CIS5930

CIS5930: PARALLEL and DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

Spring 2009

Meeting time Tuesday, Thursday, 5:15pm-6:30pm

Meeting location 103 Lov Building

Instructor Prof. Xin Yuan, 168 Love Building, 644-9133, xyuan@cs.fsu.edu

Office hours Tuesday/Thursday 2:00pm-4:00pm, or by appointment.

Textbook There is no required textbook

Reference books

D. E. Culler and J. P. Singh, "Parallel Computer Architecture, A Hardware/Software Approach," Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
A.S. Tanenbaum and M. Van Steen, "Distributed Systems Principles and Paradigms," Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.

Class Home Page http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~xyuan/cis5930/index.html

Course description and objectives

Both parallel and distributed systems (PDS) can be defined as a collection of processing elements that communicate and cooperate to solve problems. This course focuses on the principles of PDS and their implementation and performance issues. We will examine various systems issues including parallel machine architectures, parallel programming models, performance monitoring and optimization techniques, and the interaction of the compiler, run-time, and machine architecture. The topics include the following.

Parallel architectures:
- Shared memory architectures
  - Symmetrical Multi-Processor (SMP) architecture
  - Homogeneous multi-core architecture (Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Barcelona)
  - Heterogeneous multi-core architecture (IBM Cell)
  - Many-core architecture
- Distributed memory architecture
  - Clusters of workstations/servers (draco.cs.fsu.edu)
  - Massively Parallel Processing architecture (IBM Blue Gene)
  - Grid computers
- Communication hardware and Interconnection networks (InfiniBand)
Parallel system models (PRAM, LogP, etc) and Parallel algorithm development basics
Parallel Programming models
- Thread programming
- OpenMP
- MPI
- Other emerging/fading programming models (UPC, Cilk, etc)
Performance monitoring and optimization techniques
Compilation techniques for parallel architectures
Communication library implementation and communication optimization techniques
Software/Hardware fault tolerance techniques

The objective is to cover important aspects of parallel and distributed systems, to expose students to contemporary PDS technologies, and to study the trend of technology advances in PDS. After this course, the students are expected to:

Understand general concepts in parallel and distributed systems such as cache coherence and transactional memory.
Explain the important issues in architectures, programming models, operating systems, and libraries and compilers for parallel systems.

Prerequisite

You must have completed COP 4610 Operating Systems (or equivalent)
There are overlaps between this course and CDA5155 (Computer Architecture), CEN5515 (Data and Computer Communications), and COP5611 (Operating systems).

Grading
Students are expected to participate in class discussions, read research papers, and write short critics. Homework will be assigned occasionally. Each student will give one 30-minute presentation for a paper/report/white paper assigned by the instructor. Groups of two/three students will be formed to do the group course project and one programming project. At the end of the semester, each group will submit a course project report and make a 30-minite project presentation. There will be a take home final exam. The grade points are distributed as follows:

10% - classroom participation
10% - presentation
20% - homeworks, paper critics, group programming assignment
40% - course project (group)
20% - final exam (take home, open everything, no discussion)

Final letter grade will be assigned based on the relative performance. Like a typical graduate class, it is expected that at least half of the class will receive A or A- grades.

Course policies

Attendance: The university requires attendance in all classes. Absences may be excused with appropriate documentation. Excused absences include documented illness, deaths in the immediate family and other documented crises, call to active military duty or jury duty, religious holy days, and official University activities. Accommodations for these excused absences will be made and will do so in a way that does not penalize students who have a valid excuse. Consideration will also be given to students whose dependent children experience serious illness.

Incomplete grade: An incomplete grade will be assigned only under the following exceptional circumstances:

If you miss the final exam with an accepted excuse, you must make up the exam during the first two weeks of the following semester.
Due to extraordinary circumstances, with appropriate documentation, the student can make up the missed portion, which must be no more than 25% of the course, prior to the end of the next semester.

Honor code: The Florida State University Academic Honor Policy outlines the University¢s expectations for the integrity of students¢ academic work, the procedures for resolving alleged violations of those expectations, and the rights and responsibilities of students and faculty members throughout the process. Students are responsible for reading the Academic Honor Policy and for living up to their pledge to be honest and truthful and strive for personal and institutional integrity at Florida State University. (Florida State University Academic Honor Policy, found at http://dof.fsu.edu/honorpolicy.htm.) Under the university honor code policy, for level 1 agreement between the instructor and the students who violate the honor code, the penalty for the first violation is a zero for the particular exam/quiz/project AND one letter grade deduction for the course (e.g. B --> C). The second violation will be resolved through the Office of the Dean and the Faculties.

ADA: Students with disabilities needing academic accommodations should: (1) register with and provide documentation to the Student Disability Resource Center, and (2) bring a letter to the instructor indicating the need for accommodations within the first week of class. This syllabus and other class materials are available in alternative formats on request.

For more information about services available to FSU students with disabilities, contact: Student Disability Resource Center
874 TraditionsWay
108 Student Services Building
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4167
(850) 644-9566 (voice)
(850) 644-8504 (TDD)
sdrc@admin.fsu.edu
http://www.disabilitycenter.fsu.edu/