Parallel Programming and Architectures

• Weekly hours
• Competences
• Objectives
• Contents
• Activities
• Teaching methodology
• Evaluation methodology
• Bibliography
• Web links
• Previous capacities

Teachers

Person in charge

• Eduard Ayguadé Parra ( )

Weekly hours

Competences

Transversal Competences

Appropiate attitude towards work

• G8 [Avaluable] - To have motivation to be professional and to face new challenges, have a width vision of the possibilities of the career in the field of informatics engineering. To feel motivated for the quality and the continuous improvement, and behave rigorously in the professional development. Capacity to adapt oneself to organizational or technological changes. Capacity to work in situations with information shortage and/or time and/or resources restrictions.
  • G8.3 - To be motivated for the professional development, to face new challenges and the continuous improvement. To have capacity to work in situations with a lack of information.

Technical Competences of each Specialization

Computer engineering specialization

• CEC2 - To analyse and evaluate computer architectures including parallel and distributed platforms, and develop and optimize software for these platforms.
  • CEC2.1 - To analyse, evaluate, select and configure hardware platforms for the development and execution of computer applications and services.
  • CEC2.2 - To program taking into account the hardware architecture, using assembly language as well as high-level programming languages.

Technical Competences

Common technical competencies

• CT8 - To plan, conceive, deploy and manage computer projects, services and systems in every field, to lead the start-up, the continuous improvement and to value the economical and social impact.
  • CT8.7 - To control project versions and configurations.

Objectives

1. Ability to write and understand parallel programs that make use of the low-level Pthreads interface.
   Related competences: CEC2.2,
2. Ability to implement the basic functionalities in a library supporting the execution of parallel applications on a shared-memory architecture.
   Related competences: CT8.7, CEC2.2, G8.3,
3. Ability to understand the main components used to build a multiprocessor architecture, and design on paper a system that fulfill certain design restrictions.
   Related competences: CEC2.1, G8.3,
4. Ability to write simple applications using the MPI programming model, evaluate their performance and identify the critical parts that limit scalability.
   Related competences: CEC2.2, G8.3,
5. Ability to assess the quality of a proposed solution to a specific problem
   Related competences: G8.3,
6. Ability to autonomously complete or expand knowledge and to perform a specific job even though the statement is incomplete or information relevant to the implementation is missing
   Related competences: G8.3,

Contents

1. MPI: parallel programming for distributed-memory architectures
   This topic will introduce how to program parallel applications using MPI, a programming model based on message passing for distributed-memory cluster architectures.
2. Parallel programming using Pthreads
   Introduction to the basic functionalities that are offered by the Pthreads low-level support library
3. Implementation of a shared-memory programming model: threads and synchronization, work sharing and tasking model
   This topic presents how to design and implement a library supporting the execution of parallel programs in OpenMP, in particular the aspects related with thread management and synchronization, work sharing in the OpenMP worksharing constructs and the tasking model.
4. Components and design of a cluster architecture
   This topic will introduce the main components in a cluster architecture we the objective of doing a design with certain performance/power trade-offs and budget.

Activities

Activity Evaluation act

Teaching methodology

Evaluation methodology

Bibliography

Basic:

• Introduction to parallel computing - Grama, A.; Karypis, G.; Kumar, V.; Gupta, A, Pearson Education, 2003. ISBN: 0201648652
  https://discovery.upc.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991003524559706711&context=L&vid=34CSUC_UPC:VU1&lang=ca

Complementary:

• Unit 1: POSIX Threads (Pthreads) programming - Ayguadé, Eduard, Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors , 2021.
  
• Unit 2: Build (on paper) your own cluster architecture - Ayguadé, Eduard, Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors , 2021.
  
• Unit 3: MPI (Message Passing Interface) - Ayguadé, Eduard, Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors , 2021.
  
• Laboratory assignments: Lab 1 - OpenMP parallelisation of Eratosthenes Sieve - Ayguadé, Eduard, Departament d'Arquitecture de Computadors , 2023.
  
• Laboratory assignments: Lab2 - Implementing a minimal OpenMP runtime - Ayguadé, Eduard, Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors , 2021.
  
• Laboratory assignments: Lab 3 - Performance characteritzation of HPC clusters - Ayguadé, Eduard ; Àlvarez, Lluc, Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors , 2023.
  
• Laboratory assignments: Lab 4 - Heat equation using MPI - Ayguadé, Eduard ; Àlvarez, Lluc, Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors , 2023.
  

Web links

• Message Passing Interface (MPI) https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/mpi/
• POSIX Threads Programming https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/pthreads/
• OpenMP complete specifications and examples https://www.openmp.org/specifications/

Previous capacities