we were doing Electrical Engineering they opened up Computer and said if you want, after the third year onwards you can do
Computer Engineering. And in our batch, we had 60 electrical students, and they offered Computer Engineering for 20 students. So
it was in 2000 and at that time computer was something very attractive and out of those 60 except a very few, other top 20 students came to do Computer Engineering.
So Sir, the next question is about your higher studies like MSc and Ph.D.?
I didn’t do a M.Sc., and I did a direct Ph.D. I did it at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney in Australia. And
I worked in a lab called Embedded Systems Lab at UNSW. In 2003 February I started, and it was for 3 years and 6 months. I
finished it in August 2006. I came back in September 2006 and joined Peradeniya as a lecturer here. Even before starting my
Ph.D., I was a lecturer here just after my graduation in December 2002.
And why did you select Embedded Systems other than Networking and Software for your Ph.D.?
To me, embedded systems were more fun when comparing to networking. Things like embedded systems, microcontrollers, and computer architecture interested me more.
So sir, what are your research
in Embedded Systems and
Computer Architecture?
So for my Ph.D., I did research related
to Embedded Systems and Computer
Architecture. There I built new processor
architecture for Embedded Systems, and
the processor can do things like identifying security attacks at the processor level.
You know that to identify attacks we use
virus guard and all. Instead of using a
virus guard, can a processor itself identify
attacks at the instruction level? I built
a processor like that. That’s very much
related to computer architecture.
After my Ph.D., when I came back here, I
did a lot of different things. And I used to
visit the university where I did my Ph.D.
applications. For instance if you want to
put a controller in a car, it has to be realtime on the brake. The controller handling the brake has to work within a cer-
as a visiting researcher.
tain amount of time. If it takes long, then
Any other research?
If you are building a robot, for instance,
Yeah, other research. I am heading a
research lab called Embedded Systems
and Computer Architecture Lab (ESCAL)
here at Peradeniya. I’m very much interested in doing this “High- Performance
Computing” related research. That’s again
high- performance computing related to
embedded systems. High performance
computing is something where you cater
requirements of applications that need
faster computation. If you take an embedded system, maybe there are real-time
there is no point. That’s just one example.
you have a loop for a robot. It keeps on
looping. That loop has to be fast enough.
If you want your robot to do a lot of different things, you have to make the work
happening in this loop faster.
So there are lots of places where you
want to finish computation faster. There
are different ways of doing the acceleration. You can do it using a better algorithm or by using better compilers and
“You know that to identify attacks we use virus
guard and all. Instead of
using a virus guard, can
a processor itself identify
attacks at the instruction
level?
I built a processor like
that. That’s very much
related to computer
architecture. ”
you can do it using various hardware
Gauge Newsletter
University of Peradeniya
13