[SciPy-Dev] GSoC 2019 Projects

[Gregory Lee]

Hi Peter,

Yes, the application period is still open for GSOC, although the final
deadline is the 9th, so time is becoming fairly short to get feedback on
proposals.

A few other students have expressed interest in the FFT-based backends, but
any interested candidates are welcome to apply. Please see some prior posts
on this lists for some discussions related to that project. The primary
intention is to allow 3rd party implementations to override the ones
provided by SciPy when requested. Ideally there should also be some way to
provide additional arguments specific to those implementations (e.g.
specifying number of threads, planner effort, etc in the case of PyFFTW).
We do not want any breaking changes to the existing scipy.fftpack
interfaces as we need to maintain backwards compatibility with a lot of
preexisting code in downstream libraries. Ideally downstream libraries
should be able to benefit from the changes made in SciPy without any
substantial refactoring on their end.

I am not personally familiar with the specifics of the ODE project and do
not know if other candidates are currently pursuing that topic. Hopefully
one of the mentors for it can respond here.

- Greg




On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 10:05 AM Peter Bell <peterbell10 at live.co.uk> wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
>
> I am interested in applying for Google summer of code and was wondering if
> you
>
> are still looking for students?
>
>
>
> A bit about myself
>
> -------------------
>
> My name is Peter and I'm in my 4th (penultimate) year of an integrated
> masters
>
> in computational physics. Programming and numerical methods forms a key
> part of
>
> this degree and many of my courses make heavy use of python with cython,
> numpy,
>
> scipy, matplotlib, etc. While my degree is primarily Physics, I have taken
> a
>
> number of computer science courses covering software engineering, object
>
> oriented design and high performance programming.
>
>
>
> I also have an interest in open source collaboration and, when time has
> allowed,
>
> have contributed to a few projects via github (@peterbell10). The majority
> of
>
> my contributions have been to a minecraft server which I've been
> contributing to
>
> since summer 2017. You can see my pull requests here:
>
>
> https://github.com/cuberite/cuberite/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Amerged+author%3Apeterbell10
>
>
>
> Questions about the projects
>
> -----------------------------
>
> I have some questions regarding both of the proposed projects.
>
>
>
> Revamp fftpack:
>
> * Is the primary intention to keep the scipy.fftpack interface the same,
> but add
>
>   some mechanism to inject custom implementations? Or will this require
> changes
>
>   to the front-facing interface as well? (e.g. for agreement with
> numpy.fft)
>
> * What should this look like from the user's point of view? e.g.
>
>
>
>        import scipy.fftpack
>
>        import pyFFTW.interfaces.scipy_fftpack as fftw_pack
>
>
>
>        scipy.fftpack.set_backend(fftw_pack)
>
>
>
>   where we just provide a module implementing a well-documented backend
>
>   interface. Alternatively, fftw_pack could be an object, potentially with
>
>   its own instances of caches and settings which might allow for more
>
>   configuration from the user.
>
>
>
> Improve ODE solvers (mainly the first 3 tasks):
>
> * How much mathematical background is required? I have done a course
> covering
>
>   the mathematics of ODE schemes including RK methods and some variable
> timestep
>
>   methods, but am not familiar with control theory which is mentioned for
> the
>
>   3rd task.
>
> * Will developing the test set just involve binding existing
> implementations to
>
>   python for use in a testing framework, or do you expect these to be
> rewritten
>
>   entirely in python or cython?
>
>
>
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Peter
> _______________________________________________
> SciPy-Dev mailing list
> SciPy-Dev at python.org
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev
>
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