Postgraduate Course: Hardware, Compilers and Performance Programming (PGPH11004)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Physics and Astronomy |
College |
College of Science and Engineering |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits |
10 |
| Home subject area |
Postgraduate (School of Physics and Astronomy) |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/msc/
|
Taught in Gaelic? |
No |
| Course description |
This course teaches how performance is achieved in modern HPC systems through the application of computer science concepts. The first part of the course focuses on hardware architecture, including design of processors, memory systems and interconnects, and shows how these components are put together to form current commercial systems. The remainder of the course covers the exploitation of the hardware by compilers, including compiler architecture and a wide variety of compiler optimisation strategies. Emphasis is placed on practical aspects that are useful to the performance programmer, and the course covers techniques that can be used to measure and improve code performance on modern architectures.
The course is delivered using EPCC's dedicated training facilities and is taught using a variety of methods including formal lectures, practical exercises, programming examples and informal tutorial discussions. This enables lecture material to be supported by the tutored practical sessions in order to reinforce the key concepts. |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites |
It is RECOMMENDED that students also take
Fundamental Concepts of High Performance Computing (PGPH11014)
|
| Prohibited Combinations |
|
Other requirements |
Only postgraduates or final year MPhys students with suitable computational background, subject to space restrictions and agreement with relevant Programme Coordinator.
|
| Additional Costs |
None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 2, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
WebCT enabled: Yes |
Quota: 34 |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| King's Buildings | Lecture | | 1-11 | | 09:00 - 13:00 | | | |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course students should be able to:
- Understand how performance is achieved via hardware, compilers and operating systems.
- Appreciate the limitations of systems and recognise when these will have a serious impact.
- Interpret the observed performance of code in terms of how its execution is realised on the system.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the design of different HPC systems.
- Identify code regions appropriate for manual optimisation and propose, implement and evaluate optimisations on these regions. |
Assessment Information
100% coursework
|
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Not entered |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Not entered |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords |
HCPP |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr Judy Hardy
Tel: (0131 6)50 6716
Email: j.hardy@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Yuhua Lei
Tel: (0131 6) 517067
Email: yuhua.lei@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2011 The University of Edinburgh -
31 January 2011 8:09 am
|
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