The University of Western Ontario
London, Canada
To best utilize parallel and distributed systems (multi-core, many-core and cluster) is nowadays an essential task for computer scientists.
This course studies the fundamental aspects of parallel systems and aims at providing an integrated view of the various facets of software development on such systems: hardware architectures, programming languages and models, software development tools, software engineering concepts and design patterns, performance modeling and analysis, experimenting and measuring, application to scientific computing.
Course topics may include but are not limited to:
Part of the materials (multi-threaded programming, hierarchical memory) are shared between
this course:
CS4435/CS9624 - High Performance Computing: From Models of Computation to Applications
and previous editions of
CS 9535 and CS 4402.
Follow this link for various resources (software tools and tutorials, hardware documentation, conferences, other HPC course web sites, etc.) regarding this course and HPC in general (http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~moreno/HPC-Resources.html).
| Name: | Marc Moreno Maza |
| Office: | MC383 and MC 327 |
| Office Hours: | Tuesday 2:30-4:30 pm in MC 327 |
| Email: | moreno@csd.uwo.ca |
| Phone: | 661-2111 x3741 |
Notes of each lecture will be available on the course website, approximately one or two days after the oral presentation. There is no textbook.
The course web site is accessible from: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~moreno/CS9535-4402-1314.html
Please check the site often for updates on lecture notes and errata. Also be aware that the course website is not a substitute for actual classroom attendance!
The list of topics will be something on the order of:
CS3101 is a new course which has started in the 2012-2013 academic year. Its web site ishttp://www.csd.uwo.ca/~moreno/CS3101-1314.html This course is meant to provide the necessary theoretical background (architectures, models of computations, algorithms) to understand and practice high-performance computing.
CS3101 can be seen as an extension of other CS courses such as
Students who are taking CS4402 this 2013-2014 academic year may not have taken CS3101 in previous years since it only existed for one year. Therefore, for the 2013-2014 academic year, CS4402 is a self-contained course (as in previous years) where a sufficient subset of this theoretical background is presented.
Students who will take CS4402 in later years would be required to go thtough CS3101 first. This will allow CS4402 to cover more programming topics, in particular regarding distributed computimg and hardware acceleration technologies (GPUs, FPGAs). This change could be effective from the 2014-2015 academic year. Please ask the instructor for details.
Lectures: 3 hours (Wednesdays 10:30am - 11:20am in KB - Room 103 and Thursdays 4:30pm - 6:20pm in MC-105B.
Each student is expected to attend the lectures. In particular, quizzes (short written tests) may take place without notice in advance.
All dates are tentative and currently subject to change, although it is doubtful by any significant amount.
| Evaluation Technique | Weight | Posted Date (tentative!) | Due Date (tentative!) | Workload |
| Assignment One | 1/6 | Tu, Jan. 28 | Fr, Feb. 14 | regular |
| Assignment Two | 1/6 | We, Feb. 26 | We, Mar. 19 | regular |
| Project | 1/3 | Fr, Feb. 14 | Th, Apr. 3 | heavy |
| Quizzes | 1/9 each | N/A | various | N/A |
If for any reason the schedule given above cannot be adhered to, the assignment, project and quiz marks will be pro-rated. For instance, if an assignment has to be canceled for any reason, the remaining assignment weight will be prorated to add up to 1/3.)
Every effort will be made to have assignments, projects and quizzes marked and handed back within 3 weeks of the hand-in date, preferably sooner.
Quizzes may be held without being announced in advance.
Quizzes will be closed book.
Assignments will be due on the (tentative) dates listed above. The assignment will be sent by email to the instructor.
Extensions will be granted only by the course instructor. If you have serious medical or compassionate grounds for an extension, you should take supporting documentation to the office of the Dean of your faculty, who will contact the instructor.
A project topic is chosen by the student and approved by the instructor. Presenting in class research articles is a typical project. See the resource page for possible research articles to review and present in class. More articles can be proposed by the instructor on a particular topic of interest, upon request by the student. Each student must choose a project topic by March 14. The projects will be presented in class by the students during the last week of classes. Each presentation will consist of a 15 minute talk followed by questions for 5 to 10 minutes. A detailed project report will also be required and due by April 8.
For CS9535, there is no Assignment Two, while the Project is of much larger scale and start during the Assignment Two period. CS9535 projects must deal with current research topics (in the scope of this course's contents) and can be related to the student thesis (in fact, this is recommended). The topic of each CS9535 project must be discussed individually with the instructor during the Assignment Two period. This implies a literature review to be done by the student and presented to the instructor during a face-to-face meeting. By March 14, (preferably earlier) the objectives of each CS9535 project must be well-defined by the student and approved by the instructor. This will give the mark for Assignment Two. Projects must then be implemented and will be presented in class during the last week of classes, as for CS4402. With this definition of the CS9535 project and CS9535 Assignment Two, the mark allotment is the same as far CS4402. That is, assignments, projects and quizzes constitute 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3 of the CS9535 mark, respectively.
Each student will be given an account on the Computer Science Department senior undergraduate computing facility, GAUL. In accepting the GAUL account, a student agrees to abide by the department's Rules of Ethical Conduct
Note: After-hours access to certain Computer Science lab rooms is by student card. If a student card is lost, a replacement card will no longer open these lab rooms, and the student must bring the new card to a member of the Systems Group in Middlesex College Room 346.
This term I took both CS4402 - Parallel and Distributed Systems and CS4435 - High Performance Computing. The course material taught me concepts that I applied successfully in several other courses and have influenced every line of code I have written since. The work I did throughout both courses reinforced the importance of the theoretical groundwork established in my first three years at Western and provided concrete evidence of its use in moving the state of the art forward. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to study this material as an undergrad and I believe it has given me a competitive edge as I venture into my new career.
Part of the strength of the courses was the excellent instruction provided by Marc Moreno Maza. His balanced and challenging assignments excited me about the possibilities provided by the course materials. When I finished the first assignment in both courses I felt like I had a new insight into writing well designed code. Solving the problems provided by Prof. Moreno Maza taught me the lessons he was trying to teach but did so in a way that felt like discovery; never before had I felt so sure of the answers I submitted for such a challenging assignment.
I have had many great experiences as a student at Western, these two courses stand with the best of them. After such a great learning experience I felt compelled to write you and let you know about it. The quality of the instruction provided as well as the material presented make me proud to have been a student at Western. I don't believe I would have learned as much at any other university in Canada.
Prof. Moreno Maza is a credit to this institution and CS4402 and CS4435 should be recognized as courses that illustrate the strength of the Computer Science program at Western.
This is a graduate student from University of Delaware writing, my name is XXX. I am taking an advanced parallel programming course in my department, and I need to present the matrix transpose problem in CUDA to show the memory optimizations are done.
I found your slides for the course CS9535/4402 in which you talked about high performance computing with CUDA very detailed and did an excellent work in presenting the process, I found it even more clear than reading the NVIDIA documentation. Would you mind if I recycle some of your slides and present it in my class? Thanks a lot for the time!
CS4435 was a course that I was not aware of until the course registration period in advance of this academic year. Having taken CS4435, I can't imagine why the course was not promoted more, especially to undergraduate honors students. Looking back, I think CS4435, like CS4447 and CS3350, is among the most important courses that I've taken as an undergraduate. My understanding is that we are one of the few universities in North America that offer courses on high performance computing; what an honor!
... Prof. Moreno Maza's approach to teaching and ability to communicate both the important theoretical and practical aspects of the course topics that has had such a lasting effect on me. I am grateful that I was able to take these courses and feel more prepared for the next stages of my academic and industrial life.