GSoC Application

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Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2008? What do you hope to gain by participating?

We are hoping to spread awareness of our project and to get new developers involved to help extend its features.

Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.

No, we haven't participated before

If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?

No, we have not applied to GSoC in the past.

Who will your organization administrator be? Please include Google Account information.

Me? Nate? Steve?

What license(s) does your project use?

A BSD style license.

What is the URL for your ideas page?

http://m5sim.org/wiki/index.php/Idea_page

What is the main development mailing list or forum for your organization?

Our primary mailing list is m5-users@m5sim.org. Because M5 is a simulation framework rather than a regular application, most users end up doing limited internal development as well, so general development issues are discussed on that list.

What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

None. We currently don't use IRC and instead mostly rely on instant messaging or other ad-hoc communications depending on the need. We also communicate frequently using skype or the telephone.

Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now.

Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information.

Me? Nate? Steve?

Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information.

  * Steve Reinhardt <stever@gmail.com>
  * Nate Binkert <binkert@gmail.com>
  * Ali Saidi asaidi
  * Gabe Black <gabe.black@gmail.com>
  * Korey Sewell <koreylsewell@gmail.com>
  * Ron Dreslinski <rdreslin@gmail.com>
  * Lisa Hsu
  * Kevin Lim

What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.

All mentors have been developers of M5 for over a year, and all use M5 regularly in their work. Our mentors include one professor, a research scientist, and several senior graduate students. Most mentors have experience teaching classes and/or mentoring other students.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

Since all of the mentors have already mentored undergraduates and graduate students at the University of Michigan, we have some experience with students disappearing. There are a few ways to deal with this, but the only way that is ultimately successful is to try to get the student motivated to work on the project again. We will of course remind them that their performance affects whether they get paid or not, but we'll try to keep them motivated by working closely with them and keeping them excited about the project.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

We don't really have a plan for dealing with disappearing mentors since this is highly unlikely. If one looks at the m5-users mailing list, they will see that the mentors have all been consistently active, helping users of M5 get up and running. We'd expect the same commitment of the students. That said, if any one of the mentors were to drop out for personal reasons, there are several other core m5 developers that could pick up the slack.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

We expect most of their interactions with the community to be through the wiki, mailing list, and bug tracker. During the project we would like the student to have a list of intermediate milestones so we can make sure progress is being made. Largely, we think fast responses to questions and concerns the student might have are essential to keeping the student motivated to work on the project. Finally, after the project is complete we hope the student will be actively using M5 for his or her own work and have incentive to continue contributing.

What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

We believe that if students embark on projects that excite them individually and are useful to them, and receive enough help from their mentor and the community to achieve some success toward their goal, then they will be motivated to continue with M5 beyond GSoC. We will work to get the students' code incorporated in the public repository and releases so that they can see their code being used by others as well, which should help instill "pride of ownership" to motivate their continued involvement.

idea page

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