Class URL: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hollings/cs818z/f96

You are expected to check the class web page on a regular basis (at least weekly).

Catalog Description:

Selected topics in high-performance systems, including contemporary architectures, interconnection topologies, shared memory and message-passing systems, multi-threaded kernels, latency avoidance and hiding techniques, methods for data and workload partitioning, performance profiling, debugging.

Objective:

An understanding of the issues in the design high performance computers.

Prerequisites: CMSC412, CMSC411 (or equivalent classes)

Topics Covered (in approximately the order we will cover them):

• Introduction (1 week)
• Applications (2 weeks)
• Programming Languages (1 week)
• Parallel Architectures (3 weeks)
• Operating systems for parallel computing (2 weeks)
• Runtime Libraries (1 week)
• Debugging Tools (2 weeks)
• Performance Tools (2 weeks)

Required Course Text:

Highly Parallel Computing 2^nd Edition, Almasi and Gottlieb, Benjamin/Cummings 1994.

Papers from the reading list (available soon)

Term Projects:

The class will include term projects to investigate some aspect of parallel computing in more depth. The projects are intended to be "mini-research" projects. Part of the projects will be to define a specific project from sample ideas I supply you. The project will also include a written and oral report to convey what you have learned.

Grading:

Classroom participation	15%
Programming Assignment	10%
Midterm	30%
Project	45%

The instructor reserves the right to fail, regardless of numeric score, students who do not submit a good faith attempt to complete all programming assignments.