Ideas

Calimero: OSGI module

2014-02-11T09:26:57+00:00

Description

Within this project you will make Calimero OSGI (Open Services Gateway Initiative) ready. OSGI provides a framework and service platform for deploying modular Java components, so called bundles. OSGI is a platform that can be used to create home automation gateways. Bundles have a lifecycle within an OSGI container and provide only a defined scope of their classes to other bundles within the container, which eases and enforces proper modularization of large Java projects. The goal of this project is to make Calimero OSGI ready, which means to create a bundle activator responsible for establishing connections to a KNX bus system. Furthermore, the API classes and interfaces that should be visible for other bundles need to be defined as exported classes and any dependencies on other software bundles need also to be defined and specified in the according manifest attributes of a .jar file. Within the project the build process to create an OSGI bundle should be automated and automated unit tests should verify that all the Calimero features are working within an OSGI container.

Benefit for the Student

Work on a well-established and industry acknowledged open source project. Gain experience in automation technology KNX, OSGI, build tools and automatic unit testing.

Benefit for the Project

Calimero is used in several other open source projects. A direct OSGI support within Calimero would allow to easily use Calimero as OSGI bundle in other software projects and avoid the redundancy of each project defining its own OSGI bundle for Calimero.

Requirements

Good Java programming skills
Know-how in OSGI, Build Tools (Ant/Maven/Gradle) and automatic unit testing (JUnit) is a plus.

Mentors

Wolfgang Kastner, Markus Jung

Contact

Send an email to mjung@auto.tuwien.ac.at or k@auto.tuwien.ac.at using the prefix [GSoC].
Mentors are regularly around in our GSoC IRC channel #TU-CSE-SoC at irc.freenode.net. You can also reach us via the mailinglist – send an email to cse-tuwien-gsoc14@googlegroups.com using the prefix [Calimero] (a subscription is required).

More Information

http://sourceforge.net/p/calimero/wiki/Home/
http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=osgi_module

GDAL/OGR: 3D Grid Shift Transformation

2014-02-12T09:31:59+00:00

Description

GDAL/OGR is widely used in open source and closed source applications. The OGRSpatialReference in conjunction with the PROJ.4 library is quasi standard for 2D coordinate transformation. In the GSoC 2013 project, the functionality was extended to support 3D transformations, especially focussing the transition from ellipsoidal to othometric height systems via geoid undulation models, and additionally considering anomalies of the national height systems via height correction models. Building on the results achieved so far, the goal is to implement and test a rigorous 3D transformation chain for geodetic datum transitions based on the NTv2 grid shift approach.

Benefit for the Student

Gain a deep understanding of world- and countrywide coordinate systems and their transformation. Conceive definition issues of horizontal and height systems on the earth. Being part of a small but widely used open source project.

Benefit for the Project

Set an appropriate standard for 3D transformations for subsequent projects.

Requirements

General understanding of geocentric and geographic coordinate systems, map projection and coordinate transformation is essential. Solid skills in C/C++ and understanding of existing code are necessary. Source code version management experiences (git, github) are welcome.

Mentors

Gottfried Mandlburger, Johannes Otepka

Contact

Mentors are regularly around in our GSoC IRC channel #TU-CSE-SoC at irc.freenode.net. You can also reach us via the mailinglist – send an email to cse-tuwien-gsoc14@googlegroups.com using the prefix [GDAL/OGR] (a subscription is required).

More info

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:projects:gdal-vertical-datums
http://www.mgs.gov.on.ca/stdprodconsume/groups/content/@mgs/@iandit/documents/resourcelist/stel02_047447.pdf
ftp://ftp.gouv.nc/sig/ESRI/ntv2/NTv2DeveloperGuide.pdf?
http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=3d_grid_shift_transformation

IoTSyS: Gateway persistence layer

2014-02-11T09:27:54+00:00

Description

The gateway currently keeps all oBIX objects and data point histories in memory. If the gateway is restarted all previous data points are lost. Within this project you will create a persistence layer based on a ORM framework (e.g. JPA) and allow the storage of oBIX objects in a database. Due to the aim of deploying the gateway on constrained devices (e.g. Raspberry PI) a light-weight database concept should be developed and implemented.

Benefit for the Student

Dive into latest technologies and emerging protocols for the Internet of Things/Web of Things. Gain hands on experience in Java based software development and latest Java persistence APIs and frameworks.

Benefit for the Project

A persistence layer based on a relational database is a starting point for long term observation and monitoring of buildings integrated by the IoTSyS gateway. The database can be extended in the future to be used for data mining and data analysis.

Requirements

Strong skills in Java based software development, relational data base design and Java Persistence APIs and frameworks are required.

Mentors

Markus Jung, Jürgen Weidinger

Contact

Send an email to iotsys@googlegroups.com using the prefix [GSoC].
Mentors are regularly around in our GSoC IRC channel #TU-CSE-SoC at irc.freenode.net. You can also reach us via the mailinglist – send an email to cse-tuwien-gsoc14@googlegroups.com using the prefix [IoTSyS] (a subscription is required).

More Information

http://code.google.com/p/iotsys
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/obix/ (oBIX)
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/tech/persistence-jsp-140049.html (Java Persistence API)
http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=gateway_persistence_layer

IoTSyS: Security

2014-02-11T09:28:16+00:00

Description

The IoTSyS gateway provides an oBIX Web service interface to access heterogeneous existing building automation technologies and smart meters (e.g. KNX, BACnet, ZigBee, Wireless M-Bus). The gateway provides a Web service protocol binding to SOAP and RESTful HTTP and CoAP Web service endpoints. Furthermore, virtual IPv6 endpoints are provided for all devices behind the gateway making them globally accessible in the Internet. Within this project state of the art Web service security technologies and access control technologies should be applied to protect these Web service endpoints. Transport layer security should be provided for HTTP (TLS/SSL) and CoAP (DTLS), but also message layer security should be considered. For the SOAP WS-endpoint the WS-Security stack can be used for securing message exchange by applying signatures and encryption. For the RESTful Web service endpoints XML Signature and XML Encryption should be used on the payload. Finally, access control mechanisms should be applied to allow fine-grained access control on oBIX objects for certain clients (e.g. based on XACML). The resulting outcome should be an IoTSyS security OSGI bundle that can be deployed on the gateway and protects the incoming and outgoing requests to the gateway.

Benefit for the Student

Dive into latest technologies and emerging protocols for the Internet of Things/Web of Things. Gain hands on experience in Java based software development and security for Web services. Apply theoretical knowledge on cryptography and security in practice and enhance and tighten your security skills.

Benefit for the Project

Security is currently a strong and open issue for the IoTSyS project which has highest priority. Due to the security and privacy issues arising through offering public access to automation devices a contribution on this topic would be a huge gain for the project.

Requirements

Strong skills in Java based software development are necessary.
Know-how about OSGI, IoC container design and implementation, Java byte code modification frameworks is a plus.

Mentors

Markus Jung, Jürgen Weidinger

Contact

More Information

http://code.google.com/p/iotsys
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-core-coap/ (CoAP)
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6347 (DTLS)
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wss (WS-Security)
http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/ (SOAP)
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/obix/ (oBIX)
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=xacml (XACML)
http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=security

IoTSyS: UI

2014-02-11T09:29:48+00:00

Description

The IoTSyS gateway provides an oBIX Web service interface to access heterogeneous existing building automation technologies and smart meters (e.g. KNX, BACnet, ZigBee, Wireless M-Bus). The gateway provides a simple HTML5 user interface based on AngularJS and jsPlumb that directly uses the RESTful Web service endpoints. The user interface allows a direct control interaction with the devices attached to the gateway, but further provides a simple mechanism to create control logic through graphically wiring data points of oBIX objects together. Through this wiring a communication relationship between devices can be established and simple interaction scenarios can be realized. For more complex interaction scenarios logic blocks are required. Within the project the student can work on the control user interface and enrich it with further features (e.g. user management, tab based views, persisting communication relationships to the database, dynamically creating of new logic objects, ...). Optionally, a scripting interface shall be developed that allows the dynamic creation of new logic blocks.

Benefit for the Student

Dive into latest technologies and emerging protocols for the Internet of Things/Web of Things. Gain hands on experience in Web based software development. Use latest technologies and frameworks for HTML5 based user interface development.

Benefit for the Project

Increasing the maturity of the user interface will strongly improve the usability of the project.

Requirements

Strong skills in Web based software development are necessary.
Know-how about state of the art Web framework (AngularJS, jQuery) and technologies (JavaScript, HTML5, CSS) are a big plus.

Mentors

Markus Jung, Jürgen Weidinger

Contact

More Information

http://code.google.com/p/iotsys
http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=ui

MOST: Caching expensive calculations in NoSQL storages

2014-02-11T09:13:10+00:00

Description

Handling building data on an urban level sometimes requires new concepts and out of the box thinking. The so-called virtual sensors offer access to various data sources (e.g. building sensor data, simulation program results, on demand calculation of values which are not directly measured by physical sensors, etc…) via standardized interfaces that are communicating through the MOST services. Virtual sensors/datapoints should use the NoSQL storage modules for caching previous calculated values.

Benefit for the student

The student works with state of the art urban monitoring technologies. He/she participates in the development of building data communication technologies at an urban level.

Benefit for the Project

This work intends to improve our virtual sensor concept, so that they communicate building information via the MOST framework.

Requirements

Good Java programming skills, Interest in Enterprise Java Features

Mentors

Harald Hofstätter, Christian Tauber, Stefan Glawischnig, Robert Zach

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=caching_expensive_calculations_in_nosql_storages

MOST: Distributed data preprocessing via Apache Hadoop

2014-02-11T09:12:46+00:00

Description

The student is integrating high performance, parallel data processing routines into the MOST framework. Based on the MOST NoSQL modules (Cassandra, neo4j), the available data processing routines (e.g. periodic data calculation) were moved to an independent Java module. Based on this, the student includes hadoop support to distribute these calculations.

Benefit for the student

The student works with state of the art database technologies. He/she gains expertise in the development of high-scalable and distributed data processing frameworks.

Benefit for the Project

Handling building data on an urban level requires scalable architecture. This work offers the possibility to distribute the various available data processing routines with the goal to improve performance.

Requirements

Good Java programming skills, Interest in NoSQL datastores and data processing algorithms

Mentors

Harald Hofstätter, Stefan Glawischnig, Rainer Bräuer, Robert Zach

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=distributed_data_preprocessing_via_apache_hadoop

Yellow elephant in Image by hadoop.

nomacs: Image Stitching Plug-in

2014-02-11T15:19:28+00:00

Description

A plug-in system was implemented in the last GSoC by Tim Jerman which will be released in spring 2014. In this project an image stitching plug-in shall be developed. Image stitching allows users to combine their panorama shots or to create a high resolution image from multiple images. The stitching method should adopt a robust method such as the one presented by J. Zaragoza et al.

Benefit for the Student

The student will deepen knowledge in software and plug-in architecture. In addition, basic knowledge of image processing will be gained.

Benefit for the Project

Panorama functionality will be added to nomacs by this plug-in. Furthermore, a plug-in keeps the basic image viewer, while users can extend functionality on their demand.

Requirements

Advanced image processing knowledge, good skills in C++, experience in writing Qt plug-ins.

Mentors

Markus Diem, Stefan Fiel, Florian Kleber

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=image_stitching_plug-in

nomacs: Image Transform Plug-in

2014-02-11T15:18:43+00:00

Description

A plug-in system was implemented in the last GSoC by Tim Jerman which will be released in spring 2014. In this project an image transform plug-in shall be developed. It should include these features:

Affine Image Transform
Image Rotation

The affine image transform will bring-up simple controls in the viewport which allow the user to manually transform an image. The image rotation will on the one hand allow users to rotate images arbitrarily. On the other hand an auto rotation which detects an image’s dominant orientation will be implemented similar to the method proposed by Hyong Il Koo and Nam Ik Cho.

Benefit for the Student

The student will deepen knowledge in software and plug-in architecture. In addition, basic knowledge of image processing will be gained.

Benefit for the Project

The image transform plug-in will extend nomacs to allow simple corrections of images. Furthermore, a plug-in keeps the basic image viewer, while users can extend functionality on their demand.

Requirements

Basic image processing knowledge, good skills in C++, experience in writing Qt plug-ins.

Mentors

Markus Diem, Stefan Fiel, Florian Kleber

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=image_transform_plug-in

nomacs: Social Media Plug-in

2014-02-11T15:17:52+00:00

Description

image filters for social media plugin A plug-in system was implemented in the last GSoC by Tim Jerman which will be released in spring 2014. This project shall add social media capability to nomacs by means of two plug-ins. The first plug-in will add a share button that allows users to sign-in at their preferred social media platform (e.g. facebook, twitter, google+). Then, share buttons appear for the respective platforms which allow for one-click image uploads. The plug-in must be implemented without using QWebkit in order to keep the dependencies as low as possible. The second plug-in adds an easy filter capability to nomacs (see image). The filter selection should render thumb images of the image currently displayed and be added to nomacs as Head-Up Display (HUD).

Benefit for the Student

The student will deepen knowledge in software and plug-in architecture. In addition, basic knowledge of image processing will be gained.

Benefit for the Project

The social media plug-in will extend nomacs to new media and allow for a simplified share workflow. Furthermore, a plug-in keeps the basic image viewer, while users can extend functionality on their demand.

Requirements

Good skills in C++, experience in writing Qt plug-ins, basic image processing knowledge.

Mentors

Markus Diem, Stefan Fiel, Florian Kleber

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=social_media_plug-in

OpenEngSB: Evaluation of Query Techniques

2014-03-03T10:46:04+00:00

Description

Ontologies are used to capture the tool and domain specific knowledge as well as relations between different data models inside the OpenEngSB. This knowledge is used later for transformation, querying and validation of heterogeneous data. Having in mind the complexity and size of a typical automation system it is very important to choose an optimal architecture for the ontological system and proper querying techniques, so that the final implementation will fit for the OpenEngSB requirements (especially regarding performance and scalability).

Benefit for the Student

Student will gain knowledge about different Semantic Web technologies, language and approaches for ontology querying and also architectures for querying multi-level ontological systems.

Benefit for the Project

By now, there is no clear understanding which architecture of ontological system (OS) and corresponding querying techniques will fit the best for the OpenEngSB requirements. Therefore evaluation and comparing of existing OS architectures and querying approaches should be done to choose the optimal one.

Requirements

Excellent skills in understanding and programming Java code are necessary. Knowledge in Semantic Web technologies (OWL, SPARQL) and experience with Apache Jena + (ARQ) would be useful.

Mentors

Richard Mordinyi, Stefan Scheiber, Dietmar Winkler

OpenEngSB: Implementation of an Advance Ontology-Based Data Storage Features within OpenEngSB

2014-03-03T10:45:15+00:00

Description

Currently the OpenEngSB only provide RDB as back-end data storage, which in some case make it difficult to extend it further. Therefore, an initial version of Ontology back-end have been implemented in experimental version. However, this year we wanted to fully integrate an ontology back-end, e.g., Jena TDB, to OpenEngSB. One important assignment will be to evaluate the currently available ontology data storage, to choose the best one available. This implementation of the chosen ontology-based data storage will be the main focus of the GSoC project, with some additional tasks e.g., UI for managing the data, etc.

Benefit for student

Cutting edge technology (OSGi, Ontology), Modular work package.

Benefit for project

Alternative data storage which could further push the improvement of the OpenEngSB

Requirements

Very good java skills, Experienced with OSGi environment, Familiarity with Ontology will be a big plus.

Mentors

Richard Mordinyi, Stefan Scheiber, Dietmar Winkler

OpenEngSB: Support of Software Engineering Best-Practices using an Ontology Storage

2014-03-03T10:44:34+00:00

Description

In todays software development the usage of versioning systems like Git or SVN is almost essential. The aim of the OpenEngSB is to integrate engineering tools and thus to support various engineering disciplines in their cooperation. The current capabilities of versioning systems, like branching, merging, is however missing in the OpenEngSB. A backend based on an ontology storage supporting full versioning capabilities would increase collaboration and development efficiency and effectiveness of the process.

Benefit for student

Combining cutting edge technology (OSGi, Ontology) and standard processes (SE best-practices)

Benefit for project

Git-like ontology-based storage in the OpenEngSB facilitating well-established software engineering processes

Requirements

Very good java skills, Knowledge about versioning systems, experience with OSGi and ontology technologies is a plus.

Mentors

Richard Mordinyi, Stefan Scheiber, Dietmar Winkler

OpenPixi: Implementation of standard benchmark

2014-02-11T09:21:58+00:00

Description

The aim of this project is to implement, test, and compare a standard benchmark for the OpenPixi simulator. Currently a Java version of the simulation exists, with optional parallel implementation using the IBIS framework, and a parallel version using OpenCL. For comparison purposes, parts of the code have been rewritten in C++. Also, for a WebGL version parts of the code will be reimplemented in JavaScript. The aim of this project is to define a core set of routines that should be implemented consistently in all these languages for sequential or parallel execution such that a standard benchmark can be created and tested. In any case, automatable test cases must ensure that the results agree within all versions of the code.

Benefit for the student

The student will learn to efficiently cope with various programming languages, like Java, JavaScript, and C++.

Benefit for the project

The project will benefit from a common benchmark with will have direct influence on the direction of the project.

Requirements

Good knowledge of Java, JavaScript, and C++ is of advantage.

Task for the application process

For the application process, please fix one of the issues at GitHub, or provide a small demo application that re-implements a part of the OpenPixi code in JavaScript or C++.

Mentors

Andreas Ipp, Kirill Streltsov, Clemens Müllner

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=implementation_of_standard_benchmark

OpenPixi: Micro-parallelization of the simulation using OpenCL

2014-02-11T09:21:26+00:00

Description

The aim of this project is to refine and improve the parallelization of routines used in the OpenPixi simulator. The Particle-In-Cell simulations use a large number of particles within a fixed grid. The grid and the particles are split so that they can run on different cores of a CPU, or even on different computers. There already exists a parallel implemenation which uses the IBIS framework for internode communication. Apart from this, a basic OpenCL implementation exists which realizes some basic parallelization in the grid, but does not fully exploit the parallel code structure of both, the grid and the particles. The aim of this project is to implement the full structure of the IBIS parallel version so that it can run efficiently using OpenCL. In any case, automatable test cases must ensure that the results agree with the single threaded version of the code.

Benefit for the student

The student will learn about physics simulations and how to parallelize them for best performance. The student will learn about the IBIS framework and about OpenCL.

Benefit for the project

The project will receive a fast parallel implementation of existing routines.

Requirements

Good knowledge of Java and C/C++. Knowledge of MPI or OpenCL is of advantage.

Task for the application process

For the application process, please fix one of the issues at GitHub, or provide a small demo application that uses OpenCL and implements one of the routines of the Java version of OpenPixi in parallel.

Mentors

Andreas Ipp, Kirill Streltsov, Clemens Müllner

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=micro-parallelization_of_the_simulation_using_opencl

OpenPixi: Visualization using WebGL

2014-02-11T09:21:41+00:00

Description

The aim of this project is to improve and extend a cross-platform interface using WebGL for the real-time visualization and interaction of the OpenPixi simulator. Currently, a Java web version exists, but it is desired to implement a version of the application that can run in any browser without the need for a Java plugin. Preliminary work on a WebGL version has started. The Particle-In-Cell simulation consists of a large number of particles that are simulated on a background grid. The web simulation should be able to visualize a three-dimensional setting from any perspective, including particles, meshes, and vectors on top of the meshes in a visually attractive way. The user should be able to interactively navigate through the real-time simulation. In case the browser does not support WebGL, a simpler fallback version should be displayed using standard JavaScript libraries.

Benefit for the student

The student will learn about the visualization of a physics simulation, and learn about WebGL.

Benefit for the project

The project will benefit from a visually attractive, intuitive user interface to a large amount of scientific data.

Requirements

Good knowledge of Java. Knowledge of Java, JavaScript and WebGL is of advantage.

Task for the application process

For the application process, please fix one of the issues at GitHub, or provide a small demo application that uses WebGL to reimplement some aspects of the OpenPixi application.

Mentors

Andreas Ipp, Ognen Kapetanoski, Clemens Müllner

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=visualization_using_webgl

QuantumDove: Support for two-dimensional heterostructures

2013-02-26T10:47:08+00:00

Description

QuantumDove currently only supports one-dimensional heterostructures, but the underlying libraries also allow for higher-dimensional simulations without redesigning the whole application. The task of the student is to extend the existing code appropriately to two (and possibly three) spatial dimensions.

Benefit for the Student

The student will gather a lot of experience in quantum mechanical simulations and learn how to build software in a library-centric manner. Also, since QuantumDove is still very young, the student can play a major role in refining the software design.

Benefit for the Project

The young QuantumDove project will gain a substantial amount of new functionality.

Requirements

Good C++ skills as well as education in quantum mechanics are required. Knowledge of numerical methods for solving the Schrödinger-Poisson-system is a plus.

Mentors

Toby D. Young, Karl Rupp

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki/doku.php?id=support_for_two-dimensional_heterostructures

Skeptik: Extension of proof compression algorithms from propositional to first-order logic

2014-02-11T09:24:05+00:00

Descirption

Skeptik has so far focused on the compression of propositional proofs generated by sat- and SMT-solvers. Now we would like to extend some of its algorithms to first-order proofs generated by resolution-based first-order automated theorem provers (ATPs). Skeptik’s data structures are already general enough to handle first- and even higher-order formulas. There are general abstract data structures for proofs, but they will have to be specialised (via inheritance) to deal with specific inference rules used by various ATPs. Furthermore, a combinator parser for first-order proofs in the TPTP TSTP format [1] needs to be implemented. The generalisation of the compression algorithms to the first-order case will involve some scientific creativity and will probably require some familiarity with the notion of unification, although a draft implementation of a unification algorithm is already available in Skeptik. We recommend the generalisation of the RecyclePivotsWithIntersection and LowerUnits algorithms [2], but you are welcome to study other algorithms as well and think about the viability of extending them to the first-order case.

In the previous two years, Skeptik’s GSoC students have achieved great academic success and were able to publish and present their results in high-level conferences. We are committed to provide similar opportunities to this year’s GSoC students, and we are looking for students that are enthusiastic about these opportunities! If you are interested in this project idea, please contact us as soon as possible.

[1] TSTP is the proof format used by the TPTP library of automated deduction problems maintained by Geoff Sutcliffe at the University of Miami. Google it to know more!

[2] Papers about these algorithms can be download from http://www.logic.at/people/bruno . Look for the CADE 2011 paper about regularisation and the TABLEAUX 2013 paper about lowering subproofs.

Benefit for the Student

The student will acquire practical experience and be in touch with cutting-edge research in the fields of automated deduction and applied proof theory. He will be mentioned as a co-author of any paper that might benefit from his implementation. He will have the pleasure of programming in the awesome language Scala.

Benefit for the Project

Skeptik’s application scope will be extended from propositional to first-order logic.

Requirements

Basic knowledge of logic is required. Basic knowledge of Scala or experience with other object-oriented (e.g. Java, C++,...) and functional (e.g. Haskell, OCaml,...) programming languages and willingness to learn Scala is required. Experience with data structures for proofs or directed acyclic graphs is desirable.

Mentors

Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo, Joseph Boudou

Contact

More Information

Instructions on how to improve your chances of getting accepted are listed on Skeptik's wiki (https://github.com/Paradoxika/Skeptik/wiki/GSoC-Instructions).
http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=extension_of_proof_compression_algorithms_from_propositional_to_first-order_logic

ViennaCL: Benchmark GUI

2014-02-12T08:27:45+00:00

Description

ViennaCL has a couple of benchmarking codes to optimize its compute kernels to the underlying hardware (CPUs, GPUs, Intel MIC). Within this project the student should merge these codes in a standalone, cross-platform graphical user interface (GUI) for benchmarking purposes similar to e.g. LuxMark or CompuBench. Users of the GUI should get a detailed view of the benchmark results, not only a single global point score. Also, users should have a simple one-click mechanism to submit their results back to us so that we can quickly improve our codes for better support on novel hardware.

Benefit for the Student

Squeezing the last bit of performance out of recent hardware is a lot of fun. :-)
Also, the student will learn a lot about Qt and C++ as well as the pitfalls of massively parallel hardware.

Benefit for the Project

A nice benchmarking GUI will help us with collecting performance data from new hardware quickly.
Since it is impossible for us to buy each of the many models of the market, such a benchmarking application will help us in getting valuable data.

Requirements

Experience in GUI programming with Qt is a plus. Moderate C++ skills are required.

Mentors

Karl Rupp, Philippe Tillet

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=benchmark_gui

ViennaCL: GPU-Accelerated STL Functionality

2013-02-25T14:51:49+00:00

Description

The C++ Standard Template Library (STL) defines a set of basic algorithms such as sort().
Such functionality is, where reasonable, provided for NVIDIA GPUs with thrust, but there is no extensive and independent implementation available in OpenCL. Thus, the goal of this project is to implement some of the most popular algorithms from the C++ STL for GPUs in ViennaCL.

Benefit for the Student

Fame and glory! :-) Invaluable experience in programming a robust high-level interface for targeting CPUs and GPUs on the low level will be gained.

Benefit for the Project

Providing efficient STL-type functionality will enable a lot of additional algorithms with portable performance to be added to ViennaCL in the future. In addition, users can easily compose operations not natively provided by the library.

Requirements

Advanced knowledge of C++ is essential, including familiarity with meta-programming techniques. Experience with GPU programming is a plus.

Mentors

Karl Rupp, Philippe Tillet

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=gpu-accelerated_stl_functionality

ViennaCL: Improving the PyViennaCL Python Wrapper

2013-02-25T14:51:49+00:00

Description

During GSoC 2013 the Python-wrapper PyViennaCL for the linear algebra library ViennaCL was created. Still, there is plenty room for further improvement as well as an integration of recently added functionality in ViennaCL. The aim of the project is to make PyViennaCL very robust and feature-complete.

Benefit for the Student

The student will work on the boundary between C++ and Python, thus learning a lot about the strengths and limits of both languages.

Benefit for the Project

A Python wrapper will make the rich functionality in ViennaCL available to a wide range of scientists using Python for their everyday projects.

Requirements

A solid understanding of both C++ and Python is required. Ideally, the student has some experience with working with shared libraries on multiple platforms, particularly Windows and Linux.

Mentors

Karl Rupp, Philippe Tillet

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=improving_the_pyviennacl_python_wrapper

ViennaCL: Sparse Matrix-Matrix Multiplication

2013-02-25T14:51:49+00:00

Description

GPUs are able to provide high performance for the operation C = A * B for dense matrices A, B, and C. However, if A and B are both sparse matrices, a lot of additional tricks are required to get reasonable performance. The aim of this project is to implement a toolkit of algorithms analyzing the sparsity patterns, which are then composed to yield a fast sparse matrix-matrix multiplication.
Moreover, the implementations should be tuned to GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD as well as Intel's MIC platform.

Benefit for the Student

The student will get hands-on experience in GPU programming using both OpenCL and CUDA. In particular, the student will learn the various tricks required to obtain high performance.

Benefit for the Project

The sparse matrix-matrix multiplication is a key building block for algebraic multigrid solvers and preconditioners. A fast sparse matrix-matrix multiplication will directly improve the efficiency of such methods significantly.

Requirements

Experience in either OpenCL or CUDA is desired.

Mentors

Karl Rupp, Evan Bollig

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=sparse_matrix-matrix_multiplication

ViennaCL: Tuning the OpenMP backend

2013-02-25T14:51:49+00:00

Description

ViennaCL has three computing backends: One based on CUDA, one based on OpenCL, and one based on OpenMP. While the CUDA and OpenCL backends provide high performance, this is not yet the case with the OpenMP backend. Although the OpenMP-backend was initially introduced as a fall-back mechanism for CPU-only systems, it is now mature enough to be tuned for high performance. The student will tune the individual linear algebra kernels (vector operations, matrix-vector products, etc.) for best performance.

Benefit for the Student

Squeezing the last bit of performance out of recent hardware is a lot of fun. :-)
Also, the student will learn a lot about how multi-core CPUs really work and the many tricks needed to get good performance.

Benefit for the Project

Certain algorithms cannot be implemented efficiently on CPUs with only OpenCL, so having an efficient OpenMP compute backend available will be an enabler for many high-performance implementations both within ViennaCL and derived by our users.

Requirements

Moderate C or C++ skills are required. Experience in using OpenMP is a plus.

Mentors

Karl Rupp, Philippe Tillet

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=tuning_the_openmp_backend

ViennaMesh: Mesh Doctor

2013-03-20T09:31:46+00:00

Description

Simulation meshes generated by CAD application often are of bad quality, sometimes even broken. For example the hull of an object isn't fully closed, duplicate elements exist or elements intersect each other. All of those (and many more) errorsare fatal for most meshing algorithms and following simulations.

The student should check, if there is any open source library, capable of fixing broken meshes. If available, an interface to ViennaMesh should be written. Otherwise a ViennaMesh module should be implemented which finds defects and repairs them if possible.

Benefit for the Student

The student will get in touch with the challenging topic of 3D meshing and will learn basic mesh element operations.

Benefit for the Project

The Mesh Doctor will allow ViennaMesh to detect and handle broken meshes instead of just failing to mesh them.

Requirements

The student has to provide good skills in C++ and basic knowledge in geometry.

Mentors

Florian Rudolf, Dieter Pahr, Josef Weinbub

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=mesh_doctor

ViennaMesh: Mesh Improvement of Voxel Meshes

2013-03-20T09:31:46+00:00

Description

3D image data (CT voxel data) are commonly used in biomedical applications as basis for simulation models. One challenge is how to get a mesh directly from segmented data. CGAL provides a solution to this problem. But such a mesh do not has a perfect quality which is needed for simulation models.

The task for this GSoC project is to develop a mesh improvement algorithm which is volume preserving (no shrinkage of the model). The new algorithm will be tested on several biomedical application examples.

Benefit for the Student

The student will get in touch with the challenging topic of 3D meshing and will learn how to improve volumetric meshes.

Benefit for the Project

The Mesh improvement algorithm will allow ViennaMesh generate meshes of desired quality for further sicentific processing.

Requirements

The student has to provide good skills in C++ and basic knowledge in geometry.

Mentors

Florian Rudolf, Dieter Pahr, Josef Weinbub

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=mesh_improvement_of_voxel_meshes

ViennaMesh: Mesh Optimizing

2013-03-20T09:29:28+00:00

Description

In scientific computing, many mesh related algorithms have a great need for meshes with high quality. Although the type of quality of a mesh depends on the algorithm operating on it, most requirements are similar. Especially size and shape of mesh elements is a central topic when speaking of mesh quality. Mesh generators often struggle with constraints and tend to produce low quality mesh elements. To compensate this, mesh optimizer are invented. These algorithms take a mesh and try to optimize the quality of this mesh. Popular mesh optimizers like Stellar or Mesquite were implemented.

The goal is to write an interface for such libraries to ViennaMesh. Additionally some low-level optimizations based on the ViennaGrid data structure might be implemented.

Benefit for the Student

The student will get in touch with the challenging topic of 3D meshing and will learn the importance of good mesh quality.

Benefit for the Project

With these mesh optimization modules, ViennaMesh is able to perform basic automatic mesh generation and produce meshes with high quality.

Requirements

The student has to provide good skills in C++ and interest in geometry and computer science, mathematical and geometric knowledge is advantageous.

Mentors

Florian Rudolf, Dieter Pahr, Josef Weinbub

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=mesh_optimizing

ViennaMOS: 3D Visualization

2013-02-26T10:47:08+00:00

Description

A vital part of computational science is the step of visualization. In this project, the student should extend the current visualization layer based on the VTK library. The goal is to utilize various visualization algorithms to provide advanced visualization capabilities to be used by ViennaMOS to visualize the simulation results. Different algorithms can be investigated based on the students interests, such as the visualization of iso-surfaces and vector fields, clipping, slicing, block extraction, or streamlines.

ViennaMOS is currently completly reimplemented from scratch. The current source code available on sourceforge does not reflect the current state of the project. For more information please contact the mentors via IRC or the mailinglist soc2013@iue.tuwien.ac.at.

Benefit for the Student

The student will obtain skills in 3D visualization and basic skills in GUI programming. More concretly, the student will work with the well-known open source libraries VTK and Qt.

Benefit for the Project

Due to the student's work, the project's visualization capabilities will be advanced considerably, allowing for improved capabilities to interpret the simulation results generated by ViennaMOS.

Requirements

Good C++ skills are required as well as an interest in scientific visualization and meshes.

Mentors

Josef Weinbub, Florian Rudolf

Contact

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki/doku.php?id=3d_visualization

VIM: Shiny on Compositional Data Analysis

2014-02-11T09:29:13+00:00

Description

The compositions and the robCompositions packages are software extension of the free and open-source statistical environment R. They include multivariate methods for the analysis of compositional data. However, subject matter specialists in, for example, geosciences or geochemistry often do not have any knowledge in programming or R. Thus, the aim is to provide the main facilities of both packages within a point and click interactive environment. For this task, the package Shiny should be used to turn analyses into interactive web applications that anyone can use. Several steps have to be considered:

- interaction: call the workhorse computational functions of robCompositions and compostions from shiny. Either write smart wrappers for it or revise the object-oriented class structure of these packages.
- extend these functionalities by some basic multivariate statistical methods and plots. As a guideline, use the book of Reimann, Filzmoser, Garrett and Dutter (2008).
- interactive features: shiny is favorable for its possiblity to create interactive applications. For every method, some interactive elements (e.g. sliders or text input) should be included.

Benefits for the Student

The student will get deep knowledge in programming in R and interactive web applications with shiny but also basic knowledge in compositional data analysis.
The student will work together with experts in this field of research and the project outcome (if successful) will be made available, distributed over the web and spread to the community.

Requirements

Basic knowledge in multivariate statistics. Advanced knowledge in any scripting language and especially in R. Knowledge in programming web applications.

Mentors

Matthias Templ, Peter Filzmoser

Contact

Links

www.r-project.org
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/robCompositions/index.html
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/compositions/index.html
http://www.rstudio.com/shiny/

More information

http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/cse/wiki2014/doku.php?id=shiny_on_compositional_data_analysis