Rough/tentative Schedule for CPT S 411: An Introduction to Parallel Computing (Fall 2020)

*  Look for updates through the course of the semester.
** Empty rows doesn't mean anything - i.e., don't interpret them as no class days. Class will be held on those days.

The following schedule is only tentative and is subject to change as the course progresses. So please keep a tab.

Week Day Date Topic
1 Tu 8/25 Course Overview
Th   Fundamentals of parallel computing
Reading: Basic Concepts chapter (lecture notes), Gustafson's paper
2 Tu 9/1 Models of parallel computing
Reading: Parallel architectures (Pacheco book slides)
Th   Introduction to MPI programming
Reading: MPI Programming (Pacheco book slides)
3 Tu 9/8 MPI communication primitives, Hockney model;
MPI point-to-point communication primitives (blocking vs. nonblocking)

Reading: Lecture notes chapter on Communication Patterns and MPI Primitives 
MPI Programming (Pacheco book slides)
Th   Analyzing a parallel algorithm's performance
4 Tu 9/15 Parallel runtime, speedup, work, efficiency
Th   Parallel Reduction;
MPI collective calls (Broadcast, reduce, gather, scatter, all-to-all)
5 Tu 9/22 **class will be held until 12:45pm**
Th   **class will be held until 12:45pm**
6 Tu 9/29
 Network inter-connect - measures and topologies
Th    Data distribution schemes
7 Tu 10/6 No class - Instructor "out" on a conference 
Th   Matrix algorithms: MxV, MxM (Cannon's algo)
Reading: Lecture notes chapter on matrix computations
8 Tu 10/13 No class - Instructor "out" on a conference
Th    Parallel prefix introduction
9 Tu 10/20 Parallel Random Number Generation
Th    
10 Tu 10/27 Parallel Sorting
Reading: Lecture notes chapter on parallel sorting
Th  
11 Tu 11/3
Th   OpenMP multithreading
12 Tu 11/10 Overview of the White Paper project
Th  

13 Tu 11/17 Midterm test review week
Th  
  Tu 11/24 Thanksgiving week (no class)
Th  
14 Tu 12/1 Midterm Exam given as a take-home exam via Blackboard (48 hours)
Th   Exam submissions due on Blackboard
15 Tu 12/8 Course review
Th  
  Tu 12/15 Final White Paper due by Wednesday (December 16, 2020) @ 11:59PM PDT. 
Th