Automatic Vectorising
Compilation A talk given at Microsoft Labs (Jan
2011) describing the approach we use to data parallel compilation at
Glasgow University. It covers compilation from Fortran 90 and Vector
Pascal to multi-core processors both homogenous ones and heterogeneous
ones like the Cell.
SICSA
multicore
challenge page. Describes my entry into phase 1 of
the challenge, a parallel programme to prepare concordances of text.
SICSA
Benchmarks in C, talk at the SICSA Multi-core Challenge Workshop
December 2010 reporting results of the challenge both on the SCC and
other machines.
Challenging
Multi-cores -- talk given at the Scottish Programming Languages
Society in Oct 2010 on Lino and the Intel SCC processor.
Lino: a
tiling language for arrays of processors Lino is
language for tiling large arrays of processor, in particular for
multi-core. Lino is oriented to the coordination and communication
aspects of multi-processing, and is otherwise implementation neutral,
thus naturally facilitating the composition of large systems from
heterogeneous software components. The need
for Lino is motivated, and Lino’s design and implementation are
surveyed.
SIMD and Multi-core
Parallelisation in an Imperative Language. Paper for the Advances
In Programming Languages 2009 SICSA summer school. Describes the use of
pure functions in an imperative language as a means to allow multi-core
plus SIMD parallelism
Vector Pascal.html, or as a pdf version. Vector Pascal is a
language designed to support elegant and efficient expression of
algorithms using the SIMD model of computation. It imports into Pascal
features derived from the functional languages APL and J, in particular
the extension of all operators to work on vectors of data. The type
system is extended to handle dimensional analysis. Code generation is
via the ILCG system that allows retargeting to multiple different SIMD
instruction sets based on formal description of the instruction set
semantics. For more details and other papers on this: see my compilers pages.
Quantum Relational Databases
The approach given by Grover can be generalised to set an upper
complexity limit to the basic operations of relational databases on a
quantum computer. Except in special cases where indices can be used on
a classical machine, the quantum upper complexity limit is lower than
the classical one.
Non-classical computing: feasible versus infeasible.
Physics sets certain limits on what is and is not computable. These
limits are very far from having been reached by current technologies.
Whilst proposals for hypercomputation are almost certainly infeasible,
there are a number of non classical approaches that do hold
considerable promise. There are a range of possible architectures that
could be implemented on silicon that are distinctly different from the
von Neumann model. Beyond this, quantum simulators, which are the
quantum equivalent of analogue computers, may be constructable in the
near future. Slides
to accompany the talk.
A Hardware
Relaxation Paradigm for Solving NP-Hard Problems Digital circuits
with feedback loops can solve some instances of NP-hard problems
by relaxation: the circuit will either oscillate or settle down to a
stable state that represents a solution to the problem instance. This
approach differs from using hardware accelerators to speed up the
execution of deterministic algorithms, as it exploits stabilisation
properties of circuits with feedback, and it allows a variety of
hardware techniques that do not have counterparts in software. A
feedback circuit that solves many instances of Boolean satisfiability
problems is described, with experimental results from a preliminary
simulation using a hardware accelerator.
To
Infinity
and Beyond, joint paper with Greg Michaelson and Lewis Mackenzie,
Many attempts to transcend the fundamental limitations to computability
implied by the Halting Problem for Turing Machines depend on the use of
forms of hypercomputation that draw on notions of infinite or
continuous, as opposed to bounded or discrete, computation. Thus, such
schemes may include the deployment of actualised rather than potential
infinities of physical resources, or of physical representations of
real numbers to arbitrary precision. Here, we argue that such bases for
hypercomputation are not materially realisable and so cannot constitute
new forms of effective calculability. A slightly amended version of
this has now appeared in the journal Theoretical Computer Science A.
Cantor diagonalisation and planning,
by Greg Michaelson, Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott
Murphy (2006) recently argued that one could use the diagonal argument
of the number theorist Cantor to elucidate issues that arose in the
socialist calculation debate of the 1930s. We will here argue that
Murphy's argument has certain problems, both at the number-theoretic
level and from the standpoint of economic realism.
Are there new models of
computation, an essay with Greg Michaelson arguing against recent
proposals for super Turing computation. A slightly amended version of
this has now appeared in the Computer Journal.
Boettke Syntax and the Turing
Test, a reply by Greg Michaelson, Allin Cottrell and I to a paper
on Methodology by Boettke which he published in Cahiers D'Epistemolgie.
Information, Work, and
Meaning an introduction to information theory by me and Greg
Michaelson, it relationship to thermodynamics and to classical
political economy with particular emphasis on how it applies to
industrial mass production.
The use of Image Algebra Paper
that addresses the use of Image Algebra as a foundation for image
processing in the context of the IP -Racine project. Provides a general
introduction to Image Algebra for those unfamiliar to it.
A Resolution
Independent Image Representation for Digital Cinema, standard
approaches to image and movie representation are proving inadequate in
the context of digital cinema. In particular, the use of the Discrete
Cosine Transform (DCT), as found in popular video formats, results in
visual artifacts that are unacceptable to the movie industry. This
describes a novel type of image and movie representation designed to
allow resolution-independent manipulation and achieve perceptually
lossless compression. Optimal rate control for
compressed video. Looks at algorithm based on economic pricing
theory to improve quality of compressed video. A demonstration of this is available.
Fast
Fractal Transform Method for Data Compression : rr-156-94 Describes
an improved algorithm that speeds up fractal image compression by 3
orders of magnitude. Allows fractal compression of 512x512 24 bit
colour images in less than 20 seconds. Published in Dr Dobbs Journal
#243
A review of the image compression work
that I was involved in at the University of Strathclyde.
Experimental
computers
Space Machine
Overview of the
Space Machine a FPGA computer I designed to execute cellular automata.
The machine was extensible to form a large 2D array using the blue link
ports that would connect to other boards.
Closeup showing the
INMOS Transputer that acted as the controll and configuration processor
and the link hardware that could be used to feed information into the
FPGA array from the transputer.
Building
a microcomputer with associative virtual memory, this describes the
Poppy a 64 bit address space workstation I designed and built at
Glasgow University in 1985 with funding from Acorn to support
persistent programming languages. During the 1980s I worked
on persistent programming - the idea of having a programming language
in which the variables and heap are preserved over successive
invocations of the programme. The machine had a memory management unit
specifically tailored to persistent object oriented programming, and
mapped active pages to battery backed ram chips for transactional
reliability.
Overview of the
whole Poppy computer
Motherboard, DRAM
bank at right, battery backed SRAM at back
The NS32000
microprocessor and associative string match processor
Closeup of the
stable cache, with a 10 year retention period. There was provision for
fitting more than 128K of stable cache.
E-Democracy
Leadership
Democracy and Transitions. Verbatim transcript of a talk
given at the Workers Educational Association in Stockholm in Nov 2010,
covering the ideas of direct democracy in the early Social Democratic
movement and how these were lost during the 20th century and the
catastrophic effect this had in countries like Russia. My thanks to
Joonas Laine for recording and transcribing the talk. See also the SLIDES which went with the talk.
Extending Electronic
Democracy to cover Budget decisions. A paper that describes how
multidimensional decisions about taxes and expenditure can be decided
in a consistent and secure way using mobile phone votes. There is a
growing realisation that the populace need to be consulted on a more
regular basis about issues that concern them. We address a particular
economic problem, that of national budgeting, and show how digital
technology can be applied in an understandable way in this domain. The
current situation is that governments are reluctant to conduct
plebiscites due to the expenses inherent in the traditional voting
model. Handivote is a system which allows maximal participation, using
a ubiquitous input mechanism, the mobile phone, to support
decision-making. In this paper we show how the Handivote system could
be extended to invite voter input into national economic decisions. Our
proposal includes an algorithm which maximises voter satisfaction in
the presence of budgetary constraints, and the preferences revealed by
the vote. Slides for the talk.
Art Exhibition containing work from me
Posters
a couple of posters based on selections from articles I have
written that were exhibited by the Serbian artist
Aleksandar
Dimitrijevic at an exhibition in Belgrade 19th October 2010.
Leadership Concepts and
Democracy A draft book chapter to be translated into Spanish.
It deals with the history of ideas of leadership in the socialist
movement from the critical standpoint of participatory democracy.
ELECTRONIC PLEBISCITES
Paper with Karen Renaud, We suggest a technology and set of procedures
by which a major democratic de?cit of modern society can be addressed.
The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques
in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which
voters are currently familiar. We believe that systems like this hold
considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation
and control.
Talk on democracy given in Sweden in Nov 2010,
this zip archive includes
the audio as an mp3 plus the transcript of the audio as a pdf. Debate
with Francis Spufford this is a recording of a
discussion with Professor Francis Spufford
at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2010 associated with the launch of
his book Red Plenty about Soviet
Cybernetics. The podcast starts with an introduction by the science
fiction author Ken Macleod,
and then Francis speaks and then me ( for those who do not recognise
our voices).
My review of his book is here.
My theoretical discussion of Kantorovich and Soviet cybernetics is in Mises, Kantorovich and Economic
Computation .
This
book is made up of a collection of polemical articles written by
us over the period since the fall of ‘die Mauer’ and the crisis of the
European socialist movement brought on in its wake. They record an
attempt to argue through the theoretical challenges that this period
has posed:
* Why did both Leninist communism and Social Democracy come to crisis?
* What were the economic weaknesses of both and what economic policy
should a future socialist movement adopt to overcome these?
Link to PDF
version
This
book is a manual for the Glasgow Pascal compiler, decribing both the
standard features of Pascal and the Vector Extensions that allow
efficient parallel processing on modern multi-core chips.
The
book is an innovative cross-disciplinary investigation of the
relationship between computing and physical reality. It starts off
investigating the mystery of why mathematics is so effective in science
and seeks to explain this in terms of the modelling of one part of
physical reality by another. Going from the origins of counting to the
most blue-skies proposals for novel methods of computation the authors
investigate the extent to which the laws of nature and of logic
constrain what we can compute. In the process they examine formal
computability, the thermodynamics of computation and the promise of
quantum computing. ( in press with OUP)
A
book which examines the domain of classical political economy using the
methodologies developed in recent years both by the new discipline of
econo-physics and by computing science. The book begins by examining
the most basic feature of economic life production and asks what it
is about physical laws that allows production to take place. How is it
that human labour is able to modify the world? It looks at the role
that information has played in the process of mass production and the
extent to which human labour still remains a key resource. The
Ricardian labour theory of value is re-examined in the light of
econophysics, presenting agent based models in which the Ricardian
theory of value appears as an emergent property. The authors present
models giving rise to the class distribution of income, and the long
term evolution of profit rates in market economies.
A
book on programming for the SIMD instructionsets of modern processors.
It looks at theese architectures and gives examples in Vector Pascal, a
language that I developed for high performance image processing.
English Edition of a book that has
subsequently appeared in several languages (below). It examines the
extent to which modern super computer technology allows both an
efficient system of planned economy and enhanced democratic control of
society using electronic voting.
Note that the EPUB format is a relatively innacurate conversion from
the original latex
Extended
German translation of Towards a New Socialism, containing the Czech
introduction. This includes certain chapters elided from the German
edition published by Papyrossa ( shown in picture).
Denna
bok, skriven av en nationalekonom och en datorforskare, visar inte bara
att ett annat sätt är möjligt - den visar också
hur det rent konkret kan förverkligas med hjälp av modern
datakraft och det nätverksbyggande som brutit igenom i vår
tid.
A
textbook on compiler construction showing how to build high speed
interactive compilers after the idiom of the Borland compilers. The
example compiler is an implementation of PS-algol. The web link is to a
version of the book used as teaching notes here.
Online Economics Papers
Defence of Empirical
Evidence: draft reply to Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan in
response to their criticisms of our previous work in their book Capital
as Power. It summarises the reasons why the observed empirical data
tend to validate the theory that labour time is the source of exchange
value.
Testing
the
labour
theory
of
value
:
an
exchange
An exchange with Shimshon Bichler and
Jonathan Nitzan stemming from an open letter originally posted by
Stefanos Kourkoulakos regarding the conference Crisis of Capital, Crisis of Theory
held at York University Canada.
Methods of modelling
in the light of information theory and entropy, a paper prepared
for the conference Nuevos paradigmas
en la economía y ciencias sociales del Siglo XXI , to be
held in Mexico City, October 2010 ( link disabled whilst paper is
reviewed). Power point presentation slides here.
CREDIT
CRUNCH:
ORIGINS
AND
ORIENTATION
PAUL COCKSHOTT AND DAVE ZACHARIAH , an article which
looks at the causes of the credit crisis and how economic policy
should respond to it.
Supplementary chapters for
the draft French edition of Towards a New Socialism. These chapters
were written in 2008 for a proposed French edition, but the French
publisher withdrew after we had written the chapters. Since the
chapters relate to general updateing of the work, and as such may be of
interest to English language readers, I have made them available here.
Hilbert Space Models Commodity
Exchanges Abstract. It is argued that the vector space measures
used to mea- sure closeness of market prices to predictors for market
prices are invalid because of the observed metric of commodity space.
An alternative representation in Hilbert space within which such
measures do apply is proposed. It is shown that commodity exchanges can
be modeled by the application of unitary operators to this space.
Information and mass production
Babbage to Boltzman
Information theory whilst it grew out of the needs of the telecoms
industry, was built on foundations provided by 19th century
thermodynamics. Its domain of application has over the years been seen
to widen. This talk shows how information theory helps us understand
the key processes that made the industrial revolution possible, by
examining the close connection between entropy, information and
the technologies of mass production.
Ambedcar,
Baudrillard, Buddhism and Socialism An extended introduction to a
proposed Indian edition of Towards a New Socialism that attempts to
situate our work with respect to the Buddhist Socialism of the famous
Dalit leader and intellectual Ambedcar.
21st Century
Marxism it was written for Junge Welt, a German left daily, in
advance of a Berlin conference on Marxism for the 21st
Century
Cantor Diagonalisation and Planning,Murphy
(2006) recently argued that one could use the diagonal argument of the
number theorist Cantor to elucidate issues that arose in the socialist
calculation debate of the 1930s. We will here argue that Murphy's
argument has certain problems, both at the number theoretic level and
from the standpoint of economic realism.
Boettke Syntax and the Turing Test,
a reply by Greg Michaelson, Allin Cottrell and I to a paper on
Methodology by Boettke which he published in Cahiers D’Epistemolgie.
Boettke is a prominent economist of the Austrian school.
Information, Work, and
Meaning an introduction to information theory by me and Greg
Michaelson, it relationship to thermodynamics and to classical
political economy with particular emphasis on how it applies to
industrial mass production.
Demography and long term profit
rates We discuss the original formulation of the theory of the
falling rate of profit by Marx and the criticisms of the theory’s
micro-foundations by Roemer. We then counterpose to this an alternative
macroeconomic interpretation in which the falling rate of profit is
driven by demographic factors. We follow this up with an examination of
why the assumptions made in Roemer’s analysis are empirically
unjustified. In particular we criticize his use of the average rate of
profit rather than the monetary interest rate as the regulator of
investment decisions. We conclude with an examination of the social
implications of a declining rate of profit.
A Note on
the Significance of the Standard Commodity in Sraffa's System, a
joint paper with Ajit Sinha. The paper discusses the role of the
Standard Commodity as a numeraire. We argue that the heart of Sraffa’s
motivation for introducing the Standard Commodity was the dependence of
relative prices on technical conditions in the basic sector. We show,
by constructing a large class of worked examples that the direction of
price movements under technical change will be dependent on the
numeraire. If the choice of numeraire is arbitrary then so are the
relative movement directions of prices under technical change. Joint.pdf, Pretty print output of a program to
evaluate the hypothesis that the direction of movement of a commodities
price under technical change can be dependent on the numeraire. This is
the program used to evaluate the hypothesis discussed above. The Vector
Pascal source of the program is available as Joint.pas
Hunting productive work. The
paper, jointly with Dave Zacharaih summarises the definitions of
productive labour derived from Smith and Marx. It attempts to develop a
more general definition deriving from Sraffa's standard commodity and
the theory of relative surplus value. The implications of the new
definition for the examination of highly socialised capitalist
economies like Sweden are examined. .
Vector Space Metrics in
Economics. Argues that capitalist economic activity can be modeled
by rotation operators acting on a Hilbert space.
The organic composition of capital
and profit rates, Appeared 2003 in Cambridge Journal of Economics.
Shows that industries with high organic composition have low profit
rates. The source data for this is available to others as a spreadsheet ,that shows the rates of
profit by industry for the USA in 1987, against the organic composition
of capital for these industries. It shows, that counter to expectation,
industries with a high organic composition of capital have a low rate
of profit and vice versa. The spreadsheet is an excel one.
Value,
markets
and
socialism Examines the very limited role for markets in a
socialist economy and the different form of appearance that value (
abstract labour ) has in such an economy.
Value's Law Value's Metric:
RR-94-168 An investigation into the metric space generated by
commodity exchange. Provides empirical data comparing labour and
electricity as the possible supports for this metric space.
Value price transformation as a
real process : rr-167-94 Published as "Does Marx Need to
Transform?", by Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott for a conference on
the centenary of the publication of Volume 3 of Marx's Capital, which
took place in Bergamo in December 1994. The paper argues, on an
empirical basis, that actual prices fall somewhere between the
untransformed labor values of Capital, Volume 1, and the prices of
production discussed by Marx in Volume 3.
"Calculation,
Complexity and Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Once Again,"
by Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott, published in ROPE, summer 1993.
We present a counter-argument against Mises' charge that rational
economic calculation is impossible under socialism (a charge recently
revived by Don Lavoie). The paper also considers other contributors to
the Socialist Calculation Debate, such as Oskar Lange.
"Socialist
Planning after the Collapse of the Soviet Union", by Allin Cottrell
and Paul Cockshott, published in Revue Europeene des Sciences Sociales,
1993. We make the argument that what failed in the USSR was not
socialist planning as such, but a particular and definitely flawed
variant of same, and suggest the outlines of an alternative system of
planning. The paper is complementary to our 1993 book, "Towards a New
Socialism."
金
融危机的根源与对策 "The root causes of the financial crisis and
countermeasures", translation of the paper 'Credit Crunch, origins and
orientations', listed above in the English language sections. Chinese
Abstract reads: 摘要：美 刊《科学与社会》2010年7月号刊登了保罗·考克夏特和戴夫·扎卡里亚题为
《信用恐慌：起源与对策》的文章。作者通过回顾 20世纪资本主义的演变史，认
为新自由主义向食利者利益的倾斜导致经济中非生产性部门和人员越来越膨胀是金融兴盛也是其危机的根源。而当
今金融系统发挥了封建社会封建贵族和神职人员的
作用，通过它社会的积蓄越来越多地分配给银行家、空军战机和士兵，而使社会贫困化。世界人口红利正在消失也
是资本主义这种靠利润驱动的生产方式难以继续维 系的重要原因。作者提出了废除不公正的债务、取消剥削和投资社会化等应对战略。文章内容如下。
Finnish
Ajatuksia
johtajuudesta
ja
demokratiasta
Sosialismi.net julkaisee Paul
Cockshottin Tukholman Socialistiskt Forumissa 27.11.2010
pitämän esitelmän, jonka otsikkona oli Ideas of
Leadership and Democracy (Ajatuksia johtajuudesta ja
demokratiasta). Esitelmän alkuosa käsittelee vasemmiston
perinteisiä demokratiakäsityksiä sekä tavoitteita
parlamentaarisesta tasavallasta ja neuvostotasavallasta, ja
hylkää molemmat suoran demokratian hyväksi.
Esitelmän jälkimmäinen osa käsittelee konkreettisia
esityksiä sosialismiin siirtymisen ensimmäisistä
askelista, ja loppuosassa Cockshott vastailee yleisön kysymyksiin
2000-luvun marxilaisuus
Skotlantilainen taloustieteilijä ja tietojenkäsittelytieteen
professori (Reader) Paul Cockshott vaatii
työväenliikettä kohtaamaan oikeiston talousopit
silmästä silmään ja kehittämään
niiden haastajaksi omista luokkaeduistaan ponnistavaa teoriaa
1800-luvulla kehitetyn poliittisen taloustieteen pohjalta. Cockshottin
mukaan tähän tehtävään kuuluu myös sen
kuvaaminen, miten tulevaisuuden sosialistinen
talousjärjestelmä on tarkoitus järjestää. On
irtauduttava Länsi-Euroopan marxilaisuudelle tyypillisestä
spekulatiivis-filosofisesta menetelmästä ja
hyödynnettävä muun muassa tilastollisen mekaniikan ja
laskettavuuden teorian kaltaisia tieteenhaaroja sosialistista
suunnitelmataloutta hahmoteltaessa.
Oberhand
gewinnenDer Kapitalismus verfügt über
theoretische Grundlagen, die ihn bis heute zusammenhalten. Die
Arbeiterklasse kann daher nur revolutionär sein, wenn sie eine
politische Ökonomie der zukünftigen Gesellschaft entwickelt
Unerwartete
Quelle Die Physik bestätigt den Marxismus Short
article describing how the Gibbs Boltzman distribution of money derives
from work of Yakovenko, and how statistical mechanics approaches give
the same general predictions as the Adam Smith/Karl Marx theory of
price.
Steuern
für den SozialismusArticle on tax policy in
Venezuela. It focuses on the limits to funding internal expenditure
from dollar revenues for oil sales without an adequate internal tax
base. Particular focus is paid to the conflict between attempting to
maintain exchange controls and attempting to control Bolivar inflation
when running a current account surplus. The exchange controls are there
to prevent expatriation of revenue by the rich. The article argues that
it would be better to have an effective tax on property incomes.
Zeit
statt GeldArticle on the problem of inflation in Venezuela
and review of proposals for monetary reform in that country.
Ökonomisches
Übergangsprogramm zum Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts in der
Europäischen Union Dieser programmatische Artikel versucht die
wirtschaftlichen Schritte zu skizzieren, die notwendig wären, um
eine kapitalistische Wirtschaft wie die der EU in eine sozialistische
zu überführen. Wir untersuchen das Problem anhand sehr anschaulicher
Begrifflichkeiten und schlagen gezielte politische Maßnahmen vor.
Diese Maßnahmen unterscheiden sich deutlich von der Tradition der
Europäischen Sozialdemokratie des 20. Jahrhunderts.
Hungarian
Új szocializmus
felé This is a Hungarian introduction to the book
'Towards a New Socialism'. As far as I know the introduction is the
only part of the book translated into Hungarian. The translation
appears to date from 2006.
These are articles or papers
of mine that have been reproduced and translated on Russian language
web sites. Thanks to Yuriy Zhilovets
and Sergei Markoff among
others for being so kind as to translate these..
DE STORA SPRŎGEN An article
examing capital accumulation in Britain since the late 19th century and
the implications this has for China. Published in the Swedish journal
Clarte An English language draft is available here and
has now appeared in English in the Bulletin of Political Economy. För
ett genomskinligt produktionssätt - W Paul Cockshott &
Allain Cottrell röda rummet 3-02 PDF
version
Assorted other papers are available on the Reality web site.
