Computer Systems LabTJHSST

Current ProjectsIn-House, pt 5

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Current Projects, pt. 5In-House

• Linux Kernel Debugging API

• Machine Learning Techniques for Game Playing

• Part-of Speech Tagging with Corpora

• Benchmarking of Cryptographic Algorithms

• Resource Locking and Synchronization in the Linux Kernel

• Maintenance of a Robust, Highly-Available Computer Systems Laboratory

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Linux Kernel Debugging API

The purpose of this project is to create an implementation of much of the kernel API that functions in user space, the

normal environment that processes run in. The issue with testing kernel code is that the live kernel runs in kernel space, a separate area that deals with hardware interaction and management of all the

other processes. Kernel spacedebuggers are unreliable and very limited

in scope; a kernel failure can hardly dump useful error information because there's no operating system left to write

that information to disk.

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Machine Learning Techniques for Game PlayingMachine learning allows the

computer to create its own logical rules, and learn from its past

experiences. Machine Learning allows an AI to increase its abilities over time, even without additional

direct programmer input. My project hopes to develop a proficiency at Tic-Tac-Toe. My project hopes to create

a new algorithm for a relatively simple game, Tic-Tac-Toe. Ideally,

this algorithm will be modified according to its results to create better

algorithms.

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Part-of Speech Tagging with

CorporaThe aim of this project is to create and

analyze various methods of part-of-speech tagging. The corpora used are of extremely limited size thus offering

less occasion to rely entirely upon tagging patterns gleamed from

predigested data. Methods used to analyze the data and resolve tagging ambiguities include Hidden Markov

Models and Bayesian Networks. Results are analyzed by comparing the

system-tagged corpus with a professionally tagged one.

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Analysis and Maintenance of a Robust, Highly-Available Computer Systems Laboratory

This project is an exploration of one possible environment that

meets the criteria for a "robust" and "highlyavailable" laboratory, while still providing the students who work in the lab with all of the required facilities. The first goal was to determine exactly

what those criteria are, and exactly what "required facilities" entails. This is must be executed

for each lab that is created in order to best fit the systems design to the needs of the

students and staff.

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Benchmarking of

Cryptographic Algorithms

The author intends to validate theoretical numbers by

constructing empirical sets of data on cryptographic algorithms. This data will then be used to give factual predictions on the

security and efficiency of cryptography as it applies to

modern day applications.

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Resource Locking and Synchronization in the Linux Kernel

The goal of the KDUAL project is to create a C library which implements the

kernel Application Programming Interface (API) in user-space and performs automatic

debugging. Sections of kernel code can then be compiled against this library and run as ordinary programs for convenient

testing. This particular section of the project aims to implement the kernel's resource locking API with automatic

detection of deadlock situations. Locking will be implemented in two parts-the core algorithms, with their ownAPI designed to

be convenient for the developers, and simple glue code bridging that API to the

kernel API.