Hardware, Compilers and Performance Programming (P00343)

? Credit Points : 10 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : PHY-P-HPCHCPP

This course teaches how performance is achieved in modern HPC systems through the application of computer science concepts. The first part of the course focuses on hardware architecture, including design of processors, memory systems and interconnects, and shows how these components are put together to form current commercial systems. The remainder of the course covers the exploitation of the hardware by compilers, including compiler architecture and a wide variety of compiler optimisation strategies. Emphasis is placed on practical aspects that are useful to the performance programmer, and the course covers techniques that can be used to measure and improve code performance on modern architectures.

The course is delivered using EPCC's dedicated training facilities and is taught using a variety of methods including formal lectures, practical exercises, programming examples and informal tutorial discussions. This enables lecture material to be supported by the tutored practical sessions in order to reinforce the key concepts.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : Only postgraduates or final year MPhys students with suitable computational background, subject to space restrictions and agreement with relevant Programme Coordinator.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Postgraduate (School of Physics), (School of Physics, Schedule Q)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Tuesday	09:00	13:00	KB

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

On completion of this course students should be able to:

- Understand how performance is achieved via hardware, compilers and operating systems.
- Appreciate the limitations of systems and recognise when these will have a serious impact.
- Interpret the observed performance of code in terms of how its execution is realised on the system.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the design of different HPC systems.
- Identify code regions appropriate for manual optimisation and propose, implement and evaluate optimisations on these regions.