Computer Science Department

CS 475: Parallel Programming
GRAD 510: High Performance Computing
Fall 2008

Class meets: Tu-Th 2:00-3:15 PM in NESB B101
Labs meet: M 12:00 - 12:50 or M 2:00 - 2:50 (labs are required)

Announcements:

Watch this space, the Schedule Page and Lab Schedule Page for last minute information. There is also a page for announcements specific to distance students

Wed Aug 27 (8:00 am): At the start of the semester, class accounts on the department machines were created for everyone registered for the class(es). Your login id is your last name (possibly truncated to 8 characters). In case of conflicts with existing logins your first initial is added at the end (e.g., rajopads, in they needed to create an account for my sibling whose first name starts with S). Your password is your CSU id. If you can't figure it out please contact sna@cs.colostate.edu. If you need a new account for other reasons, please contact one of us.
Tue Aug 26 (6:00 pm): This is the first time that the campus and on-line versions of the class are being aligned. It is also the first time that we are taping the campus lectures and making them available to you as media files. Please bear with us during the transition. In general, the lectures will be posted a few hours after the on-campus lecture. PowerPoint slides will also be posted after the lectures. Today, there were some technical glitches in the recording, so the lecture itself will be posted only on Wednesday. The PowerPoint slides have been posted.
Tue Aug 26 (6:00 pm): a short description of the data plotting techniques has been posted.
Tue Aug 26 (6:00 pm): As stated earlier, most of the material (taped lectures, PowerPoint slides, and reading material) will be posted off the schedule page.
Tue Aug 26 (6:00 pm): There is a page for announcements specific to the on line section of the course.
Mon Aug 25 (7:40 pm): HW0 has been posted. It is due by midnight Sunday.
Sun Aug 24 (6:00 am): Please note there will be no lab this week (as stated in the schedule page). See you all on Tuesday in class (B101 NESB).
Wed July 23 (11:00 am): Homework and Lab assignments will be announced here but the details will usually be posted off the Syllabus/Schedule page.

Course Overview

Parallel programming is becoming increasingly critical for a computer scientist/engineer. Tomorrow, all machines are all going to be parallel, and a sequential program will be a slow program. Dave Patterson's keynote talk at LCPC 2006 eloquently makes that argument that we are at the end of the "La-Z-Boy Programming" era.

This course will train you to be ready for this challenge. It will teach you the basic concepts of writing, debugging, analyzing, benchmarking, and designing parallel programs. It covers the two main paradigms: shared memory, and message passing. We will also examine a number of parallel algorithms for a range of problems. The class is intended to be very hands-on: you will

write a number of programs (in C);
run them on the CS department's Unix platforms and on a large scale supercomputer;
measure the running time as a function of two parameters (problem size and number of processors);
analyze your observations; and
write reports on your observations and analyses.

Because this class is a capstone course for the undergraduate Computer Science curriculum, there is a significant writing component. This will be in the form of detailed lab reports, and a term paper, for which you will receive critical feedback on your writing and expository skills.

Prerequisites: CS 370 System Architecture and Software or instructor consent. Another key prerequisite is intellectual curiosity.

Tentative Syllabus & Schedule

The tentative schedule of lecture topics, titles and due dates of the Homework and Lab assignments and the associated reading material is also posted there. Note that it is tentative and we may not be able to cover all topics. The table will be modified as the course proceeds.

Details

Class meets: Tuesday, Thursday 2:00-3:15 PM in Clark A 206.
Instructor: Sanjay Rajopadhye USC 223, (email: Sanjay.Rajopadhye@colostate.edu), (phone: 491-7323).
Office Hours: Please see Sanjay's weekly schedule.
Graduate Teaching Assistants: Tomofumi Yuki (email: yuki@cs.colostate.edu) and Kaustubh Gadkari (email: kaustubh@cs.colostate.edu)
Office Hours: Fri 10-12 in North Lab.
Textbook: Parallel Programming in C with MPI and OpenMP, Michael J. Quinn (Mc Graw Hill, 2003 ISBN 0-07-282256-2).
Tentative Grading: Homework/Labs 50%, Midterms 30%, Final Project 20%.
- Most homeworks will involve writing programs and analyzing them, both analytically and empirically. Assignments must be submitted at the beginning of class on the due date. Programming assignments must be checked in by the time indicated. Late assignments will not be accepted (exceptions may be announced in class or posted).
- There will be two midterms and a project, but no final exam.
Final Project For your final project, you will work with a partner and parallelize a complete application, or do a comparative study of different approaches to parallel programming. More on this later.
The university calendar has scheduled the final exam on Thursday, December 18, 5:50-7:50 PM, in the classroom. We do not have a final exam. Your final project report (the last thing that you will turn in for this class) will be due on Wednesday, December 17 at 5:00 pm.
Important Information: Be sure to read the Computer Science Department Student Information Sheet. You are expected to be aware of the policies outlined there.