Programming of Parallel Computers - Methods and Tools

Aim

Parallel computers are used for heavy computations. The student should acquire knowledge about the programming of parallel computers and master selected methods and tools. The course shall also give an overview of how parallel computers can be used in some application areas, such as image analysis and scientific computations. After the course the student is expected to be able to 1) use efficient methods and languages for the programming of parallel computers, 2) program parallel computers with distributed memory (MPI) and shared memory (OpenMP).

Content

Parallel computer architecture: memory hierarchies, shared memory and distributed memory architectures. Vector instructions. Parallel execution models and programming languages. Performance measurements and enhancement. Message passing, multithreaded and dataparallel programming. Design and analysis of fundamental parallel algorithms. Time complexity. Scalability. Scheduling of parallel programs. Grid computing. Tools for parallel programming. MPI (Message passing interface) and OpenMP. Basic parallel algorithms and BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms). Application areas. Parallel solving of equation systems. The laboratory course gives practical experience in programming parallel systems (different programming paradigms are used).