Hi all, first of all, thanks again for your interest. It's great to see that you are excited about our GSoC project idea on language and runtime support for parameter servers in SystemML. I'd like to give a couple of pointers to clarify potential questions some of you might have.
1) GSoC Guidelines: There are good existing guidelines. Please read them and make sure that you're eligible. http://community.apache.org/gsoc.html https://google.github.io/gsocguides/student/ 2) Project Discussion: For all technical discussions around potential project proposals, let's use the main epic JIRA SYSTEMML-2083. At this stage right now, it's important to understand the general goal, existing related work, and how the proposal would differentiate. Furthermore, think about aspects of the project you would be most interested in. Examples are (1) language and API extensions for a seamless integration in SystemML (e.g., paramserv builtin function, Keras2DML extension, function pointers), and (2) runtime support for local/distributed, synchronous/asynchronous execution and related performance features. Both would touch upon SystemML internals but at different abstraction levels. I encourage you to think about how you would approach such a sub project. Please don't hesitate to reach out (in public or private as you prefer) to discuss your ideas. 3) Optional Contributions: If you are unsure about what it means to work on the internals of SystemML, you might want to consider picking up small tasks and simply giving it a try. That's perhaps the best way to get comfortable and to evaluate for yourself if your would enjoy the summer project. There are many open issues some of which are tracked via JIRAs, but we're happy to give more pointed suggestions as well. 4) Project Proposals: After working through the technical aspects and your own ideas, you should be in good shape to write your project proposal. It's fine to have multiple proposals on the same overall project. At the end of the day, its your project proposal that covers your ideas on the how to tackle the overall goal. We are happy to provide feedback though. I would recommend to start early and iterate on it. @Nakul and @Krishna: Please correct me if I missed something (since I'm volunteering for the first time as a GSoC mentor). Regards, Matthias
