Next generation garbage collection: discovery, design, and development. This project aims to improve the performance of programming languages used by millions of Australians every day, such as Java, JavaScript and PHP by developing improved memory-management algorithms. These languages use what is referred to as “garbage collection” to ensure memory is managed without data loss, but do so conservatively and consequently cause performance challenges and energy overheads. This project expects to p ....Next generation garbage collection: discovery, design, and development. This project aims to improve the performance of programming languages used by millions of Australians every day, such as Java, JavaScript and PHP by developing improved memory-management algorithms. These languages use what is referred to as “garbage collection” to ensure memory is managed without data loss, but do so conservatively and consequently cause performance challenges and energy overheads. This project expects to provide these languages with improved memory-management algorithms, and provides researchers and industry with a framework for innovation. This project will enable safe software that is more efficient on today's hardware and able to exploit emerging hardware. This project should lead to better performance and energy savings for server applications, phones, watches, and smart appliances, while ensuring memory safety.Read moreRead less
Designing Radiation-Tolerant Reconfigurable Systems for Space. The processing speed, cost and flexibility requirements of future satellite-based applications cannot be satisfied with conventional radiation-hardened processors or custom integrated circuits. This project aims to develop key technology to enable off-the-shelf hardware to be customised for this use without compromising reliability. The project aims to develop the design methods needed to implement a given set of satellite applicatio ....Designing Radiation-Tolerant Reconfigurable Systems for Space. The processing speed, cost and flexibility requirements of future satellite-based applications cannot be satisfied with conventional radiation-hardened processors or custom integrated circuits. This project aims to develop key technology to enable off-the-shelf hardware to be customised for this use without compromising reliability. The project aims to develop the design methods needed to implement a given set of satellite applications on a processing platform composed of application-specific soft processors and accelerator circuits hosted on conventional reconfigurable logic devices. Crucially, the solution architecture is expected to be sufficiently hardened against radiation-induced errors while meeting performance and circuit area constraints.Read moreRead less
Metamorphic slices and their applications in fault localization. The main purpose of this project is to enhance the quality of software. The expected outcomes include the delivery of new cost-effective methods to debug software, and the extension of current debugging methods to be applicable in wider contexts.
Cost-effective use of assertions in the verification and validation of distributed and real-time systems. The project will reinforce Australia as a world leader in empirical software engineering and software verification and validation research, thus building on Australia's strengths in ICT research and innovation. Through the involvement of a local software verification and validation company and through industrial case studies, this project will also improve the software verification and valid ....Cost-effective use of assertions in the verification and validation of distributed and real-time systems. The project will reinforce Australia as a world leader in empirical software engineering and software verification and validation research, thus building on Australia's strengths in ICT research and innovation. Through the involvement of a local software verification and validation company and through industrial case studies, this project will also improve the software verification and validation capabilities of local industry, allow them to save software development costs, and improve the quality of the software produced.Read moreRead less
Mapping the Effectiveness of Automated Software Testing. This project aims to help software engineers build complex software systems in far more reliable and cost-effective ways. It takes an interdisciplinary approach by applying machine learning techniques to automatically test complex software systems. Expected outcomes include a novel methodology for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of test suites generated by automated software testing techniques and the approaches required for generat ....Mapping the Effectiveness of Automated Software Testing. This project aims to help software engineers build complex software systems in far more reliable and cost-effective ways. It takes an interdisciplinary approach by applying machine learning techniques to automatically test complex software systems. Expected outcomes include a novel methodology for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of test suites generated by automated software testing techniques and the approaches required for generating high-quality test cases. Such advances are urgently needed to avoid disasters when deploying software systems in the real world.Read moreRead less
Metamorphic Testing: An In-Depth Study to Enhance the Failure-Detection Capability of Software Testing Without an Oracle. Nowadays, software is pervasive and ubiquitous. It plays a significant role in the daily lives of all kinds of people. The Australian software industry has bloomed in recent years. Our research results will improve the cost-effectiveness of software development, thereby upgrading the nation's software productivity and quality. These factors are conducive to the export of soft ....Metamorphic Testing: An In-Depth Study to Enhance the Failure-Detection Capability of Software Testing Without an Oracle. Nowadays, software is pervasive and ubiquitous. It plays a significant role in the daily lives of all kinds of people. The Australian software industry has bloomed in recent years. Our research results will improve the cost-effectiveness of software development, thereby upgrading the nation's software productivity and quality. These factors are conducive to the export of software produced by Australians and helpful in raising our nation's competitive advantage towards the goal of becoming a leading nation in the software industry among Asia-Pacific countries.Read moreRead less
A Comprehensive Testing Methodology for Embedded Software. Embedded systems are a bedrock technology for many high-technology industries. They are used in many safety-critical situations, such as medical devices and car control systems, amongst hundreds of other applications. Unfortunately, current practice still sometimes results in disastrous mistakes remaining undetected, leading to multi-million dollar losses and in some cases even deaths. Improved testing methods for these systems offer ....A Comprehensive Testing Methodology for Embedded Software. Embedded systems are a bedrock technology for many high-technology industries. They are used in many safety-critical situations, such as medical devices and car control systems, amongst hundreds of other applications. Unfortunately, current practice still sometimes results in disastrous mistakes remaining undetected, leading to multi-million dollar losses and in some cases even deaths. Improved testing methods for these systems offer the potential of reducing such catastrophic losses. Improved embedded system testing techniques can offer Australia a competitive advantage in this strategically important industry. We will work to distribute our results to the Australian embedded systems community.Read moreRead less
Practical Tools and Techniques for the Testing of Concurrent Software Components. This project will develop tools and techniques for the practical, systematic testing of concurrent software components. Testing is a major means for ensuring that software performs as expected, but testing concurrent software is poorly understood even though the majority of complex, computer-based systems are concurrent in nature. The complexities arising from the non-deterministic nature of such software means tha ....Practical Tools and Techniques for the Testing of Concurrent Software Components. This project will develop tools and techniques for the practical, systematic testing of concurrent software components. Testing is a major means for ensuring that software performs as expected, but testing concurrent software is poorly understood even though the majority of complex, computer-based systems are concurrent in nature. The complexities arising from the non-deterministic nature of such software means that testing tools and techniques used for simpler, sequential software are inadequate. The outcomes of this project will consist of practical techniques for the effective testing of concurrent software components in general and tools for the testing of Java components in particular.Read moreRead less
Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and ....Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and test it against empirical data from software industry. We will provide novel visualization techniques to comprehend measurements of large systems. The outcomes will help software projects better estimate deadlines and budgets thus reducing costs significantly.Read moreRead less
Failure-Based Testing: An In-Depth Theoretical and Experimental Study. Nowadays, software is pervasive and ubiquitous. It plays a significant role in the daily lives of all kinds of people. The Australian software industry has bloomed in recent years. Our research results will improve the cost-effectiveness of software development, thereby upgrading the nation's software productivity and quality. These factors are conducive to the export of software produced by Australians and helpful in raising ....Failure-Based Testing: An In-Depth Theoretical and Experimental Study. Nowadays, software is pervasive and ubiquitous. It plays a significant role in the daily lives of all kinds of people. The Australian software industry has bloomed in recent years. Our research results will improve the cost-effectiveness of software development, thereby upgrading the nation's software productivity and quality. These factors are conducive to the export of software produced by Australians and helpful in raising our nation's competitive advantage towards the goal of becoming a leading nation in the software industry among Asia-Pacific countries.Read moreRead less