Milos Cvetanovic

Chapter One - A Systematic Approach to Generation of New Ideas for PhD Research in Computing

Abstract This article represents an effort to help PhD students in computer science and engineering to generate good original ideas for their PhD research. Our effort is motivated by the fact that most PhD programs nowadays include several courses, as well as the research component, that should result in journal publications and the PhD thesis, all in a timeframe of 3–6 years. In order to help PhD students in computing disciplines to get focused on generating ideas and finding appropriate subject for their PhD research, we have analyzed some state-of-the-art inventions in the area of computing, as well as the PhD thesis research of faculty members of our department, and came up with a proposal of 10 methods that could be implemented to derive new ideas, based on the existing body of knowledge in the research field. This systematic approach provides guidance for PhD students, in order to improve their efficiency and reduce the dropout rate, especially in the area of computing.

Approach for estimating similarity between procedures in differently compiled binaries

Abstract Context Detection of an unauthorized use of a software library is a clone detection problem that in case of commercial products has additional complexity due to the fact that only binary code is available. Objective The goal of this paper is to propose an approach for estimating the level of similarity between the procedures originating from different binary codes. The assumption is that the clones in the binary codes come from the use of a common software library that may be compiled with different toolsets. Method The approach uses a set of software metrics adapted from the high level languages and it also extends the set with new metrics that take into account syntactical changes that are introduced by the usage of different toolsets and optimizations. Moreover, the approach compares metric values and introduces transformers and formulas that can use training data for production of measure of similarities between the two procedures in binary codes. The approach has been evaluated on programs from STAMP benchmark and BusyBox tool, compiled with different toolsets in different modes. Results The experiments with programs from STAMP benchmark show that detecting the same procedures recall can be up to 1.44 times higher using new metrics. Knowledge about the used compiling toolset can bring up to 2.28 times improvement in recall. The experiment with BusyBox tool shows 43% recall for 43% precision. Conclusion The most useful newly proposed metrics are those that consider the frequency of arithmetic instructions, the number and frequency of occurrences for instructions, and the number of occurrences for target addresses in calls. The best way to combine the results of comparing metrics is to use a geometric mean or when previous knowledge is available, to use an arithmetic mean with appropriate transformer.

ADVICE—Educational System for Teaching Database Courses

This paper presents a Web-based educational system, ADVICE, that helps students to bridge the gap between database management system (DBMS) theory and practice. The usage of ADVICE is presented through a set of laboratory exercises developed to teach students conceptual and logical modeling, SQL, formal query languages, and normalization. While working on the exercises, students use the system to access real databases, and the system provides them with feedback about their solutions. From the perspective of an instructor, the system allows easy exercise management and continual progress monitoring. The paper also describes a practical experience with the use of ADVICE on a database course over a three-year period.

Design of the Simulator for Teaching Computer Architecture and Organization

This paper presents a general purpose discrete event simulator, named SLEEP, that helps students to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the domain of Computer Architecture and Organization simulator design. The motivation for developing SLEEP is given after an analysis of simulators available in the open literature. The analysis is followed by implementation details explaining execution and simulation algorithms of SLEEP. Then, the SLEEP simulator features are briefly described. Finally, the performance evaluation with generated test workload is presented.

Chapter Three - Dataflow-Based Parallelization of Control-Flow Algorithms.

Abstract Compared to control-flow architectures, dataflow architectures usually offer better performances in high performance computing. Moreover, dataflow architectures consume less electrical power. However, only since recently, the technology enables the development of dataflow architectures that are competitive with control-flow architectures. From a programming perspective, there are a relatively small number of experienced dataflow programmers. As a result, there is a need of translating control-flow algorithms into the dataflow environment. This chapter focuses on extracting methods from various fields, which could be applied on translating control-flow algorithms to dataflow environment, comparing available programming tools for dataflow architectures with respect to the previously established methods, and finally, evaluating speedups and reductions in power consumption on a dataflow implementation of the Lattice–Boltzmann method, implemented using a specific tool and method. Results show a remarkable speedup (one to two orders of magnitude), and, at the same time, a considerable reduction in power consumption.

Comparison of Binary Procedures: A Set of Techniques for Evading Compiler Transformations

License violation analysis may require digital forensics in the performance of a time-consuming search in order to find out whether a binary code of a product contains a procedure that originates from a source code for which a license is required. The conducted experiment shows that the production of a binary code using an arbitrary compiler decreases results of the evaluated solutions up to 10 times. The best performing solution, among those evaluated, uses software metrics for assessing similarities between procedures and ranks procedures from the binary code according to their similarities with the target forensics procedure. This paper tries to improve the ranking by proposing five techniques for making similarities assessment more robust against compiler transformations. The proposed techniques filter stack instructions and transfer instructions, retain partial information about the instruction order, simulate inlining, and eliminate procedures that significantly differ from the searched procedure. The techniques are evaluated using a dataset based on the STAMP benchmark and re-evaluated using a dataset based on the BusyBox toolset. The evaluation shows that the use of the proposed techniques increases recall by 47 and 42% for the first and second datasets, respectively.

SAIL-Software system for learning AI algorithms

Artificial intelligence (AI) comprises a large spectrum of groups of algorithms: heuristic algorithms for search and planning, formal methods for representation of knowledge and reasoning, algorithms for machine learning and many more. Since these algorithms are complex, there is a need for a system which would enable their application both in everyday work and education processes. This paper describes a software system for learning AI algorithms called SAIL (Software System for AI Learning), which can be used both on computers and mobile devices. The paper gives examples of lab exercises and self‐study tasks that through graphic representation and detailed procedures help students master this area. Students can enter their examples into the system and obtain correct solutions for those examples. At any point when an example is simulated, a student can proceed to the next step or go back to the previous one, save the current simulation as a file, or print the detailed procedure as a task solution. SAIL helps lecturers go through the syllabus more efficiently and improve class material, while at the same time it helps students get a better grasp of implemented algorithms. SAIL can also benefit software engineers, who can select and simulate an adequate algorithm to solve a specific problem. The results of the SAIL system are verified within the AI introductory course at the School of Electrical Engineering University of Belgrade and they are presented in this paper.

A survey and evaluation of free and open source simulators suitable for teaching courses in wireless sensor networks

This paper attempts to give a survey of some free software tools for wireless sensor networks. It targets teachers and students who might have the need for education in this area. As a first stage in creating this survey, a process of software collection is presented. First collection step is search through the Shanghai list for the first 50 universities. From these universities, available information about used software for wsn-related courses is collected. Additionally, other wsn software surveys are considered. Then, only free, open source and available software are kept, because they are the easiest for students to get it. Then evaluation based on topics coverage and software features is done. Topics are selected from IEEE Curriculum guidelines, while features give emphasis on practical usage from user aspect. Selected topics are embedded systems, computer networks, operating system and system resource management. Features used in the evaluation are support for GUI and command line, programming language learning overhead, ease of installation, extensibility, and platform portability. As a result, following software tools are described: TinyOS, Prowler, Riot, Castalia, Avrora, Shawn, TRMSim-WSN, and Shox.

Restart Optimization for Transactional Memory with Lazy Conflict Detection

This paper presents an optimization algorithm for transactional memory with lazy conflict detection. The proposed optimization attempts to minimize the execution time of restarted transactions. Minimizing happens during restart, by avoiding the re-execution of a section of a transaction that is unaffected by the restart. The proposed optimization builds on previous research and differs in that it eliminates the need for the prediction of conflicting accesses and introduces incremental context saving. Moreover, the paper introduces analytical models for estimating the execution time of transactions, with and without the restart optimization, that are developed using the continuous-time model. A critical evaluation comparing analytical models with the simulation results is discussed in the paper.

ERLE: Embedded run length image encoding

File format used for images in embedded devices is mostly determined by limited available resources and performances. This paper proposes a new file format named ERLE which is adapted for usage in embedded devices. The format is presented by explaining the benefits of using this file format on embedded devices and drawbacks of using the standard image formats for image processing on small footprint embedded devices. Moreover, ERLE file format sections are described, as well as compression algorithms that are used and main file auxiliary structures for faster random pixel access.