CMSC 714 (Fall 2003)

Professor:

Dr. Jeff Hollingsworth
4161 AV Williams
(40) 5-2708
hollings@cs.umd.edu

Office Hours:
Tu 11:00-12:00, F 10:00-11:00

Class URL: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hollings/cs714/f03 You are expected to check the class web page on a regular basis (at least twice 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)

· Programming Models (2 weeks)

· Parallel Architectures (2 weeks)

· Debugging & Instrumentation (2 weeks)

· Scheduling (1 week)

· Performance Tools (2 weeks)

· OS Issues (2 weeks)

· Commercial Applications (2 weeks)

Required Course Text:

The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure, Foster and Kesselman, Morgan-Kaufmann 1998 (available new and used from amazon.com)

Papers from the reading list

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 reports to convey what you have learned.

Grading:

Classroom participation	10%
Programming Assignment	15%
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.