EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training Cloud Computing for Big Data

People

Dale Whinham

I am an ex-IT administrator who decided to turn my fascination for computer programming into a potential new career path, and so I returned to education in 2013. I graduated from Newcastle University in 2017 with a BSc in Computer Science with Games Engineering, and in 2018 I completed an MSc in Games Engineering.

I have a passion for low-level programming, using languages such as C and C++ to get close to the 'metal' and make efficient use of the hardware. In 2015, I joined ARM in Cambridge to carry out a 1 year industrial placement, where I worked on Android OpenGL code samples for mobile GPUs, and then as an embedded software engineer where I worked on power management firmware for ARM system-on-chips (SoCs).

I particularly enjoy working with graphics/rendering code, game engines, and GP-GPU programming.

PhD title

Load Balancing for Cloud Enabled Streamed Real-Time Physics

This project builds on the previous and ongoing work of CDT colleague Alexander Brown, who has developed a novel approach for distributing real-time physics simulations across standard cloud infrastructure. Now that a solution has been realised for fixed, pre-determined volumes of 3D space with a uniform workload, the aim of this project is to develop methods for determining the most optimal resource allocation for any simulation environment. Given that objects in a physics simulation are likely to change position frequently, ensuring that the workload is shared evenly between cloud instances is key to the efficacy of the system. We hope to leverage statistical analysis of patterns of behaviour within the simulation to determine the optimal allocation of computational resources to the system.

We expect this research to benefit the video games industry as well as certain areas of engineering (e.g. river modelling with interactive fluid dynamics and erosion).

This project is expected to pose significant research challenges in both computing and statistics, and so the CDT programme has been highly beneficial by providing training in combining these two disciplines to effectively tackle complex problems

Outside of my studies, I enjoy teaching/mentoring programming students, contributing to open source projects, playing guitar/keyboards, playing competitive video games, and I have a keen interest in the demoscene. I also enjoy repairing, using, and programming vintage computers.

Supervisor

Graham Morgan