National Center for Computational Sciences

When: June 16, 2008
Where: JICS (ORNL)
Registration: Click here to register

Beginning Course

This one-day course is aimed at students with some programming experience (preferably in C or C++) and the desire to write programs for the supercomputer using MPI. In this course, I will begin with an introduction to the UNIX operating system, the vi editor, make files, and batch scripts. In the second part of the course, I will discuss concepts of parallelization, and introduce the MPI library and the six functions with which most parallel codes can be written. Finally, I will provide a project for the students to practice their new parallel programming skills. Throughout the course I keep students’ interest by combining relevant events in the history of computer science with conceptual explanations and practical computing tips.

Advanced Course

This one-day course is aimed at students with experience with Unix or Linux and some programming experience (preferably in C or C++). In the first part of the course, I will discuss concepts of parallelization, and introduce the MPI library and the six functions with which most parallel codes can be written. In the second part of the course, I will cover additional, more advanced MPI functions, and then introduce OpenMP, which is often used in conjunction with MPI to produce hybrid programs appropriate for multicore supercomputer architectures. Finally, I will provide a project for the students to practice their new parallel programming skills.

Tentative Schedules

Beginning Course

9:00-9:30 Welcome/Introduction/Plenary Speaker
9:30-10:00 UNIX/vi
10:00-10:45 Makefiles and batch scripts
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:00 Parallel programming concepts and MPI (concepts and 6 functions)
12:00-1:00 Lunch (Doug Kothe, ORNL)
1:00-2:00 Parallel programming concepts and MPI (performance evaluation)
2:00-2:45 NCCS tour
2:45-4:30 Application: programming assignment
4:30-4:45 Wrap-up and survey

Advanced Course

9:00-9:30 Welcome/Introduction/Plenary Speaker
9:30-10:45 Parallel Programming Concepts and MPI
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:00 More MPI functionality
12:00-1:00 Lunch (Doug Kothe, ORNL)
1:00-2:00 OpenMP
2:00-2:45 NCCS tour
2:45-4:30 Application: programming assignment
4:30-4:45 Wrap-up and survey

Biographies

Rebecca Hartman-Baker received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. During her tenure at UIUC, she worked with a high school physics teacher to introduce supercomputing into the classroom and developed this beginning supercomputing course for minority high school and undergraduate students in the Washington, D.C. area. She was a postdoctoral research associate in the Computational Mathematics group at ORNL before joining the Scientific Computing group at NCCS in 2007.

Arnold Tharrington received a B.S. in physics from the College of Charleston in Charleston, S.C. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on the computational study of phase transitions in atomic and molecular clusters. He did postdoctoral research in computational biophysics under the supervision of Dr. Gregory Voth at the University of Utah. At this writing, Dr. Tharrington is a key member of National Center for Computational Sciences team working to deliver a petaflop supercomputer. Specifically, he is validating the scientific applications on the supercomputer.