Postgraduate Course: HPC Architectures (PGPH11080)
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 |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | After taking this course students should have a good understanding (from the practioner's perspective) of the way HPC systems are designed and how this affects both the way they are programmed and the performance of applications.
The course will cover the following topics:
- Basic components of HPC systems: processors, memory, interconnect, storage.
- Classification of architectures: SIMD/MIMD, shared vs distributed memory, clusters
- System software: OSs, processes, threads, scheduling, batch systems.
- Brief history of HPC systems, including Moore &©s Law.
- CPU design: functional units, instructions sets, pipelining, branch predicition, ILP (superscalar, VLIW, SIMD instructions), multithreading.
- Caches: operation and design features
- Memory: operation and design features, including cache coherency and consistency
- Multicore CPUs, including cache and memory hierarchy
- GPGPUs: operation and design features
- Interconnects: operation and design features
- Current HPC architectures
Lectures will be followed by tutored practical sessions illustrating the key concepts.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2013/14 Semester 1, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Learn enabled: Yes |
Quota: None |
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
16/09/2013 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 22,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
63 )
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| Additional Notes |
Please contact the School for further information
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| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
100 %,
Coursework
0 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours:Minutes |
|
|
| Main Exam Diet S1 (December) | | 2:00 | | |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course students should be able to:
- Understand the key components of HPC architectures
- Understand the basic principles of operation of these components
- Appreciate the main design choices and trade-offs in HPC architecture.
- Understand how the components are put together to form complete systems
- Understand how HPC system software is used to manage the hardware.
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Assessment Information
| 100% examination consisting of a two hour exam |
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 | HA (S1) |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr William Jackson
Tel:
Email: Adrian.Jackson@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Yuhua Lei
Tel: (0131 6) 517067
Email: yuhua.lei@ed.ac.uk |
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