John Hawkins Research

Overview

I was actively involved in academic research from 1998, up until 2005 when I completed my PhD. The underlying theme in all of my research was the use of functional languages, particularly Haskell. Some of my earlier research looked at using Haskell to implement genetic algorithms and graph search techniques. From there I moved on to looking at how functional programs could be used as a specification from which parallel message passing algorithms, defined in CSP, could be refined. A further extension of this was then to look at how these derived CSP processes could be further refined into Handel-C programs allowing implementation on reconfigurable logic devices such as the FPGA.

Phd Thesis

PhD thesis (PDF, 1.8Mb)

A Framework for Refining Functional Specifications into Parallel Reconfigurable Hardware Implementations [University of Reading, 2005]

Other Publications

1. J. Hawkins and A. Abdallah
   Derivation of Scalable Message-Passing Algorithms Using Parallel Combinatorial List Generator Functions, WOTUG Commmunicating Process Architectures (CPA 2004), Oxford, September 2004.
2. John Hawkins and Ali E. Abdallah
   Hardware Synthesis of a Parallel JPEG Decoder from its Functional Specification, Proceeding of IFIP Working Conference on Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems, Toulouse, France August 23-26, 2004 (IFIP 2004).
3. I. Damaj, J. Hawkins and A. Abdallah
   Mapping High Level Algorithms onto Massively Parallel Reconfigurable Hardware, IEEE/ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications, Tunisia, July 2003. P14 - 22.
4. Ali. E. Abdallah and John Hawkins,
   Formal Behavioural Synthesis of Handel-C Parallel Hardware Implementations from Functional Specifications HICCS 2003
5. John Hawkins and A. E. Abdallah,
   An Overview of Systematic Development of Parallel Systems for Reconfigurable Hardware.
   Proceedings of the 8th International Euro-Par Conference, EuroPar 2002, Paderborn, Germany. (LNCS 2400, August 2002); pp 615-619.
6. John Hawkins and A. E. Abdallah,
   A Generic Functional Genetic Algorithm.
   Proceedings of the the IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications, AICCSA 2001 Beirut, Lebanon (IEEE Computer Society Press, June 2001); pp 141-150.
   ISBN: 0-7695-1165-1
7. A. E. Abdallah and John Hawkins,
   Calculational design of special purpose parallel algorithms.
   Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on Electronics Circuits and Systems, ICECS'2K, Jounieh (IEEE Computer Society Press, Dec. 2000); pp 261-267.
   ISBN: 0-7803-6542-9.
8. John Hawkins, A. Abbas and A. E. Abdallah,
   A Generic Functional Graph Search Algorithm.
   Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligenge, IC-AI'2000, Las Vegas, USA (CSREA Press, June 2000); pp 1497-1504.
   ISBN: 1-892512-58-0.
9. John Hawkins and A. E. Abdallah,
   A functional environment for prototyping evolutionary algorithms.
   Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligenge, IC-AI'2000, Las Vegas, USA (CSREA Press, June 2000); pp 531-538.
   ISBN: 1-892512-56-4.