Summer thus far...

So this summer, I was lucky enough to land a position at an REU (Research Experience for Undergrads) at my school, Binghamton University. So effective late May, I have been in Bing spending my days in front of a computer screen. It has actually been a lot of fun. Im working with Professor Madden on some of his circuit design software, except that I dont need to know anything about how circuits work, which is good for me. The general idea is that you have these blocks that represent something that needs to be on the chip and you have to arrange them somehow. A modern chip can have millions of blocks, thus making the task pretty much impossible for humans to do, so we get computers to do it. But the placement of these blocks on the circuit can make a huge difference in the performance of the chips. Better placement means faster processes. So essentially, I have a bunch of rectangles that need to be placed on a larger rectangle in the most efficient way possible. But there is a catch. This problem is computationally intractable, meaning that the absolute correct answer cant be reached in any reasonable amount of time. If one did write the software to do this, it wouldnt finish running before a giant asteroid hit Earth (april 13th, 2029). So anything we do are approximations of the correct answer, which is why there is debate in the field on the best way to do it. Its a really cool problem and has a lot to do with algorithms. In this blog, I am going to be writing a lot about my progress and they are usually meant for myself rather than anyone else.

Beyond that, I am also serving as the Teaching Assistant for cs 240, which is also pretty fun in itself.

The only downside to this summer gig is that its pretty lonely up here. The Binghamton I knew during the normal year is certainly gone and replaced with a very empty place. So when all of my high school friends are home and together, I am at college while all of my college friends are off doing there own thing. Plus, Alia isnt here, which is the biggest problem with this arrangement. But the other kids in my program are pretty cool and smart, so its not all bad. It has certainly become infinitely more fun since the beginning weeks.



I have taken up longboarding, which is ridiculously awesome. It has cost me a lot in terms of cuts and bruises, but it is still ridiculously fun.

Until another time.