Changes between Version 15 and Version 16 of SoC2015

Timestamp:

Feb 20, 2015, 12:52:10 AM (8 years ago)

Author:

Niall Douglas

Comment:

Added the prearranged projects

SoC2015

@@ -223 +223 @@
 The following students successfully sought out mentors and prearranged GSoC project proposals. They have also proven their programming competency by supplying C++ library code they have written for inspection.
 
-1. Damian Vicino. Topic: Safe Numerics. Mentor: Robert Ramey.
-
-2. Louis Dionne. Topic: Heterogeneous collections (Boost.Hana). Mentor: Joel Falcou.
+== 1. Safe Float (boost::safe_numerics<float>) (Damian Vicino mentored by Robert Ramey) ==
+
+=== Background ===
+Arithmetic operations in C++ are NOT guaranteed to yield a correct
+mathematical result. This feature is inherited from the early days of C.
+The behavior of int, unsigned int and others were designed to map closely
+to the underlying hardware. Computer hardware implements these types as a
+fixed number of bits. When the result of arithmetic operations exceeds
+this number of bits, the result will not be arithmetically correct. In the
+past 2 years, the library safe_numerics was developed in Boost Incubator
+with a focus in safe_integer operations. Now, we are interesting in
+pushing the project forward to include the floating point arithmetics, an
+important milestone for the project.
+
+=== GSoC project proposal ===
+To design a drop-in replacements for float and double (safe<float> and
+safe<double> which guarantee that, when used in expressions in a C++
+program, no incorrect arithmetic results will produced. To implement the
+safe_numerics<float> and safe_numerics<double>. To write unit and
+functional regression testing for all of the above to a 100% code coverage
+level. To write documentation to Boost quality levels for the new
+container classes, including time and space complexity guarantees and
+exception guarantees for each API and each use of each API.
+
+
+== 2. Improve associative data structures in Hana (Louis Dionne mentored by Joel Falcou) ==
+
+=== Background ===
+Hana[1] is a library providing data structures and algorithms working on
+heterogeneous objects. It is basically a standard library where you would
+replace std::vector by std::tuple (which makes it quite different to the
+standard library). The project was started by Louis Dionne as part of GSoC
+2014.
+
+There is still room for improvement in many parts of the library. Some of
+the most lacking parts are the associative data structures, Set and Map,
+which provide a limited interface and are implemented using tuples and
+linear searching internally, which is inefficient. It would be great to
+have a new implementation for those data structures, and also to explore
+how the interface of these structures could be improved.
+
+
+=== GSoC project proposal ===
+This project requires good knowledge of:
+
+* Prior art in C++ template metaprogramming (MPL, Fusion, MPL11 and many
+  other smaller libraries) - C++11/14 template metaprogramming
+  implementation techniques - Functional programming; Hana is functional in
+  nature and most concepts used in the library
+  come from there. To design a new interface for the associative data
+  structures, you must be able to navigate through this.
+
+The project is easy to specify:
+
+* Find what functionality is missing in the associative data structures -
+  Find a way to incorporate the new functionality in the current concepts,
+  or modify those concepts to improve their generality and consistency. -
+  Explore possible implementation techniques for Maps and Sets. Benchmark
+  the compile-time (and runtime) performance.
+
+* Re-implement those data structures, with unit tests, examples and
+  documentation.
 
 
 = Mentors who may be available for GSoC in 2015 =
 
-* David Bellot, Boost.uBLAS
-* Kyle Lutz, Boost.Compute
+== 1. Kyle Lutz, Boost.Compute ==