wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk

Academic Background

• BaEcon, Manchester University, 1974
• Msc.Computer Science, Heriot Watt University, 1976
• Ph.D. Computer Science, Edinburgh University, 1982

Membership of Professional Bodies

• EPSRC Computer College
• American Association for Advancement of Science
• IEEE Computer Society
• International Working Group on Value Theory

Computer Expertise

• Expert in information theory and video data-compression.
• Programming experience in FORTRAN, Algol, Pascal, Occam, C, C++, Java, Delphi and Assembler.
• Systems programming experience with: MSDOS, Windows 95 and UNIX.
• Hardware design tools: ORCAD, VHDL and PALASM.
• Experienced in the design and implementation of programming languages and compilers.
• Competent in the implementation of database management systems.
• Implementer and designer of virtual memory management systems.
• Designer of video processors, instruction-set processors, and parallel machines.

Work History

Research activities

• Development of 3d face conforming software to allow transfer of facial expressions between characters.
• Research into the use of MMX parallelism for fast stereo image matching.

Research activities

• Development of the Strathclyde Compression Transform (SCT), a low bandwidth video compression system suitable for video-telephony or Internet TV broadcasting. Work funded by Orange PLC and Acorn computers to the sum of over £200,000. Provides basis for the recently launched Orange Video Phone.
• Currently in the running for the H263L low bandwidth video standard by the International Telecommunications Union. Over 30 organizations have expressed an interest in licensing this technology from the University.
• Design of the Hibase compressed relational database system, funding for this from government and industrial sources £220,000 so far. It has been licensed to Gentia software, and the university anticipates royalty income of circa £300,000 per annum from my patents.
• Design and implementation of the SPACE machine, a high performance parallel computer for discrete event simulation. This work involved hardware design using transputers and Field Programmable Gate Arrays.
• A compiler writers’ tool-kit for the development of interactive compilers for PCs.

Teaching experience

• Supervision of research students, teaching undergraduate courses in : AI Techniques, Compilers, C++, VHDL, Computer Organization, and the History and Philosophy of Computer Design.

• Designed and implemented two special purpose database computers designed for free-text retrieval, one for the PC, the other for mini-computers. Machines had special instruction-set for recognizing regular grammars.
• Designed an object-oriented co-processor to be used with SUN workstations and worked on the establishment of standards for the interchange of persistent data.

• Worked on the Persistent Programming project.
• Played a leading role in the design and implementation of the language PS-algol. The results of the research have been extensively reported in the literature.
• I was awarded my Ph.D. for a thesis on "Orthogonal Persistence". The early work on persistence in programming languages by our group led to the emergence of a rapidly developing programming technique. The approach has adopted by major international companies, Sun are incorporating it in the Java Spaces system, and many academic research groups.
• I developed the Kaleidoscope windowing colour graphics display processor for high speed animation, a floppy disk controller for Sinclair computers that was put into production by Centronic Inc. of New Jersey.
• I collaborated with ICL and Acorn computers on the application of persistence to mainframes and workstations, resulting in Acorn awarding me funds to develop the ‘Poppy’ a persistent store computer based upon a modified NS32016 processor with object oriented addressing.

• Implemented automatic routing for gate arrays.
• Worked on a high-level logic design language, SYMBOL II language. This was a modular language, similar to VHDL, for the top down design of mainframe computers.
• I applied this system to the design of the microcode scheduler of the 2966 mainframe processor.

Foreign Languages

• Conversational and reading ability in French
• Conversational German.

Research Grants
 

Publications

Patents

1. Neural Networks R. Fryer, R. Lambert and P. Cockshott British App 9307611.5, 13 April 1993, Japan 06-522895, PCT GB94/00777, 13 December 1994 (Licensed to Orange)
2. Method and Apparatus for Simulation of a physical process G. Milne/P. Cockshott US Patent 5,485,599 Granted 16 January 1996, Europe Patent 0506685 8 November 1995 States DE, FR, GB, IT, NL
3. Fractal Data Compression D. McGregor, P. Cockshott, R. Fryer and R. Lambert PCT/GB95/00093, 27 July 1995, UK 9401112.9, 19 January 1994, International WO 95/20296, 27 July 1995. (Licensed to Orange)
4. Error Recovery in Card Arrays P. Cockshott and G. Russell (ERCA) GB.9511403.9, 6 June 1995
5. Best First SCT D. McGregor, P. Cockshott, R. Lambert and R. Fryer UK 9522077.8, 27 October 1995,(Licensed to Orange)
6. Minimum Entropy D. McGregor and P. Cockshott BP9604522.4, 2 March 1996, International Patent WO 97/32263, 4 Sept 1997(Licensed to Planning Sciences International).
7. Array Indexing D. McGregor and P. Cockshott BP 9605853.2, Filed 20 March 1996, International Patent WO 978/35256 25 Sept 1997. (Licensed to Planning Sciences International)
8. Vector Quantization, P. Cockshott BP 9622055.3 (Licensed to Orange)

Peer review journal papers in chronological order

1. PS-algol: an Algol with a Persistent Heap, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 17, No 7 (July 1981), 24-31. Atkinson M P, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P.
2. Algorithms for a Persistent Heap, Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 13, No 3, (March 1983), 259-272. Atkinson M P, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P.
3. CMS - A chunk management system, Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 13, No 3, (March 1983), 273-85. Atkinson M P, CHISHOLM K J, Cockshott W P.
4. An approach to persistent programming, The Computer Journal, 1983, Vol. 26, No 4, 360-365, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, MORRISON R.
5. POMS - a persistent object management system, Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 14, No 1,( January 1984), 49- 71, Cockshott W P, Atkinson M P, Chisholm K J, Bailey P J, Morrison R.
6. Persistent Programming and Secure Data Storage, Software Development, Vol. 29, No 5, June 1987, Cockshott W P.
7. Labour Value and socialist economic calculation, Economy and Society, Vol. 18, No.l. Feb. 1989, Paul Cockshott & Allin Cottrell.
8. Layered Implementations of Persistent Object Stores, March 89, Software Engineering Journal, W P Cockshott, P Balch, P Foulk.
9. A low cost text retrieval machine, IEE Proceedings E, Vol. 136, July 89, P Cockshott P Foulk
10. Application of artificial intelligence techniques to Economic Planning, Journal of Future Computer Systems, Nov 1989, P Cockshott
11. Parsing Instruction-set Computers, IEE Proceedings E, Vol. 138, No5 1991, P Cockshott P Foulk
12. Scaleable cellular array architecture, Computing and Control Engineering Journal, Vol. 3 , No 5 ,1992, P. Cockshott, P. Shaw, P Barrie, G. Milne
13. Design and verification of a highly concurrent machine, Microprocessors and Microsystems, Vol. 16 No 3, P Barrie, 1993, P Cockshott, P. Shaw, G. Milne
14. Calculation complexity and planning, Review of Political Economy, Vol. 5 , No 1 ,1993, A Cottrell, P Cockshott
15. Socialist Planning after the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Revue Europeenne des science sociales, 1993, Tome XXXI, No. 96, A Cottrell, P. Cockshott.
16. Persistent objects in Turbo Pascal for Windows, Journal of Object Oriented Programming, 1993, Vol. 6 , No. 2, P Cockshott.
17. Architectures for persistence, Microprocessors and Micro-systems, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1993, Gordon Russell and Paul Cockshott.
18. Approaches to real-time Fractal image compression, Electronic Imaging, Vol. 4, No 2, 1994, R J Fryer, D R McGregor, P Cockshott, P Murray.
19. Testing Marx: Some new results from UK data, Capital and Class, Number 55, Spring 1995, Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell, Greg Michaelson.
20. Implementation of Lattice Gasses Using FPGAs, Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, Vol. 12, No 1, pp. 51-66, 1996.
21. Reply to Maniatis, Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell, Greg Michaelson, Capital and Class, Vol. 59, 1996, pp55-60.
22. Labour time versus alternative value bases: a research note. Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 21 No 4, July 1997, pp. 545-549.
23. Information and Economics. Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, Research in Political Economy, Volume 16,1997, pp177-202.
24. Value Markets and Socialism, Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, Science and Society, Volume 61, no. 3, 1997, pp 330-357.
25. High Performance Operations Using a Compressed Database Architecture, W.P. Cockshott, D. McGregor, J.Wilson, the Computer Journal, in press.

Conferences and workshops

1. Progress with persistent programming, presented at the CREST course at the UEA, September 1982, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, Morrison R.
2. Problems with persistent programming languages, presented at the workshop on programming languages and database systems, University of Pennsylvania, October 1982. Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, Morrison R.
3. Current progress with persistent programming, presented at the DEC workshop on persistent programming languages and databases, Boston, April 1983, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, Morrison R.
4. PS-algol a language for persistent programming, 10^th Australian Computer Conference, Melbourne Sept 1983, 70-79, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, MORRISON R.
5. PSM16000 , Proceedings of the first Alvey WORKSHOP ON ARCHITECTURES FOR I.ARGE KNOWLEDGE BASES, Manchester University, May 1984, Cockshott W P.
6. Knowledge Base Machines - requirements and short to medium term possibilities, Proceedings of the second Alvey WORKSHOP ON ARCHITECTURES FOR LARGE KNOWLEDGE BASES, Manchester University, July 1984, Cockshott W P.
7. Addressing Mechanisms and Persistent Programming, proceedings of the Data Types and Persistence Workshop, Appin, August 1985, 363-383, Cockshott W P.
8. Persistent Object Store Hardware and Software Interfaces, proceedings of Alvey workshop on Knowledge Manipulation Engines, 28-29 May 1987, Brunel University, Cockshott W P.
9. Vorlich - a hardware regular expression processor, proceedings of the European UNIX Users Group Conference, Spring 1987, Helsinki, Cockshott W P, Forsyth M, Foulk P W.
10. Stable Virtual Memory, proceedings of the workshop on Persistent Object Systems: their design, implementation and use, August 1987, Appin, P Cockshott.
11. Design of POMP a persistent object management coprocessor, in Persistent object systems: their design implementation and use, Newcastle Australia, 1989. Published by Springer Verlag as Persistent Object Systems, P Cockshott.
12. Implementing large persistent address spaces on Intel processors, Bremen conference on computer architectures for persistence and security 1990. Published by Springer Verlag, P Cockshott .
13. A learning circuit that operates by discrete means, P Cockshott , G Milne, in VLSI for Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks, Plenum Press, 1990
14. Performance Evaluation of the Rekursiv Object Oriented Computer, Hawaii Intl. Conf. System Sciences, 1992, P. Cockshott.
15. Socialist Planning after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in Symposium on The Socialist Calculation debate After the Upheavals in Eastern Europe, December 1992, University de Lausanne, Allin Cottrell, Paul Cockshott.
16. Realizing Massively Concurrent Systems on the SPACE Machine, IEEE Workshop on FPGAs for Custom Computing Machines, 1993, P Barrie, P Cockshott, G McCaskill, G Milne.
17. A Scaleable Neural Architecture Combining Unsupervised and Suggestive Learning, Porc. Int. Con. on Artificial Neural Nets and Genetic Algorithms, Innsbruck, Austria, 1993, R Lambert, P Cockshott, R Fryer.
18. DAIS: an object oriented processor cache, Persistent Object Systems 6, 1994, G Russell, P Cockshott.
19. Does Marx Need to Transform, Marxian Economics a Centenary Appraisal, International Conference on Karl Marx’s Third Volume of Capital: 1894-1994, University of Bergamo, December 1994, Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell.
20. Data compression in database systems, International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium 98, Cardiff 1998, W.P. Cockshott, D. McGregor, N. Kotsksi, J.Wilson.
21. Un modèle de planification efficace, at conference organised by CENTRE D'ETUDES PROSPECTIVES D'ECONOMIE MATHEMATIQUE APPLIQUEES A LA PLANIFICATION, Univ. Paris X, 1998 Paul Cockshott, Allin Cottrell.

Books

1. PS-algol Implementations, Ellis Horwood, 1990, P Cockshott
2. A Compiler Writers Toolbox , Ellis Horwood, 1990, P Cockshott
3. Towards a new socialism, Spokesman Books 1993, P. Cockshott, A. Cottrell.

Reports and non-reviewed journal papers

1. NEPAL - the New Edinburgh Persistent Algorithmic Language, in Databases, Pergamon Infotech State of the Art report, Series 9, No 8, 299-318 January 1982, Cockshott W P.
2. Orthogonal Persistence, Ph.D. Thesis Edinburgh University, Feb 1983, Cockshott W P.
3. The Persistent Object Management System, Glasgow University Computer Science Department, Persistent Programming Research Report, 1983, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, Morrison R.
4. PS-algol Papers Glasgow University Computer Science Department, Persistent Programming Research Report, 1983, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, Morrison R.
5. Progress with Persistent Programming Glasgow University Computer Science Department, Persistent Programming Research Report, 1984, Atkinson M P, Bailey PJ, Chisholm K J, Cockshott W P, Morrison R.
6. CPOMS - a revised version of the persistent object management system in C, Glasgow University Computer Science Department, Persistent Programming Research Report, 1985, Brown A L, Cockshott W P.
7. The Persistent Store Machine, Glasgow University Computer Science Department, Persistent Programming Research Report, 1985, Cockshott W P.
8. Building a Microcomputer with associative virtual memory, Glasgow University Computer Science Department, Persistent Programming Research Report, 1985, Cockshott W P.
9. Design of Pomp, Persistent Object Management, co Processors, University of Strathclyde, Computer Science Research Report, 1988, W P Cockshott. Also presented to Australian conference on persistent object-systems, Newcastle, Australia, 1989
10. Applications of Artificial Intelligence Techniques to Economic Planning. University of Strathclyde, Computer Science Research Report, 1988, W P Cockshott. Also appeared in Journal of Future Computer Systems.
11. Towards Hardware Compilation, University of Strathclyde, Computer Science Research Reports, 1988, W P Cockshott, P W Foulk
12. A Critical Assessment of Two Non Von Neuman Architectures, University of Strathclyde, Computer Science Research Reports, 1988, W P Cockshott, P W Foulk.
13. Persistence is a Virtue, in Program now, Vol.2 No.3, May 1988, pp.16-19, P Cockshott
14. Data Signatures, in Program Now, Vol.12 No.7, Sept.1988, pp. 10-15, W P Cockshott
15. What’s in a bit, in Program Now, Vol.2. No.6, Aug. 1988, pp. 26-29, W P Cockshott
16. The End is in Sight, in Program Now, Vol.2. No.8. 1988, W P Cockshott
17. Mr. Gorbachov’s Spreadsheet, in Program Now, Vol.2. No.9, pp. 20-24, 1988, W P Cockshott.
18. Persistent Salgol Compiler for the IBM At, Departmental report, July 1989, W P Cockshott
19. Layered Implementation of a persistent object store, Departmental Report, July 1989, W P Cockshott
20. Definition and linkage techniques for graphics abstract datatypes, Departmental Report October 1989 , W P Cockshott
21. Circal and quantum phenomena, Departmental report 1990 , W P Cockshott
22. Handshake Serial Logic, Departmental Report 1991, P Cockshott.
23. A parallel database programming language based on APL, Departmental Report, IKBS 5-91, August 1991.
24. Performance Evaluation of the REKURSIV Object Oriented Computer, Research Report, ARCH-8-91, W P Cockshott.
25. Use of high-speed Cellular Automata to simulate road traffic, P Barrie, P Cockshott, G McCaskill, HDV-27-93, May 1993.
26. A survey of architectures for memory resident databases, G Russell, P Cockshott, ARCH-10-93, April 1993.
27. On-Line Training by Combining Supervised and Unsupervised Learning, R LAMBERT, P Cockshott, R Fryer, MPRG-3-93.
28. Fast Fractal Transform Method for Data Compression, D R McGregor, R J Fryer, W P Cockshott, Research Report/94/156, April 1994.
29. Physical Realism and Formal Process Semantics, P Cockshott, P Shaw, Research Report/94/150, May 1994.
30. Implementation of Lattice Gases Using FPGAS, P Shaw, W P Cockshott, P M Barrie, Departmental Research Report 94/161 October 1994.
31. Information and Economics: A critique of Hayek, A F Cottrell, W P Cockshott, Departmental research report 94/166, October 1994.
32. Value Price Transformation as a Real Process, A F Cottrell, W P Cockshott, Departmental research report 94/167, November 1994.
33. Value’s Law Value’s Metric, A F Cottrell, W P Cockshott, Departmental research report 94/168, November 1994.

An implementation of PS-algol for the IBM PC, on sale from the department of computer science University of Strathclyde.