CSC 2/458

Parallel and Distributed Systems

Spring 2008.

Course Schedule (evolving)

Note:  assigned reading must be completed before class.

Wed. 16 Jan.
First day of class.
Overview, intro (notes #1).
Mon. 21 Jan.
Martin Luther King, Jr. day; no classes.
Wed. 23 Jan.
More overview; the multicore revolution
To be read before class today:  article by Sutter & Larus
Mon. 28 Jan.
Review of threading fundamentals (notes #2); pthreads
To be read before class today:  PLP sections 8.6 and 12.1–12.3; and pthreads tutorial
Due by noon today (but not handed in):  first part of assignment 1
Wed. 30 Jan.
Threads and synchronization (notes #3)
To be read before class today:  MCS paper
Due by 5pm Friday:  second part of assignment 1 (hand in)
Mon. 4 Feb.
Concurrent data structures (notes #4)
To be read before class today:  Moir & Shavit
Wed. 6 Feb.
Formal aspects of concurrency
To be read before class today:  Herlihy & Shavit
Due by 5pm Friday:  third part of assignment 1 (hand in)
Mon. 11 Feb.
Concurrency & data structures, continued;
brainstorming for assignment 2
(no new reading for today)
Wed. 13 Feb.
Cache coherence protocols (notes #5)
To be read before class today:  Culler & Singh sections 5.1–5.3
Mon. 18 Feb.
Memory models
To be read before class today:  Adve and Gharachorloo
(Here’s the shorter magazine version if you prefer)
Wed. 20 Feb.
Behavior-oriented parallelization (BOP)
Prof. Scott out of town; guest lecture by Prof. Chen Ding
To be read before class today:  Ding et al.
Due by 5pm Friday:  half-page summary of Prof. Ding’s talk (email to the TA).
Due by midnight Sunday:  first part of assignment 2
Mon. 25 Feb.
MPI (lecture slides #6)
To be read before class today:  on-line tutorial from LLNL
(other resources also available from ANL)
Wed. 27 Feb.
OpenMP (notes #7)
To be read before class today:  on-line tutorial from LLNL
(other resources also available from openMP.org)
Mon. 3 Mar.
Modeling speedup (notes #8)
To be read before class today:  Gustafson, Karp & Flatt, and Crowl.
Due by class time today:  proposal for semester project or presentation (email Prof. Scott)
Wed. 5 Mar.
Intro to Transactional Memory (notes #9)
To be read as soon as possible:  Larus & Rajwar, chapter 1.
Due by 5pm Friday:  second part of assignment 2
10–14 Mar.
Spring break; no classes.
Mon. 17 Mar.
More on Transactional Memory
To be read as soon as possible:  Dalessandro et al.
Wed. 19 Mar.
More on Transactional Memory
Optional reading:  Menon et al.
Mon. 24 Mar.
Threading models
To be read before class today:  SEDA and Capriccio.
Wed. 26 Mar.
Paul Ardis— parallel clustering algorithms.
Due by 5pm Friday:  half-page summary of Paul’s talk (email to the TA).
Mon. 31 Mar.
Distribution (notes #11)
Due by noon today:  third part of assignment 2
Wed. 2 Apr.
Chen-Hsiang Feng— peer-to-peer, overlays, distributed hash tables (slides).
To be read before class today:  Lua et al.
Due by 5pm Friday:  half-page summary of Chen-Hsiang’s talk (email to the TA).
Mon. 7 Apr.
Jing Xue— large-scale cache coherence.
To be read before class today:  Sun Fireplane
Due by noon Wednesday:  half-page summary of Jing’s talk (email to the TA).
Wed. 9 Apr.
Kyle Sabo— parallel functional langauges.
To be read before class today:  Haskell wiki, sections 3, 4, 5.1–5.6, 6, and 7.
(NB:  this is an introduction to the sequential language; knowing
you have read it, Kyle will be able to focus on the parallel extensions.)
Due by 5pm Friday:  half-page summary of Kyle’s talk (email to the TA).
Mon. 14 Apr.
Luke Dalessandro— the DAPRA HPCS (High Productivity Computing Systems) langauges:  Fortress, X10, and Chapel.
To be read before class today:  X10 (section 3), Fortress,
and Chapel (section 4 and, optionally, sections 2 and 3).
Due by noon Wednesday:  half-page summary of Luke’s talk (email to the TA).
Wed. 16 Apr.
Dan Quirk— .NET parallel extensions
To be read before class today:  Background info on delegates and LINQ.
Due by 5pm Friday:  half-page summary of Dan’s talk (email to the TA).
Mon. 21 Apr.
Lei Qiao— current and future supercomputer architectures.
To be read before class today:  The TOP500 Project and Blue Gene/L.
Due by noon Wednesday:  half-page summary of Lei’s talk (email to the TA).
Wed. 23 Apr.
Brief student project presentations:
Mon. 28 Apr.
Brief student project presentations:
Wed. 30 Apr.
Final student project presentation: Brief introduction to SDSM: Software distributed shared memory (notes #12)
Due by 5pm Friday:  final papers and project write-ups.

Please don’t forget to complete your on-line course evaluation.

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Last Change:  12 January 2011 / Michael Scott's email address