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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2018/2019

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Physics and Astronomy : Postgraduate (School of Physics and Astronomy)

Postgraduate Course: Threaded Programming (PGPH11077)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Physics and Astronomy CollegeCollege of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryThis course is a practical introduction to parallel programming using the threading model, which is commonly used on shared memory and multicore hardware. The majority of the course is focused on teaching the use of the industry standard OpenMP API.
Course description After taking this course students should have a good practical understanding of multithreaded programming. They should be competent OpenMP programmers, and have have an appreciation of alternative APIs for multithreaded programming, and their relative merits.

The course will cover the following topics:
- Basic concepts of shared memory: threads, tasks, shared/private data, synchronisation.
- Concepts of OpenMP: parallel regions, shared/private variables, parallel loops, reductions
- OpenMP parallel regions and associated clauses
- OpenMP worksharing directives, scheduling of parallel loops
- OpenMP synchronisation: barriers, critical sections, atomics, locks.
- OpenMP tasks
- Additional features of OpenMP: nesting, orphaning, threadprivate globals, OpenMP 4.0 features
- OpenmP implementations
- Basic concepts of Posix threads, Boost/C++0x threads, Intel TBB, Java threads
- Comparison of APIs

Lectures will be followed by tutored practical sessions illustrating the key concepts. Students will have the choice of using either C or Fortran in the practical programming sessions on OpenMP.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Understand the key concepts of multithreaded programming
  2. Have a knowledge of the syntax and semantics of the OpenMP API.
  3. Be able to write a correct OpenMP program in C/C++ or Fortran.
  4. Have an appreciation of the advenced features of OpenMP
  5. Understand the key concepts of other threaded APIs.
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Additional Class Delivery Information 1x 1 hour lab per-week during Weeks 1-11.

2x 1-hour lectures per week during Weeks 1-7.
KeywordsProgramming,threads,parallel,shared memory,OpenMP,hpc
Contacts
Course organiserDr Mark Bull
Tel: (0131 6)50 6717
Email: markb@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Ben Morse
Tel: (0131 6)51 3398
Email: Ben.Morse@ed.ac.uk
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