Postgraduate Course: Parallel Programming Languages and Systems (Level 11) (INFR11023)
Course Outline
| School | School of Informatics |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 10 |
| Home subject area | Informatics |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/ppls |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | The module familiarises students with the issues involved in designing, implementing and applying parallel programming systems. Initial motivation will be provided by consideration of a number of typical high performance applications and parallel architectures. This will highlight the role of parallel software systems as a means of bridging the gap between these and allow abstraction of the issues which must be addressed by any such system (partitioning, communication, agglomeration, scheduling). It will explore the ways in which these challenges have been addressed by a range of systems, including both de facto standards and more adventurous research projects. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | Students MUST NOT also be taking
Parallel Programming Languages and Systems (Level 10) (INFR10015)
|
Other requirements | This course is open to all Informatics students including those on joint degrees. For external students where this course is not listed in your DPT, please seek special permission from the course organiser.
Students must also be competent programmers in C, C++ or Java and have an appreciation of the connection between log_2 and 2^. |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2014/15 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Learn enabled: No |
Quota: None |
|
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
12/01/2015 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
76 )
|
| Additional Notes |
|
| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
80 %,
Coursework
20 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours & Minutes |
|
| Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | Parallel Programming Languages and Systems | 2:00 | |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
1 - Describe generic issues (as discussed in the syllabus) which must be addressed by any parallel programming system.
2 - Explain, given a description of a previously unseen parallel application, where specific instances of the generic issues will arise.
3 - Explain, in considerable detail, the ways in which the generic issues are addressed by the MPI and Pthreads programming models and their supporting infrastructure.
4 - Apply their practical experience with MPI and Pthreads to write clean, adaptable and scalable parallel programs for simple applications.
5 - Compare the approaches proposed by a range of more speculative programming models. |
Assessment Information
Written Examination 80
Assessed Assignments 20
Oral Presentations 0
Assessment will be by a combination of
* Short programming exercises, designed to familiarize students with the practicalities of parallel programming.
* pencil-and-paper exercises |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
* Introduction. Conceptual and architectural models of parallelism. Parallel algorithmic paradigms and simple parallel algorithms.Iterative, recursive pipeline and bag-of-task parallelism.
* Generic issues in shared variable programming. Mutual exclusion, condition synchronization. Locks, barriers semaphores and monitors, use and implementation.
* Realisation in Pthreads and Java.
* Issues in message passing programming. Channels and synchronization models.
* Realisation in MPI: communicators, simple and collective operations
* Selected case studies highlighting alternative approaches, for example,
o Associative models. Linda, tuple space and related primitives.
o Threading Building Blocks.
Relevant QAA Computing Curriculum Sections: Concurrency and Parallelism |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
* G.R. Andrews, Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel and Distributed Programming, 2000.
* B. Wilkinson, M.Allen, 'Parallel Programming, Techniques and Applications', 1999.
* I Foster, 'Designing and Building Parallel Programs', 1995.
* M.J.Quinn, 'Parallel Programming in C with MPI and OpenMP', 2004.
* Selected research papers. |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Lectures 20
Tutorials 0
Timetabled Laboratories 0
Non-timetabled assessed assignments 20
Private Study/Other 60
Total 100 |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Iain Murray
Tel: (0131 6)51 9078
Email: |
Course secretary | Ms Katey Lee
Tel: (0131 6)50 2701
Email: |
|
© Copyright 2014 The University of Edinburgh - 13 February 2014 1:37 pm
|
University Homepage