CS525: Parallel Computing
Spring 2023.

Ananth Grama, ayg@cs.purdue.edu, 765 494 6964

Office Hours: LWSWN 3-154F
W, 3:00 - 4:00 and by appointment (zoom link will be emailed).

TA: Wenbo Xie, xie401@purdue.edu
Office Hours: TBA

Course Announcements:

Important announcements relating to the course will be made here. Please look at this area of the web page periodically. Announcements will include (but are not limited to) release of assignments, erratas, and other material.

Midterm Dates

Tuesday Feb 13, 2024, 8pm - 10pm, Location: LILY G126

Tuesday Mar 19, 2024, 8pm - 10pm, Location: LILY G126

Thursday Apr 25, 2024, 8pm - 10pm, Location: LILY G126

Course Contents

CS525, Parallel Computing deals with the use of large scale computing platforms ranging from multicore processors, tightly coupled servers, message passing platforms, and virtualized cloud computing environments. The course consists of four major parts:
  • Parallel and distributed platforms: This part of the class outlines parallel computing hardware. Topics covered include processor and memory architectures, multicore, SMP, and message passing hardware, interconnection networks, and evaluation metrics for architectures. Cost models for communication are also developed.
  • Parallel Programming: Programming models and language support for programming parallel platforms is discussed. Message passing using MPI, thread-based programming using POSIX threads, and directive-based programming using OpenMP are discussed.
  • Parallel and Distributed Algorithms: Starting from design principles for parallel algorithms, this part develops parallel algorithms for a variety of problems. Various metrics for evaluating these algorithms are also discussed.
  • Applications: A variety of parallel applications from diverse domains such as data analysis, graphics and visualization, and scientific simulations are discussed.

Videos for the class (youtube links here -- they will also be available on brightspace)

Password for the youtube video links will be mailed to you.

Syllabus and Lecture Slides.

Academic Dishonesty Policy:

Please read this policy before starting as I intend on enforcing it strictly.

Grading Policy

Your grade will be determined using the following grading rubric:

Homeworks: 40%
Three Midterms: 60% (dates above -- not to be missed!)