CPS615 Spring 00 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: Books

• Peter S. Pacheco, Parallel Programming with MPI, Morgan Kaufmann, 1997. Book web page: http://fawlty.cs.usfca.edu/mpi/
• Gropp, Lusk and Skjellum, Using MPI, Second Edition 1999, MIT Press. Book web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=0262571323

Logistics: Registration etc.

• Class Email Alias cps615spring00@npac.syr.edu
• Powers that be Alias cps615adm@npac.syr.edu
• Home Page is: http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/cps615spring00
• Homework Server: http://class-server.npac.syr.edu:3768
• Please register for CPS615 at the student course records database at https://students.npac.syr.edu:5557/student.html
• See instructions athttp://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/cps615spring00/Reg_Grad615.html

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
  • Grid Generation
• 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

• Computational Science Introduction

Lectures: Web Export

• Computational Science Introduction