CPS615 Spring 2000 Computational Science
Taught Monday and Wednesday 5 pm
to 6.20 pm EST
Instructor: Geoffrey Fox
gcf@npac.syr.edu
Grader: Qiang Zheng zhengq@npac.syr.edu
Logistics: CD-ROM
A Two-volume CD-ROM set of background material prepared in early 1999
is available on request.
And can be found online
Logistics: Books
Logistics: Registration etc.
Course Organization
- Graded on the basis of approximately 8 Homework sets which will be due
Thursday of the week following day (Tuesday or Thursday given out)
- There will be one project -- which will start after message passing (MPI)
discussed
- Total grade is 70% homework, 30% project
- Languages will Fortran or C and Java -- we will do a survey early on to
clarify this
- All homework will be handled through the web and indeed all computer access
will be through the VPL or Virtual Programming Laboratory which gives access to
compilers, Java visualization etc. through the web
Material Covered in CPS615
- Status of High Performance Computing and Computation HPCC nationally
- Application driving forces - Some Case Studies
- Importance of algorithms, data and simulations
- What is Computational Science Nationally and how does it with Information
Technology
- Systems approach: Problem Solving Environments
- Technology driving forces
- Moore's law and exponentially increasing transistors
- Dominance of Commodity Implementation
- Basic Principles of High Performance Systems
- We have a good methodology but software that trails applications and
technologies
- Elementary discussion of Parallel Computing in Society and why it
must obviously work for computers!
- Overview of Sequential and Parallel Computer Architectures
- Comparison of Architecture of World Wide Web and Parallel Systems (Clusters
versus Integrated Systems)
- What Features of Applications matter
- Decomposition, Communication, Irregular, Dynamic ….
- Issues of Scaling
- What sort of software exists and Programming Paradigms
- Data parallel, Message Passing
- Three Exemplars: Partial Differential Equations (PDE), Particle
Dynamics, Matrix Problems
- Simple base version of first Example -- Laplace's Equation
- Illustrate parallel computing and lead to a
- General Discussion of Programming Models
- SPMD and Message Passing (MPI) with Fortran, C and
Java
- Data Parallel (HPF, Fortran90) languages will be
discussed later but NOT used
- Visualization is important but will not be
discussed
- Return to First Example: Computational Fluid Dynamics and other PDE
based Applications
- Return to Parallel Architectures
- Real Systems in more detail
- Trends, Petaflops
- Second Exemplar: Particle Dynamics
- Simple Example O(N2) Law -- best possible parallel performance
- Real Applications: Astrophysics and Green's functions for Earthquakes with
Fast Multipole Solvers
- Third Exemplar: Matrix Problems
- Matrix Multiplication is "too easy"
- Linear solvers are demanding but use libraries
- Sparse Solvers are most important in practice
- Advanced Software Systems
- OpenMP and Threads
- Parallel Compilers and Data Structures
- Tools -- Debuggers, Performance, Load Balancing
- Parallel I/O
- Problem Solving Environments
- Application Wrap-up: Integration of Ideas and the Future
Lectures: PowerPoint
Lectures: Web Export
All already delivered classes are available as
synchronized
audio/video/slides Leccorder presentations
Assignments
For help go to
http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/cps615spring00/assignments/hwinfo.html
For the Virtual Programming Lab, go to the
VPL