order to book the project for you. 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.</H4>  
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<ul class="striped">
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<li> <H4>[CU1] Automata Minimisation</H4>
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  <p>
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  <B>Description:</b>  
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  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_finite_automaton">Deterministic finite automata</A> 
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  have many uses in Computer Science, for example for lexing
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  program code. In order to improve their run-time, automata need to be minimised, that 
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  is transformed into equivalent automata with the smallest possible number of state 
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  nodes. 
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  </p>
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  <p>
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  There is a little known method for minimising deterministic finite
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  automata by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Brzozowski_(computer_scientist)">
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  Janusz Brzozowski</A>. 
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  This method first reverses the edges of an automaton, which produces
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  a potentially non-deterministic automaton. The non-deterministic automaton is 
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  then determinised using the usual powerset construction. This is repeated
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  once more and voila you obtain a minimised version of the automaton
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  you started with. It is rather surprising that this method works at all: 
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  the powerset construction might produce an automaton with an exponentially 
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  larger number of states, completely contrary to the idea of minimising the
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  number of states. The task of this project is to implement this method, check that
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  it actually works with some examples and
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  compare it with more traditional methods for automata minimisation
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  (in terms of run-time, code complexity, etc). Examples can be 
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  obtained by translating regular expressions into automata. A natural extension
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  of the project is therefore to implement a recogniser for regular expressions
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  following, for example, this <A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~so294/documents/jfp09.pdf">paper</A>. 
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  </p>
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  <p>
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  <B>Literature:</B> 
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  A good place to start with this project are 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 is by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullmann (available in the library). 
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  There is also an online course about automata 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. There
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  is also the book <i>Automata and Computability</i> by 
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~kozen/">Dexter Kozen</A> including more 
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  advanced material about automata.
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  Finally, there are millions of other pointers about automata
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  minimisation on the web. Finally, I will give a lot of the background in
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  my Automata and Formal Languages course (6CCS3AFL), which starts in September.
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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 some
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  reasonable programming skills. The project can be easily implemented
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  in languages like
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  <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</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>, 
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  <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, etc.
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  </p>
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<li> <H4>[CU2] Equivalence Checking of Regular Expressions</H4>
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  <p>
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  <B>Description:</b>  
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  Solving the problem of deciding the equivalence of regular expressions can be used
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  to decide a number of problems in automated reasoning. Recently, 
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~asperti/">Andreas Asperti</A>
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  proposed a simple method for deciding regular expression equivalence described
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~asperti/PAPERS/compact.pdf">here</A>. 
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  The task is to implement this method and test it on examples.
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  It would be also interesting to see whether Asperti's method applies to
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  extended regular expressions, described
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  <A HREF="http://ww2.cs.mu.oz.au/~sulzmann/manuscript/reg-exp-partial-derivatives.pdf">here</A>.
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  </p>
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  <p>
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  <B>Literature:</B> 
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  The central literature is obviously the papers
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~asperti/PAPERS/compact.pdf">here</A> and
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  <A HREF="http://ww2.cs.mu.oz.au/~sulzmann/manuscript/reg-exp-partial-derivatives.pdf">here</A>.
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  Asperti has also some slides <A HREF="http://www.cs.unibo.it/~asperti/SLIDES/regular.pdf">here</a>.
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  More references about regular expressions can be found
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  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">here</A>. Like in
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  [CU1], I will give a lot of the background pf this project in
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  my Automata and Formal Languages course (6CCS3AFL).
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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 passion for theory and some
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  reasonable programming skills. The project can be easily implemented
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  in languages like Scala
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  <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</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>, 
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  <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, etc.
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  Being able to read <A HREF="http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell">Haskell</A>
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  code is beneficial for the part involving extended regular expressions.
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  </p>
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<li> <H4>[CU3] Machine Code Generation for a Simple Compiler</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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  I recently implemented a very simple compiler for a very simple functional
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  programming language following this 
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-toplas.pdf">paper</A> 
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  (also described <A HREF="http://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="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/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
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  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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  <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). 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 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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  A simple assembler for the JVM is described <A HREF="http://jasmin.sourceforge.net">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="https://wiki.aalto.fi/display/t1065450/LLVM+IR">here</A> and
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  <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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  <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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  compilers. Since my compiler is implemented in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
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  it would make sense to continue this project in this language. I can be
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  of help with questions and books about <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>.
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  But if Scala is a problem, my code can also be translated quickly into any other functional
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  language. 
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  </p>
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<li> <H4>[CU4] Implementation of Register Spilling Algorithms</H4>
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  <p>
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  <b>Description:</b> 
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  This project is similar to [CU3]. The emphasis here, however, is on the
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  implementation and comparison of register spilling algorithms, also often called register allocation 
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  algorithms. They are part of any respectable compiler.  As said
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  in [CU3], however, my simple compiler lacks them and assumes an infinite amount of registers instead.
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  Real CPUs however only provide a fixed amount of registers (for example
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  x86-64 has 16 general purpose registers). Whenever a program needs
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  to hold more values than registers, the values need to be “spilled”
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  into the main memory. Register spilling algorithms try to minimise
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  this spilling, since fetching values from main memory is a costly 
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  operation. 
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  </p>
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  <p>
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  The classic algorithm for register spilling uses a
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  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_allocation">graph-colouring method</A>.
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  However, for some time the <A HREF="http://llvm.org">LLVM</A> compiler
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  used a supposedly more efficient method, called the linear scan allocation method
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  (described 
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/course/cs132/linearscan.pdf">here</A>).
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  However, it was later decided to abandon this method in favour of 
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  a <A HREF="http://blog.llvm.org/2011/09/greedy-register-allocation-in-llvm-30.html">
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  greedy register allocation</A> method. It would be nice if this project can find out
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  what the issues are with these methods and implement at least one of them for the 
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  simple compiler referenced in [CU3].
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  </p>
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  <p>
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  <B>Literature:</B> 
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  The graph colouring method is described in Andrew Appel's 
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  <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/java/">book</A> on compilers
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  (I can give you my copy of this book, if it is not available in the library).
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  There is also a survey 
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  <A HREF="http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/fernando/publications/drafts/survey.pdf">article</A> 
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  about register allocation algorithms with further pointers.
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  </p>
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  <p>
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  <B>Skills:</B> 
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  Same skills as [CU3].
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  </p>
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<li> <H4>[CU5] A Student Polling System</H4>
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  <p>
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   251  | 
  <B>Description:</B>
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   252  | 
  One of the more annoying aspects of giving a lecture is to ask a question
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  to the students and no matter how easy the questions is to not 
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  receive an answer. Recently, the online course system 
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  <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A> made an art out of
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  asking questions during lectures (see for example the
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  <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A> 
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   258  | 
  course CS253).
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   259  | 
  The lecturer there gives multiple-choice questions as part of the lecture and the students need to 
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   260  | 
  click on the appropriate answer. This works very well in the online world. 
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   261  | 
  For  “real-world” lectures, the department has some 
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   262  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response">clickers</A>
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   263  | 
  (these are little devices part of an audience response systems). However, 
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   264  | 
  they are a logistic nightmare for the lecturer: they need to be distributed 
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   265  | 
  during the lecture and collected at the end. Nowadays, where students
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   266  | 
  come with their own laptop or smartphone to lectures, this can
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   267  | 
  be improved.
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   268  | 
  </p>
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   269  | 
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   270  | 
  <p>
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   271  | 
  The task of this project is to implement an online student
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   272  | 
  polling system. The lecturer should be able to prepare 
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   273  | 
  questions beforehand (encoded as some web-form) and be able to 
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   274  | 
  show them during the lecture. The students
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   275  | 
  can give their answers by clicking on the corresponding webpage.
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   276  | 
  The lecturer can then collect the responses online and evaluate them 
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   277  | 
  immediately. Such a system is sometimes called
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   278  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response#Smartphone_.2F_HTTP_voting">HTML voting</A>. 
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   279  | 
  There are a number of commercial
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   280  | 
  solutions for this problem, but they are not easy to use (in addition
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   281  | 
  to being ridiculously expensive). A good student can easily improve upon
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   282  | 
  what they provide. 
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   283  | 
  </p>
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   284  | 
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   285  | 
  <p>
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   286  | 
  The problem of student polling is not as hard as 
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   287  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting">electronic voting</A>, 
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   288  | 
  which essentially is still an unsolved problem in Computer Science. The
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   289  | 
  students only need to be prevented from answering question more than once thus skewing
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   290  | 
  any statistics. Unlike electronic voting, no audit trail needs to be kept
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   291  | 
  for student polling. Restricting the number of answers can probably be solved 
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   292  | 
  by setting appropriate cookies on the students
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   293  | 
  computers or smart phones.
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   294  | 
  </p>
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   295  | 
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   296  | 
  <p>
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   297  | 
  <B>Literature:</B> 
  | 
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   298  | 
  The project requires fluency in a web-programming language (for example 
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   299  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">Javascript</A>,
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   300  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP">PHP</A>, 
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143
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   301  | 
  Java, <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, 
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   302  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)">Go</A>, 
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   303  | 
  <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
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132
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   304  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)">Ruby</A>) 
  | 
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   305  | 
  and possibly a cloud application platform (for example
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   306  | 
  <A HREF="https://developers.google.com/appengine/">Google App Engine</a> or 
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   307  | 
  <A HREF="http://www.heroku.com">Heroku</A>).
  | 
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   308  | 
  For web-programming the 
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   309  | 
  <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A>
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   310  | 
  course at <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A> is a good starting point 
  | 
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   311  | 
  to be aware of the issues involved. This course uses <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>.
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133
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   312  | 
  To evaluate the answers from the student, Google's 
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   313  | 
  <A HREF="https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts">Chart Tools</A>
  | 
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   314  | 
  might be useful, which ar also described in this 
  | 
| 
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   315  | 
  <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtgT4jgnE8">youtube</A> video.
  | 
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132
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   316  | 
  </p>
  | 
| 
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   317  | 
  | 
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143
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   318  | 
  <p>
  | 
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   319  | 
  <B>Skills:</B> 
  | 
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132
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   320  | 
  In order to provide convenience for the lecturer, this project needs very good web-programming skills. A 
  | 
| 
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   321  | 
  <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker mentality</A>
  | 
| 
 | 
   322  | 
  (see above) is probably very beneficial: web-programming is an area that only emerged recently and
  | 
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   323  | 
  many tools still lack maturity. You probably have to experiment a lot with several different
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   324  | 
  languages and tools.
  | 
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   325  | 
  </p>
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   326  | 
  | 
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140
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   327  | 
<li> <H4>[CU6] Implementation of a Distributed Clock-Synchronisation Algorithm developed at NASA</H4>
  | 
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143
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   328  | 
  
  | 
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140
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   329  | 
  <p>
  | 
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   330  | 
  <B>Description:</B>
  | 
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141
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   331  | 
  There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
  | 
| 
140
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   332  | 
  <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A> 
  | 
| 
141
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   333  | 
  describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
  | 
| 
 | 
   334  | 
  messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
  | 
| 
143
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   335  | 
  A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is 
  | 
| 
 | 
   336  | 
  <A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
  | 
| 
141
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   337  | 
  The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
  | 
| 
140
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   338  | 
  </p>
  | 
| 
 | 
   339  | 
  | 
| 
144
 | 
   340  | 
  <p>
  | 
| 
140
 | 
   341  | 
  <B>Literature:</B> 
  | 
| 
141
 | 
   342  | 
  There is a wide range of literature on clock syncronisation algorithms. 
  | 
| 
 | 
   343  | 
  Some pointers are given in this
  | 
| 
 | 
   344  | 
  <A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
  | 
| 
 | 
   345  | 
  which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
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| 
 | 
   346  | 
  are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
  | 
| 
140
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   347  | 
  </p>
  | 
| 
 | 
   348  | 
  | 
| 
143
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   349  | 
  <p>
  | 
| 
 | 
   350  | 
  <B>Skills:</B> 
  | 
| 
141
 | 
   351  | 
  In order to implement a simulation of a network of clocks, you need to tackle
  | 
| 
140
 | 
   352  | 
  concurrency. You can do this for example in the programming language
  | 
| 
141
 | 
   353  | 
  <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> with the help of the 
  | 
| 
 | 
   354  | 
  <A HREF="http://akka.io">Akka</a> library. This library enables you to send messages
  | 
| 
 | 
   355  | 
  between different <I>actors</I>. <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242">Here</A> 
  | 
| 
 | 
   356  | 
  are some examples that explain how to implement exchanging messages between actors. 
  | 
| 
140
 | 
   357  | 
  </p>
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   358  | 
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132
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   359  | 
</ul>
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   360  | 
</TD>
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   361  | 
</TR>
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   362  | 
</TABLE>
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<P>
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<!-- Created: Tue Mar  4 00:23:25 GMT 1997 -->
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Last modified: Wed Sep 12 16:30:03 GMT 2012
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