User:Blevando

I am an undergraduate at Valparaiso University pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.

E-mail: benjamin.levandowski@marquette.edu

Work log

Week 1

General Orientation of REU and projects, along with Marquette University and its facilities
Met with mentor and student researchers to discuss potential projects
Read literature regarding potential projects
- Previous summer's research paper and an older paper on Embedded Xinu
- Paper on MiniOS and Papers on the Tock Embedded OS
- Paper describing Xest
- Looked at the ARM Cortex-A53 Technical Reference Manual to familiarize myself with ARM assembly and C calling convention
- Skimmed papers on Computer Science Secondary Education
Began to familiarize myself with Embedded Xinu by completing the UART homework from COSC 3250
Briefly explored the Rust programming language
Finalized a research project

Week 2

Read through relevant portions of the ACM/IEEE Computer Science Curricula 2013 Report
Found and read papers relating to computer science education in parallel and distributed computing and its relation to hardware
- Primarily searched through publications that derived from the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education
Furthered my familiarity with the multi-core Pi 3
Learned more ARM assembly by exploring the factorial homework from COSC 2200
Learned how not to give a presentation
Began to build a sandbox environment for XINU PI3 to mirror the arm playground for the Raspberry Pi
- Successfully able to run an isolated assembly file on the Pi3
- Environment still needs better structure
- Need to be able to easily run code on all cores

Week 3

Sandbox environment easily runs code on all processors
- Behavior is unpredictable after code terminates, loop forever for now
Completed Responsible Conduct of Research training including online modules and face-to-face discussion
Searched for programming tasks used in education
- Tasks designed for parallel assembly elude me, but some may be able to be modified to fit this purpose
Serial output needs attention now that up to 4 cores may write to it at once
A specific teachable task will be chosen next week

Week 4

Decided on a specific problem, the coupon collector's problem
- Easy to parallelize, works naturally with shared memory, and fits well with existing curricula
Implemented single core version in ARM assembly
Extended functionality to multi-core
Began to use mutexes and made use of atomic assembly instructions
Program does not yet work properly; either there exists race conditions or issue with cache coherence
Continued to debug software and explored solutions presented online

Week 5