Capita Selecta of Software Engineering
This page contains information for the academic year 2011-2012.
Organization
The Capita Selecta of Software Engineering is a collaboration between KUL, UA and VUB. You have to attend the lessons and do the assignments of all three parts. Below you can find the information about the VUB part. The other parts are here:
For questions regarding the VUB part, please contact Bruno De Fraine or Viviane Jonckers.
Abstract: Partitioned Global Address Space
Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) is a parallel programming model where large data objects are partitioned across different processors (each processor has a “local” part of the data), yet made globally available (each processor can access all of the data). As such, the PGAS model preserves most of the convenience of shared memory programming, but explicitly considers data locality, which is crucial for achieving good performance.
In the domain of high-performance computing (HPC), the PGAS model is a promising approach to program computer systems with distributed memory (e.g. a cluster of computers on a local network), or “multi-core” and “many-core” architectures where memory access is no longer uniform across different computing cores (Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) architecture).
Programming languages and libraries have integrated the PGAS model in a number of different ways. Unified Parallel C,Co-Array Fortran and Global Arrays are PGAS programming approaches that follow the SPMD (=single program, multiple data) model of parallel programming. On the other hand, X10 and Chapel implement an asynchronous PGAS model which provides a richer execution framework with a number of concepts such as task pools and asynchronous task creation.
Schedule
Please find the schedule for the VUB part here. The classes will take place on VUB campus Etterbeek. The room is in building D (map and photo).
- Monday, 24 October 2011, 15:00-19:00, room D.2.15
- Monday, 31 October 2011, 15:00-19:00, room D.2.15
Check the websites for the KUL and UA parts for the rest of the schedule.
Assignments
There are two assignments for this part of the course:
- The report is an assignment for all students (i.e. KUL, UA and VUB students) with deadline Monday, 16 January 2012, 9:00
- The project is an assignment only for the VUB students with deadline Monday, 11 June 2012, 9:00
Please submit your answers by e-mail to Bruno.De.Fraine@vub.ac.be.
Report
As inspiration, here are some examples of problems for which you could consider a parallel implementation:
- Box or Guassian blur (link)
- Discrete Fourier transform (link)
- Ray tracing with line-sphere intersection (link)
- Conway's game of life (link)
Project
Material:
- Documented example code for the conjugate gradient method cg.zip
Material
Pointers for UPC and GA:
Pointers for X10 and Chapel: