CENG 471 Parallel Computing
Fall 2009

Most recent announcement: Feb08

Announcements

Watch this space for the latest updates (If the characters do not show properly, please try viewing this page with Unicode (UTF-8) encoding). Last updated:

February 8, 2010 14:31 Term projects are accesible.

December 29, 2009 16:07 The lecture notes and lab. studies for fourteenth is published, see Course Schedule section.

December 22, 2009 15:11 The lecture notes and lab. studies for thirteenth week is published, see Course Schedule section.

December 15, 2009 15:45 Project topics: (There will be presentations at January 5, 2009 during lecture hour).

1. Yılmaz Atalar - Travelling Salesman Problem & An Application of Travelling Salesman Problem

2. Erdal Erdal - Grid Computing & An Application of Travelling Salesman Problem

3. Necip Çeber- Message Passing in Java & Some Examples of Java Programming in Parallel

4. Ahmet Artu Yıldırım - Parallel GPU Programming with NVIDIA Cuda & Parallel Apriori Algorithm using MPI

Please visit the previous years' class pages for other possible titles or you pick one by yourself and submit to my approval.

December 15, 2009 15:44 The lecture notes and lab. studies for twelfth week is published, see Course Schedule section.

December 8, 2009 15:37 Project topics:

December 8, 2009 15:31 The lecture notes and lab. studies for eleventh week is published, see Course Schedule section.

December 1, 2009 15:38 The lecture notes and lab. studies for tenth week is published, see Course Schedule section.

November 24, 2009 15:52 The lecture notes and lab. studies for nineth week is published, see Course Schedule section. It is time to decide for your term projects both for conceptual and coding. Please send me an E-mail concerning your title.

November 17, 2009 16:36 The lecture notes and lab. studies for eight week is published, see Course Schedule section.

November 3, 2009 14:08The lecture notes and lab. studies for sixth week is published, see Course Schedule section.

October 27, 2009 14:53 There will be lecture today. But, we have lab. session during lecture hour, see Course Schedule section.

October 20, 2009 16:02The lecture notes and lab. studies for fourth week is published, see Course Schedule section.

October 13, 2009 12:00 The lab. studies for third week is published, see Course Schedule section.

February 8, 2010 14:37 All the example c-files (for lecturing and hands-on sessions) will be accessible via the link.

October 6, 2009 12:46 The lecture notes and lab. studies for second week is published, see Course Schedule section.

October 4, 2009 23:29 THIS WEB PAGE IS FINALLY AVAILABLE. In the first lecture, there will be first meeting. The lecture notes for the second week are published, see Course Schedule section. Lab. Studies will be published soon.

Overview

This course provides an introduction to parallel and distributed computing and practical experiences in writing parallel programs on a cluster of computers. You will learn about the following topics:

• Parallel Computers

• Message Passing Computing

• Embarrassingly Parallel Computations

• Partitioning and Divide-and-Conquer Strategies

• Pipelined Computations

• Synchronous Computations

• Load Balancing

• Programming with Shared Memory

Topics might be classified into two main parts as;

• Parallel computers: architectural types, shared memory, message passing, interconnection networks, potential for increased speed.

• Basic techniques: embarrassingly parallel computations, partitioning and divide and conquer, pipelined computations, synchronous computations, load balancing, shared memory programming.

Lecture Information

There is one group for lecturing. You will be expected to do significant programming assignments, as well as run programs we supply and analyze the output. Since we will program in C on a UNIX environment, some experience using C on UNIX will be important. We will provide tutorials for basic C on UNIX during the first few class periods.

In lab sessions, we will concentrate upon the message-passing method of parallel computing and use the standard parallel computing environment called MPI (Message Passing Interface). Thread-based programming will also be outlined, and the distributed shared memory (DSM) approach (If we have enough time). Each student will complete a project based on parallel computing for the laboratory study.

Also, each student will complete a project based on parallel computing, (distributed computing, cluster computing) for the midterm exam.

Important announcements will be posted to the Announcements section of this web page above, so please check this page frequently. You are responsible for all such announcements, as well as announcements made in lecture.

Course Outline

• Contents

• List of Tables

• List of Figures

• MPI Hands-On - Performance Analysis

  • Analysis of Parallel Summation with Point-to-Point Communications

• Introduction

  • Four Decades of Computing

  • Flynn's Taxonomy of Computer Architecture

  • SIMD Architecture

  • MIMD Architecture

    • Shared Memory Organization

    • Message Passing Organization

  • MPI Hands-On - Introduction to MPI

    • Parallel Computing

    • Types of parallel computing

    • Communicating with other processes

    • Hardware models

    • What is MPI?

    • MPI Implementations

    • Is MPI Large or Small?

    • Where to use MPI?

    • How To Use MPI? Essential!!

    • Getting started

      • Writing MPI programs

      • Compiling and Running MPI Programs

      • Exercise - Getting Started

  • MPI Hands-On - Sending and Receiving messages

    • Current Message-Passing

    • The Buffer

    • MPI Basic Send/Receive

    • Exercises/Examples

• Performance Analysis

  • Computational Models

    • Equal Duration Model

    • Parallel Computation with Serial Sections Model

  • Skeptic Postulates For Parallel Architectures

    • Grosch's Law

    • Amdahl's Law

    • Gustafson-Barsis's Law

  • MPI Hands-On; Examples

  • MPI Hands-On; Examples & Exercise

• Programming Using the Message-Passing Paradigm

  • Principles of Message-Passing Programming

    • Structure of Message-Passing Programs

  • The Building Blocks: Send and Receive Operations

    • Blocking Message Passing Operations

    • Non-Blocking Message Passing Operations

  • MPI Hands-On; Examples - Calculating pi number

  • MPI: the Message Passing Interface

    • Starting and Terminating the MPI Library

    • Communicators

    • Getting Information

    • Sending and Receiving Messages

      • Avoiding Deadlocks

      • Sending and Receiving Messages Simultaneously

  • MPI Hands-On; Examples & Exercise

  • Overlapping Communication with Computation

    • Non-Blocking Communication Operations

  • Collective Communication and Computation Operations

    • Reduction

    • Gather

    • Scatter

    • All-to-All

  • Groups and Communicators

  • MPI Hands-On; Collective Communications I

• Programming Shared Memory

  • Threads Model

  • What is a Thread?

  • Why Threads?

  • Thread Basics: Creation and Termination

  • MPI Hands-On; Collective Communications II

  • Synchronization Primitives in Pthreads

    • Mutual Exclusion for Shared Variables

    • Condition Variables for Synchronization

  • Hands-on; Shared Memory I; Threads

  • Controlling Thread Attributes and Synchronization

    • Attributes Objects for Threads

    • Composite Synchronization Constructs

    • Tips for Designing Asynchronous Programs

  • OpenMP: a Standard for Directive Based Parallel Programming

    • The OpenMP Programming Model

  • Hands-on; Shared Memory II; Syncronization Primitives

• Network Computing

  • Computer Networks Basics

    • Network Performance

    • Internet

    • Other Network Technologies

  • Client/Server Systems

    • Sockets

    • Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

    • Middleware

    • A Client Server Framework for Parallel Applications

  • Hands-on; Shared Memory III; MPI with Pthread, OpenMP

  • Clusters

    • Threads

  • Cluster Examples

    • Berkeley Network of Workstations (NOW)

    • The Beowulf Cluster

    • FlashMob I

  • Interconnection Networks

    • Ethernet

    • Switches

    • Myrinet Clos Network

    • The Quadrics Network

  • Grid Computing

  • Hands-on; Miscellaneous

• References:

• vita

• About this document ...

Text Book

Required

Recommended

• Parallel Programming: Techniques and Application Using Networked Workstations and Parallel Computers, 2^nd edition, by B. Wilkinson and M. Allen, Prentice Hall Inc., 2005, ISBN 0-13-140563-2.

• Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux, 2nd edition, edited by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, Thomas Sterling, MIT Press, 2003, ISBN 0-262-69292-9.

• Beowulf Cluster Computing with Windows, Thomas Sterling , MIT Press, 2001, ISBN 0-262-69275-9.

• Using MPI , Portable Parallel Programming with the Message Passing Interface, William Gropp, Ewing Lusk and Anthony Skjellum, The MIT Press, 1999, ISBN 0-262-57132-3.

• Using MPI-2, Advanced Features of the Message Passing Interface, William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, Rajeev Thakur, The MIT Press, 1999, ISBN 0-262-57133-1.

• MPI: The Complete Reference (Vol. 1) - The MPI Core, Marc Snir, Steve Otto, Steven Huss-Lederman, David Walker and Jack Dongarra, The MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-69215-5.

• MPI: The Complete Reference (Vol. 2) - The MPI-2 Extensions, William Gropp, Steven Huss-Lederman, Andrew Lumsdaine, Ewing Lusk, Bill Nitzberg, William Saphir and Marc Snir, The MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-57123-4.

• In Search of Clusters: The ongoing battle in lowly parallel computing, Second Edition, by Gregory F. Pfister, Prentice Hall Publishing Company, 1998, ISBN: 0-13-899709-8.

• How to Build a Beowulf – A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters, by Thomas Sterling, John Salmon, Donald J. Becker and Daniel F. Savarese, MIT Press, 1999, ISBN 0-262-69218-X.

• PVM: Parallel Virtual Machine, A Users' Guide and Tutorial for Network Parallel Computing, Al Geist, Adam Beguelin, Jack Dongarra, Weicheng Jiang, Robert Manchek and Vaidyalingam S. Sunderam, MIT Press, 1994, ISBN 0-262-57108-0.

This texts are only recommended rather than required. This books are useful for reference, for an alternative point of view.

Online References

Some materials are given. Please inform me about the usefullness of the materials. Check this place for updates.

The following references are available online

• Take a look at the TOP500 list

• MPI: The Complete Reference

• Message Passing Interface Forum

• MPICH Home Page

• MPI Man pages (Web format)

• ANSI C for Programmers on UNIX Systems

• Greg Wilson's Parallel Computing Timeline (1955 to 1993)

• I. Foster. Designing and Building Parallel Programs, Addison-Wesley, 1995 available on-line

• Glossary of Terms

Grading Criteria

• There will be a final exam: 40%

• Term Project as Midterm exam: 25%

• Term Project as Lab. exam: 25%

• Attendance is REQUIRED and constitutes part of your course grade; 10%.

Policies

• Attendance is COMPULSORY, and you are responsible for everything said in class.

• I encourage you to ask questions in class. You are supposed to ask questions. Don't guess, ask a question!

• You may discuss homework problems with classmates (although it is not to your advantage to do so).

• You can use ideas from the literature (with proper citation).

• You can use anything from the textbook/notes.

• The code you submit must be written completely by you.

Course Schedule

The following schedule is tentative; it may be updated later in the semester, so check back here frequently.