CMSC 714 Midterm (Spring 2000)

(1) This exam is closed book, closed notes, and closed neighbor.

(2) You have 70 minutes to complete this exam. If you finish early, you may turn in your exam at the front of the room and leave. However if you finish during the last ten minutes of the exam please remain seated until the end of the exam so you don't disturb others.

(3) Write all answers in the supplied exam booklet. Start each new problem on a new page.

(4) Partial credit will be given for most questions assuming I can figure out what you were doing.

(5) Please write neatly. Print your answers if your handwriting is hard to read. If you write something, and wish to cross it out, simply put an X through it.

1. (20 points) Define and explain the following terms:

A. Barrier

B. Super Linear Speedup

C. Binary Editing

D. NUMA

2. (25 points) Explain what data races are. Describe two approaches taken by the Eraser and Dinning/Schonberg systems try to build tools to detect data races. What are the inherent limits to such systems?

3. (20 points) Compare and contrast MPI and OpenMP in terms of how parallelism is expressed, the syntax of the language, and the intended platforms.

4.(15 points) Explain how MTOOL is able to find memory bottlenecks in programs.

5.(20 points) Both the Cray T3E and the SGI Origin allow global memory references; explain how they are similar and how they differ.