February 28th, 2010
Unfortunately my honours project is not particularly visual, so it can be hard to update this blog with my progress when I have nothing I can really show. However, progress is being made. The first component of the project, a communications and network library, was completed almost a week ago.
The most useful thing I can share is the class diagram this was based on. It’s rough, it doesn’t detail methods or member data, and it’s far from beautiful, but perfection is an easy trap to fall into. I thought it was better to have a functioning library and an ugly diagram than a work of art demonstrating a library which I then would have no time to create.
The current phase of the project is far more interesting in my opinion, and thankfully should result in something slightly more visually interesting. It concerns the division of the world, hierarchically, into microcells. This spatial partitioning, and more importantly the assignment of work to specific processors is fast becoming the major focus of the project, and I hope to follow up with more on that topic shortly.
Subject: Honours Project, Programming Tags: .NET, C++, dissertation, multithreading, networking
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February 9th, 2010
In preparation for my second honours project meeting I was asked to report my progress by under several headings. Additionally, I have prepared an updated Gantt chart reflecting the changes mentioned. Continue reading »
Subject: Honours Project Tags: dissertation, Gantt Chart, MPI, Pathfinding
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January 8th, 2010
Fundamental to computer hardware and software developments, Moore’s law states that the number of transistors that can be fitted onto an integrated circuit increases exponentially over time. From the 1970s to the present day, this has for the most part held true, with the number of transistors doubling approximately every two years. While previously this could be related to gains in CPU clock speeds, leading directly to speed increases for sequential programs, in a 2004 paper Sutter demonstrated that this is no longer possible; ‘The free lunch is over’.
That’s right, I’ve completed my project proposal. For formatting reasons, I’ve uploaded the rest of the document as a PDF.
Subject: Honours Project
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January 2nd, 2010
I completed a further proposal outline, reviewed by my supervisor and classmates, which I am expanding into a final proposal for the commencement of term next week.
I added a lot of content to this draft, and was unsure exactly what was appropriate to mention and what would not be suitable (either by being too simple or more relevant in my final dissertation), so I’m glad this was cleared up. Changes are also to be made to the overall structure of the proposal. Finally, I’ll attempt to reduce the number of references and leave some of them for my dissertation, as apparently half a dozen references would be a more suitable amount for a proposal. I think this reduction will largely occur naturally when I restructure the proposal, however.
Here’s the second outline draft, the finished proposal should be up within the next week.
Subject: Honours Project Tags: dissertation, draft, Feedback, Proposal
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December 13th, 2009
For my first group meeting with my supervisor Dr. Henry Fortuna and fellow students Dave and Drew, we were asked to prepare an outline of our project proposal.
Here’s my initial outline, which I am expanding on for our next meeting and will redraft into a complete proposal over Christmas.
We discussed a number of points, most of them common to each of our proposals. As well as this, Dr Ozveren gave further advice during his lecture on Thursday which will be addressed in my redraft.
- In terms of structure, “Motivation” deals with too many points and could become condescending to someone who is familiar with the topic. Splitting the proposal to deal with literature review under its own subheading will help to address this and to emphasise the research work which has taken place.
- The basic outline did not make it clear which points were taken or referencing literature and which were my own, obviously this is vital in the final proposal and as such should be demonstrated in the redraft.
- The section “Addressing the Question” might be better separated into “Issues”, “Methodology” and “Evaluation”
- The proposal should also include objectives and milestones, and optionally constraints, assumptions and risks.
Subject: Honours Project Tags: dissertation, draft, Feedback, meeting, Proposal
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