Knowing where one is heading during navigation brings a ured ha ine . As a student majoring in Computer Software, I began my ody ey four years ago. Now, after the initial mysticism was gradually unveiled, my curiosity remai the same. Indeed, having entered this lendid computer world, I am more than greedy for something new.
From the begi ing of my study, my endeavor was fixed on the underlying branches of Computer Science, particularly System Software development. Novel a licatio on other’s platform may be fruitful, but I think it’s more a ealing to act as an independent “manager”. In fact, mathematics, OS, DBMS and modern compiler are all the examples, any breakthrough of which would push forward the whole industry. Individuality is achieved in this unique position.
My paces toward this goal are always steady. As mathematics permeates to the every corner of Computer Science, I am eager to see how it functio . I took courses offered by the Mathematics Department including Mathematical Analysis and Advanced Algebra. The curriculum also coveredwww.reader8.net Discrete Mathematics, Probability &am Statistics and Theoretical Computer Science. As su lement to my scope of knowledge, I learn by myself Combination Mathematics and the Science of Programming. This really made a hard period of time, but the harvest was rewarding. I come to understand that even the most irrelevant software disciplines have the origi in common. The importance of Fractured Geometry in Computer Graphics is already obvious. What if a step furthers toward T or Bin Packing? Immeasurable. Then came my favorite topics: Operating System, Compiler and Database. I worked hard and derived bits of my own i ight. In fact, I was greatly encouraged to find some of my ideas succe fully implemented in the corre onding course projects. My final grade is straight “As” in these coursed. In short, although my experience in Computer Science is still limited, I believe its depth is well acce ible. As my advisor, Prof. Fang Yu, put it figuratively in one of his lectures: “ It makes no difference whether a hunter captures 5 or 7 ra its. What counts is he knows how to use his gun.”
I think I can be the qualified shooter now. in my undergraduate years, I have earned various kinds of scholarshi , among which were “Peking University Fellowship” and “Excellent Academic Scholarship”. My overall GPA ranks u er 10% among 48 students of the same grade. Because of my satisfactory performance, I was granted the honor of entering the graduate program at Peking University directly, waived of the admi ion test. In retro ect, my workload is always heavy but it is worth my time of effort. Presently, I have both adequate theoretical understanding and rich programming experience. READY I AM.
Of all the sub-areas of Computer Science, my major interest is parallel proce ing and the related compiler co truction. The terminology of parallel proce ing came to me when I read an article about digital circuit testing. According to this article, there exist many serial a roaches of solving the automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) problem. Though certain method of solving ATPG sometimes proved efficient, the computation time for a method of solving ATPG sometimes proved efficient, the computation time for a complete result is intolerable, the a parallel proce ing machine is proposed. Using paralleled ATPG method, this complete dilemma is ingeniously handled. After reading, I surprisingly realized that parallel proce ing opened a new window for the computationally inte ive problems, which prove intractable for the VON NEUMA Architecture. You can always first lit a ecific computational task into several independent divisio , then a ign each part to a certain proce or. With reasonable partition and proper synchronization, most grueling scientific a licatio can be reduced to normal scale problems.
With the advent of the multiproce or architecture, compiler optimization faced a new challenge. A compiler not only has to tra late, but it is also re o ible for generating parallel-proce ing loop provides a rich o ortunity of exploiting parallelism. Therefore, finding an optimum strategy for loo because a hot research topic. On the whole, parallelism changes our view toward the conventional computer architecture so that the compiler’s co truction must make the corre onding modification. Because of this challenging characteristic, I choose them to be my interest of future study.
Yet parallel proce ing is far from maturity. It has been o erved that some sequential algorithms can be easily tra lated into fast parallel algorithms while some others may not. Is every sequential computation can be done efficiently in parallel? If not, what properties result in such distinction? Another u ettled problem is programming parallel computers now is like programming serial computers in the 1960s. Programmers get locked into a particular manufacturer’s computers. Is it po ible for us to design a higher level language for parallel computers that hides the underlying machine architecture from users? Both are crying out for solution.
Without advanced knowledge, I can do nothing but wait. In order to convert my undergraduate study into full play, graduate education is a nece ity. From the college guide and my advisor’s recommendation, I am pleased to learn that your department has an academic atmo here where originality is a reciated and individual potential is explored. It will be the best place for my ecialized study. If po ible, my main interest in the future will be in the following areas:
Parallel proce ing, Compiler co truction.
Distributed/concurrent systems, Operating system.
Machine learning, Automated fault diagnosis.
As my undergraduate education is very basic, if you feel that I am more suited for some other areas, any of your suggestion would be highly a reciated.
Upon the completion of my study, I would return to Peking University and teach what I’ve learned to the students. Then I shall establish a research center to experiment new ideas. It is my ultimate goal to see the Chinese computer products leading the global market in the next century. After all, the navigation is not over yet!