Getting Started in the VCL Lab

This page lists tasks needed to get setup in the VCL group.

Since our major restructuring in the Summmer of 2019, text in gray font below needs to be updated.

1. Get access codes to the labs

Fill out the online form available either of two ways: 1) https://blueform.ece.ucdavis.edu, or 2) https://www.ece.ucdavis.edu → ECE Key/Access Code Request Form (which is located in the Quick Links section) requesting access for Kemper 2206 and for the main building key.

Once a form is submitted, the PI listed on the form will be contacted via email for approval to issue the key and/or access code. After the PI approval is received, the student/visitor/etc. will receive an email when the key is ready for pick-up in the ECE main office and/or an access code will be emailed to him/her.

2. Keeping in touch

Email your mobile phone number to Dr. Baas.

3. If you will use crepe, and until crepe is rebuilt as a group machine: Set default unix group to "vcl" (so file group ownership is correct)

Only if it would be very convenient to have your default group set immediately, you may want to do the following steps and then undo them after support makes the change.

Add the following line to your ~/.login file (create the file if needed): newgrp vcl
Logout and log back in. Check your primary group by typing 'groups' and press Enter. The default group is the first one listed.
Once support adds you to the primary unix group "vcl", remove the "newgrp vcl" line from your .login file.
While "newgrp vcl" is in your .login file, each time you login, two shell instances will be spawned.
Thereby requiring you to exit twice before you are fully logged out.

Here is another method suggested by ECE Support, April 2018.
If, for whatever reason, you find it would be convenient to use a different unix group during your studies temporarily, the 'newgrp $GROUPNAME' command will open up a new shell with $GROUPNAME as your active group. This may be useful, for instance, when doing work for a course where the vcl group having ownership of files you create does not seem appropriate. You can list all the groups you are a part of on a given machine with the 'groups' command - your currently-set primary group will be the first listed.

4. New computer account on the VCL linux machines

Send an email to Dr. Baas with 1) your preferred username (unless you have a strong preference or your kerberos name is long, choose the name you use for your @ucdavis.edu email address), 2) your preferred shell but only if you have a strong preference for something other than tcsh--which is the recommended shell for many CAD tools.

A temporary password will be sent to you by text. Change it using "passwd" immediately on each of the VCL linux machines.

We have several group policies regarding passwords:

Your password must be a combination upper/lower case, numbers, and special characters. Do not include any strings longer than a few characters that appear in a dictionary (any language) or online such as ucdavis, vcl, your name, your birthday, etc.
never have your password in unencrypted electronic form anywhere.

You may keep your password written on paper if you keep it in an extra safe place. You may also keep it in a VeraCrypt encrypted container which has the benefit of being secure anywhere including dropbox, gmail, usb drives, etc. Of course you must choose a similarly strong password for the encrypted container. Here are my VeraCrypt installation and usage notes that I use:

   https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/  >  download
   Install button
      uncheck "Add VeraCrypt icon to desktop" > Install
   Configure:
      Start > run it once then exit
      right click VeraCrypt taskbar icon > Preferences...
      check   "Open explorer window for successfully mounted volume"
      check   "Use a different taskbar icon when there are..."     # I suppose
      uncheck "Preserve modification timestamp of file containers"
   To use existing container:
      Double-click *.hc file, Mount on an unused partition
   To setup container:
      ref: google this: Beginner's Tutorial veracrypt free open source
      Run it,
      > Step 2: click Create Volume
      > Step 3: Create an encrypted file container > Next
      > Step 4: Standard VeraCrypt volume > Next
      > Step 5: Select File...
                > File name: Desktop > stuff.100MB.hc
                > Save
                > uncheck Never save history     # I suppose
                > Next
      > Step 8: Leave  AES, SHA-512              # I suppose
                > Next
      > Step 9: Note   10 MB container yields ~6 MB free space
                Note  150 MB container yields  148 MB free space (FAT32)
                Note 1850 MB container yields 1846 MB free space (FAT32)
                Note 3700 MB container yields 3692 MB free space (FAT32)
                Note   14 GB container yields 13.9 GB free space
                > uncheck 3 boxes I suppose > Next
      > Step 11: FAT filesystem       # "FAT" is actually FAT32 (chk Properties)
                # FAT32 is fine, normally choose it.  (4GB max file, 2TB max volume however)
                # Strange, why is Admin priv needed to mount as NTFS???
                # Strange, why is Admin priv needed to mount as exFAT???
                > Format
      > change container filename to end in .hc if skipped earlier

5. Install the CoE VPN

There are only two ways to ssh into the VCL group machines: 1) ssh from the college's VPN (the recommended method), or 2) a second method which will be described in an email sent to you when your account is setup.

To install the CoE's VPN, follow these instructions.

6. Set up your ~/.cshrc file

Once your VCL account is setup, inside of your home directory will be a template .cshrc file which reads two of the group's initialization files: one is for general items, and one is for CAD tools. Keep this code and add whatever else you like.

7. Picture for the main VCL web page

Get someone to take a friendly smiling picture of you against a light-colored background, probably without a flash. Guys: A professional-looking collared buttoned-up dress shirt, dress jacket optional, no tie needed. Gals: Something of equivalent dressiness. See google images "business casual" or "professional attire" for ideas.
1. Only if it looks better: Balance the colors (gimp: Colors > Levels... > Auto)
2. Crop a high resolution picture on the left and right sides just a little beyond the corner of your shoulders (gimp: Tools > Transform tools > Crop)
3. Resize or Scale photo (with aspect ratio locked) so it has a width of 108 pixels (gimp: Image > Scale image... > Width)
4. Crop to 144 pixels high (with aspect ratio unlocked) with a small border above head (gimp: Image > Canvas size... > Height)
5. Save as jpeg (gimp: File > Export as... > name.jpg)
Just as the picture on the lab webpage should be profession looking to give a good impression on sponsors and future employers, please also choose a professional-sounding ucdavis.edu email address in case you didn't before.

8. Setup a google calendar

Keep your schedule on a google calendar showing major committment time blocks Mon–Fri and share it with bbaas@ucdavis.edu Please use two calendars if you would like to put a lot of non-work-related information on your calendar and/or feel free to share only a free/busy view.

9. EEC 290C and EEC 299 (or EEC 199 for undergrads)

As a rule, always sign up for EEC 290C. EEC 290C = Graduate Research Group Conference in Electrical and Computer Engineering. This class gives students credit, in units, for the time spent advising and in group meetings.
Sign up for as many units of EEC 299 as you like keeping in mind that you should spend approximately 3 hours per week on research per 299 unit.
Undergraduates: sign up for EEC 199 instead of 299. TBD: whether you should sign up for 190C.

10. Join the VCL Slack channel

Details to be posted later.

11. Check out a git tree (KiloCore and other things)

Undergrad students: to keep the config cleaner, you will be added when needed.
These are the steps of adding a specific user into our git repository access list:
1. Generate an RSA key pair in a linux terminal or windows git bash (need to install Git first) by running the command:
  ssh-keygen, this will generate two files (id_rsa, id_rsa.pub) in ~/.ssh/
2. Email id_rsa.pub to one of Git admin of VCL (Shifu or Prof. Baas)
3. This step is for VCL Git administrator only, if you are a new user, skip this step and go to step 4.
  - If you are a new administrator, checkout the admin repository:
    gitolite-admin
  - Rename the id_rsa.pub to some unique meaningful name, typically the user's name, such as bob.pub
  - Put bob.pub into directory /gitolite-admin/keydir/
  - Update /gitolite-admin/conf/gitolite.conf, add Bob into the specific repository access groups
    - In gitolite.conf, we have different groups, such as @admin for administrators, @ms for master students and @undergrad for undergraduate researchers, one user can be added to more than one group
    - For example, we want to add Bob into @undergrad group. Assuming @undergrad group already has two users whose name are user1 and user2, we simply add bob to the end of line:
      @undergrad = user1 user2 bob
4. The new user can now checkout a repository by git clone. See the VCL google doc project_manager_install_guide for details on how to do this.

12. Optional: Check out an SVN tree (AsAP2 I think)

To check out the asap2 svn tree:
svnco
To update the asap2 svn tree:
svn update
To add files into the asap2 svn tree:
svn add PATH
svn commit
For more information regarding SVN, refer to the Basic SVN Commands

13. Optional: Check out a CVS tree (AsAP1 I think)

To check out the entire ppd "module" (aka directory):
Go to your path_to_your_copy directory (From step II) and execute the command:
cvs checkout ppd
This will create a dir named "ppd" which is the top level of the cvs tree.
For more information regarding CVS, refer to the CVS Help File

14. Optional: Add AsAP-ASM syntax highlighting to your nedit.rc file (less important in 2013)

Run "nedit -import /net/pizza/tools/bin/DOT.nedit"
Click "Preferences" -> "Save Defaults" -> "OK"
Restart nedit by running "nedit"

15. Read some of our introductory papers

The best papers to read will depend on your own project direction, but these papers will be informative for all new students (read in the order listed):

Bevan Baas, Zhiyi Yu, Michael Meeuwsen, Omar Sattari, Ryan Apperson, Eric Work, Jeremy Webb, Michael Lai, Tinoosh Mohsenin, Dean Truong, Jason Cheung, "AsAP: A Fine-grain Multi-core Platform for DSP Applications," IEEE Micro, Volume 27, Number 2, March/April 2007. Invited.
Zhiyi Yu, Michael Meeuwsen, Ryan Apperson, Omar Sattari, Michael Lai, Jeremy Webb, Eric Work, Tinoosh Mohsenin, Mandeep Singh, Bevan M. Baas, "An Asynchronous Array of Simple Processors for DSP Applications," In Proceedings of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC '06), February 2006, pp. 428-429, 663.
Zhiyi Yu, Michael Meeuwsen, Ryan Apperson, Omar Sattari, Michael Lai, Jeremy Webb, Eric Work, Dean Truong, Tinoosh Mohsenin, Bevan Baas, "AsAP: An Asynchronous Array of Simple Processors," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 695-705, March 2008.
Dean Truong, Wayne Cheng, Tinoosh Mohsenin, Zhiyi Yu, Toney Jacobson, Gouri Landge, Michael Meeuwsen, Christine Watnik, Paul Mejia, Anh Tran, Jeremy Webb, Eric Work, Zhibin Xiao, Bevan Baas, "A 167-processor 65 nm Computational Platform with Per-Processor Dynamic Supply Voltage and Dynamic Clock Frequency Scaling," In Proceedings of the Symposium on VLSI Circuits, June 2008, C3.1., pp. 22-23.
Dean Truong, Wayne Cheng, Tinoosh Mohsenin, Zhiyi Yu, Anthony Jacobson, Gouri Landge, Michael Meeuwsen, Christine Watnik, Anh Tran, Zhibin Xiao, Eric Work, Jeremy Webb, Paul Mejia, Bevan Baas, "A 167-Processor Computational Platform in 65 nm CMOS," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 1130-1144, April 2009. Invited.
Brent Bohnenstiehl, Aaron Stillmaker, Jon Pimentel, Timothy Andreas, Bin Liu, Anh Tran, Emmanuel Adeagbo and Bevan Baas,
"KiloCore: A 32 nm 1000-Processor Array," In Proceedings of the IEEE HotChips Symposium on High-Performance Chips, (HotChips 2016), Cupertino, CA, August 2016.
Brent Bohnenstiehl, Aaron Stillmaker, Jon Pimentel, Timothy Andreas, Bin Liu, Anh Tran, Emmanuel Adeagbo and Bevan Baas,
"A 5.8 pJ/Op 115 Billion Ops/sec, to 1.78 Trillion Ops/sec 32 nm 1000-Processor Array," Symposium on VLSI Circuits, Honolulu, HI, June 2016.
Some of our complex application papers such as: 802.11a/11g transmitter, 802.11a/11g receiver, H.264 residual encoder, and AES encryption engines.

Bin Liu and Bevan Baas, "Parallel AES Encryption Engines for Many-Core Processor Arrays," IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 536-547, March 2013.

16. Jobs for Dr. Baas

Get added to the VCL netgroup (allow logins to VCL machines etc.).

Update group file: /afs/ece/labs/vcl/admin/users

and send the following email to IT support: I have added a new user, please update the VCL netgroups.
Add to my email list.

choose UCD gmail account
→ g,c
→ / student_name
→ 3_vertical_dots
→ click on appropriate email list (inlab, phd, ms, ...)
→ ×
→ close tab
Add to vcl@ucdavis.edu email list. Dr. Baas will add you using this link.
ManageSubscribers > Add a user > Add > then after address has been added, click on the email address in the main table and add their name there.
Add to google drive.

google drive
→ choose UCD google account
→ MyDrive
→ VCL Documents
→ VCL Documents pull down triangle
→ Share
→ Advanced
→ enter name
→ Done

99. When you graduate after you have filed your dissertation/thesis

Prepare two versions of your thesis: 1) one for whatever the university wants which I believe excludes the copyright page and has some weird restrictions about headers on pagers, and 2) a normal version for posting on the VCL website. Send the second version to me.
Archive all of the LaTeX for your thesis in /vcl/doc/theses/loginname/ including a Makefile which is able to compile your thesis into pdf. Please verify it works.
Remove any personal material from your account.
Archive your work in your /home/loginname/ home directory. Remove large files that were generated by a tool that are not necessary. Add README files in every major directory with helpful guidance for a future student to pick up your work.
Probably is it a good idea to tar and gzip a copy of your entire /home/loginname/ home directory and take a copy with you.

VCL | B.Baas | ECE Dept. | UC Davis

Last update: 2021/08/20