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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2013/2014 -
- ARCHIVE as at 1 September 2013 for reference only
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Physics and Astronomy : Postgraduate (School of Physics and Astronomy)

Postgraduate Course: Performance Programming (PGPH11082)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Physics and Astronomy CollegeCollege of Science and Engineering
Course typeStandard AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) Credits10
Home subject areaPostgraduate (School of Physics and Astronomy) Other subject areaNone
Course website None Taught in Gaelic?No
Course descriptionApplication performance is one of the key requirements for HPC applications. However this is one of the
more difficult requirements to satisfy:
- Issues effecting performance often vary between different hardware and software environments.
This requires performance issues to be frequently re-visited as the hardware and software environment
changes.
- Performance programming requires detailed knowledge of the underlying environment
- The design decisions necessary to achieve good performance are often in conflict with other
desirable properties of the program.
After taking this course students should have a good practical undertanding of the general issues and
methodologies associated with designing building and refactoring codes to meet performance requirements.
In addition they will have an overview of a number of subjects that are important in the understanding of
performance on current systems.

The course will cover the following topics:
- Overview of performance programming. Methodology, the optimisation cycle.
- Designing for performance. Encapsulation as an aid to performance tuning.
- Tools for performance programming. Profilers and code instrumentation.
- Compilers and compiler optimisation.
- Memory heirarchies, Memory structures and associated optimisations.
- Performance tuning for shared memory.
- Floating point performance. Pipelines,SIMD, vectorisation.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites It is RECOMMENDED that students have passed HPC Architectures (PGPH11080)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs None
Course Delivery Information
Delivery period: 2013/14 Semester 2, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Learn enabled:  Yes Quota:  None
Web Timetable Web Timetable
Course Start Date 13/01/2014
Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 65 )
Additional Notes Please contact the School for further information
Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
No Exam Information
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course students should be able to:

- Understand the appropriate methodology when attempting to improve code performance.
- 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.
- 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
KeywordsPFP (S2)
Contacts
Course organiserDr Stephen Booth
Tel:
Email: Stephen.Booth@ed.ac.uk
Course secretary Yuhua Lei
Tel: (0131 6) 517067
Email: yuhua.lei@ed.ac.uk
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