Some Computational Science Exam questions Anwser Question 1 and at most 4 of the 5 questions in either Track I or Track II You cannot mix or match -- either choose track I OR track II The Question Common to both tracks 1: Consider the following practical computing concepts, technologies and/or systems a) JavaRMI b) MPI c) Fortran d) C++ e) World wide Collection of 100 million web Clients f) Cray T3E Parallel Computer g) A Network of 256 PC's connected via ATM h) Compiler i) Just in Time Compiler j) Interpreter Explain these concepts and define any acronyms Further we can think of 5 issues A) Performance B) Message Passing Protocols C) Parallel Computing D) Distributed Computing E) Programming Environments Use these and any other issues you think important to compare groups of the above a) to j) entities Track I: Based Mainly on CPS615 2: Give an efficient parallel algorithm that will scale to many nodes on a suitably large problem for EITHER a) Fast Fourier Transform b) Sorting for an O(NlogN) sequential algorithm c) Unbiased Random Numbers Describe the computer architecture issues (which type of machine is suitable and if good communication important) 3: Your genius has been recognized and you have been hired away from Syracuse University (this will only happen if you pass this exam) with a more less infinite salary and a budget of $500M to design and build two prototypes of the next 100 teraflop computer to be delivered to the US Department of Energy in 2004. Describe the hardware and software issues of your system design. Assume if you want that major application is weather forecasting. Describe the characteristics of system How much memory/How many nodes/Topology/Shared or Distributed Memory etc. 4: High Performance Computing Systems and technologies promise the ability to implement services of great value to society. consider the world or any region of it such as your favourite country. Explain how a parallel computing system can effectively improve the quality of life of the people. Approximately 50% of credit will be given for concept and an explanation of its importance. The other 50% of credit will be given for technical explanation of system design. Estimate size of system needed for your application. 5: Programming example Give them ~6 basic MPI calls -- ask them to write some simple code Nancy to do? 6: Derive the performance of a two dimensional parallel Jacobi algorithm on a parallel computer with a) 2D mesh interconnect b) N nodes with 1<=N<=1024 c) m by m grid in problem (take m=1024 for specificity) d) each node of machine able to perform a floating point add or multiply in TF microseconds e) Node to Node communication channels able to transmit W words in TB*W microseconds -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Track II: Based Mainly on CPS616 2: Distance education has succeeded and the Fox's Den Virtual University (FDVU) educates 100 million students per year. Central to FDVU ia a muti tier database system using JDBC and Servlets. Describe'this architecture and explain 2 3 and 4 tier systems. Explain in each case where you use Java, SQL, XML, HTML and JavaScript. Do you need any other technologies? Describe what difficulties one might encounter. 3: Your genius has been recognized and you have been hired away from Syracuse University (this will only happen if you pass this exam) with a more less infinite salary and a budget of $500M to design and build the Washington Intranet capable of running the US Government and its service to the people. Describe the hardware and software issues of your system design. You should have servers, networks and clients. Define any key object abstractions. Assume if you want that major application is servicing health care claims with use of nifty AI algorithms to detect fraud which is meant to be currently some $100 Billion per year. Describe the characteristics of system How much memory/How many nodes/Topology/Shared or Distributed Memory etc. 4: Distributed Object and Web technologies promise the ability to implement services of great value to society. consider the world or any region of it such as your favourite country. Explain how an object web system can effectively improve the quality of life of the people. Approximately 50% of credit will be given for concept and an explanation of its importance. The other 50% of credit will be given for technical explanation of system design. 5. Programming question. Nancy to invent? Should prefereably be Java and/or JavaScript 6: Consider any country that exists. State the name of this country and then design an XML representation of its government. This is a set of tags and attributes such as the the following example <senator name="Hilary Clinton" State="NY" election="00" >Only a Conjecture</senator> State the DTD for your representation. Your set of tags/attributes should be valid through multiple elections (revolutions or whatever changes government) with an election changing attribute values but not needing new tags. Give an example and explain the structure of your representation. For this question 40% of credit will be for DTD, 35% for explanation and 25% for example. Obviously you can go down to an indefinite depth in this representation. Stop when when you have spent a reasonable time on question and exercised what you know about XML. (We will judge on quality of XML and not size of bureaucracy represented)