• make (with no arguments) will produce four exectuables, sieve1, sieve2, sieve3, and sieve4, all for bassi.
• make debug should produce four exectuables, sieve1_debug, sieve2_debug, sieve3_debug, and sieve4_debug, all for bassi.
• make csu should produce four exectuables, sieve1, sieve2, sieve3, and sieve4, all for the csu machines.
• make csu_debug should produce four exectuables, sieve1_debug, sieve2_debug, sieve3_debug, and sieve4_debug, all for the csu machines.

There is already a movement that suggests that all students be taught parallel programming in the introductory courses, and tech sequential programming as a special case (see Bleloch's keynote speech at PPoPP 2009).

Patterson's keynote talk at LCPC 2006 eloquently makes that argument that we were, even then at the end of the "La-Z-Boy Programming" era (here are his slides).

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

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

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

Tentative Syllabus & Schedule

• Class meets: Tuesday, Thursday 2:00-3:15 PM in Clark A 206.
• Instructor: Sanjay Rajopadhye 340 CSB, (email: Sanjay.Rajopadhye@colostate.edu), (phone: 491-7323).
  Office Hours: Please see Sanjay's weekly schedule.
• Graduate Teaching Assistants: TBA
  Office Hours: TBA
• Textbook: Parallel Programming in C with MPI and OpenMP, Michael J. Quinn (Mc Graw Hill, 2003 ISBN 0-07-282256-2). This textbook is out of print in North America. If you are able to get it from any other source (eBay, Amazon, international, etc.) that's fine, but we're also working with the publisher to make the required chapters available to students). This will cost about $30, and can be purchased at the CSU bookstore (it's not there yet).
• Tentative Grading: Homework 45%, Labs 5%, 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.