Parallel and Distributed Computation (CS621, Fall 2009)

Please note that you must have an M.S. degree in CS or have taken two 500 level CS courses at the University of Kentucky before you can register for this course.

Semester: Fall, 2009.
Class: 2:00pm - 3:15pm, TR.
Classroom: Funkhouser Biological Sciences Building: Room-B13.

Instructor: Jun Zhang, E-mail:jzhang@cs.uky.edu, Tel:257-3892.
Office: 763F Anderson Hall.
Office Hours: TH: 1:00pm - 2:00pm, and by appointment.

Reference Text Books:
Introduction to Parallel Computing: Design and Analysis of Algorithms
by Vipin Kuman, Ananth Grama, Anshul Gupta, and George Karypis, 2nd Ed., 2003. (required, BOOK 1)

Using MPI: Portable Parallel Programming with the Message-Passing Interface
by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, and Anthony Skjellum, 2nd Ed., 1999. (BOOK 2)

CS621 syllabus.pdf, for Fall 2009; (subject to change)

Some rules rule.pdf, you should know before taking this course.

Here is An MPI Tutorial, describing simple MPI routines

Here is another online tutorial on Message Passing Interface (MPI);

Beginner's Guide for UK IBM Systems, a manual to explain how to use the supercomputers at the University of Kentucky.

Class Slides (Fall 2009)

Important Changes from previous teaching: We will no longer use the supercomputers at the UK Computing Center for the assignments. Students must have their own machines (PC or whatever machines) to run a version of MPI to simulate parallel and distributed computations.

Assignments (Fall 2009)

First assignment: Read through Chapter 1 of both BOOK 1 and BOOK 2.
Homework 1, assigned on 9/10, due 9/17, 2009.
Project 1, assigned on 9/24, due on October 6, 2009;
Homework 2, assigned on 9/26, due on October 3, 2006;
Project 2, assigned on 10/29, due on November 5, 2009;
Midterm Exam will be on October 12, 2006.
Project 3, assigned on November 12, due on November 24;
The following are old stuff.
Project 1, assigned on 9/7, due on September 14, 2004;
Homework 1, ps file, and pdf file, due September 28;
Project 2, ps file, and pdf file, due October 19;
Homework 2, ps file, and pdf file, due November 16;
Project 3, ps file, and pdf file, due December 2;
The 2001 Midterm Exam Problems, ps file, and pdf file.
The 1999 Midterm Exam Problems, ps file, and pdf file, and
These past exams are only provided for reference purpose. There is no guarantee that this year's midterm exam will be similar to those ones;

For some information on building PC and workstation clusters, please see Microway, Inc.

The following is the course materials that I used in previous year's teaching. It may give you an idea of what will be covered in the this course. However, there is NO GUARANTEE that this year's course content and requirements will be exactly the same as that offered in 1998.

1998 Class Materials

Parallel Computer: The supercomputer that will be used in this class for practicing parallel programming is the HP Superdome at the University of Kentucky High Performance Computing Center.

Message Passing Interface: We plan to use the emerging standard Message Passing Interface (MPI) on the Power Challenge. Although this is not a very efficient way to do parallel computing on Power Challenge, our goal is to learn programming skill with MPI. Here is the official MPI site.

Here is a description of the course. I am working on a postscript file of the course description. It is called syllabus.ps. You should also read the general policies on homework and grading, here is the downloadable rule.ps.

Class Notes

September 2; September 4; September 8; September 14; September 16; September 18;
September 21; September 23; September 25; September 28; September 30; October 5;
October 7; October 8; October 9; October 12; October 14; October 16; October 26;
October 30; November 1; November 4; November 6; November 9; November 11;
November 13; November 16; November 18; November 20; November 23; November 25;
December 2; December 4; December 7; December 9;

Supplementary Materials

Chapter 1; August 30
September 9; September 14;

Please be advised that the midterm exam is on Tuesday October 22.

Warm-Ups

Set up your HP Supercomputer Account.
If you decided to take this course, please e-mail me with information on your name and student ID number.
To know how to run MPI on the the HP supercomputer, see Project0.html.
You need to download Project0.tar. These are sample makefile and C and Fortran codes.

Homework Projects

Answers

Supercomputing Technology News

IEEE Computer Society's ParaScope, a list of parallel computing sites.
On February, 1998, IBM announced the world's first 1000 MHZ chip, three times faster than Intel's fastest chip. Don't worry about that, your parallel computers could be even faster.
In May, 1998, Los Alamos built a mail-order supercomputer and it is among the word's fastest. Take a look at the new supercomputer, named Avalon.
The TOP500 List of Supercomputer Sites .
MPI Software Technology, Inc.: a commercial MPI software company.
Beowulf Project at CESDIS.
Take a look at the Earth Simulator in Japan, the fastest supercomputer on Earth.

The World's Fastest Supercomputers

Here is a list of parallel scientific computing courses offered at several universities:

On-line study materials on parallel computing:

Designing and Building Parallel Programs by Ian Foster.

Return to Jun Zhang's:
Home page; Publication list; Research interests; Resume.

Last modified on Thursday, August 20, 2009.