CS 6404

Advanced Topics in Mathematical Software:

Software for High Performance Scientific Computing

Spring 1996

What's New:

• Group project summaries.

Miscellany:

• Original course announcement.
• A list of useful links.
• A start on a list of useful references.
• Group project guidelines.
• Group project summaries.

Handouts:

• Syllabus (postscript version).

Lecture Notes:

1. Section I: Primer on High Performance Computing (postscript version).
2. Section II: Programming Languages and Language Extensions.
3. Section III: Programming and Problem Solving Environments.

Reading Assignments:

1. Two recent reports co-authored by Geoffery Fox:
   • "Basic issues and current status of parallel computing---1995," G. Fox, NPAC Report SCCS-736, 1995. Available in postscript (warning: this thing is big---about 5 Mb compressed) or html.

   • "Characteristics of HPC scientific and engineering applications," G. Fox, K. Hawick, and A. White, NPAC Report SCCS-741, 1995. Available in postscript or html.

   Hardcopies of these reports are also available at the Reserve Desk in the Library.

2. A recent paper by Ian Foster, "Task Parallelism and High Performance Languages". You can view a postscript copy of this report or look at a hardcopy on reserve at the library. This paper also appeared in IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology, 2(1994), pp 27-36.

   If you want more information about the Fortran M language, which encorporates the ideas of this paper, you can look here.

3. Another report co-authored by Geoffery Fox, "The use of National Information Infrastructure and High Performance Computers in Industry." There is an HTML version available here, a postscript copy here, and a hardcopy on reserve. There are some discussion questions available for this paper as well.

4. ``Visual programming and debugging for parallel computing,'' J. C. Browne, S. I. Hyder, J. Dongarra, K. Moore, and P. Newton. IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology (3:1, Spring 1995, pp 75-83). A postscript copy of (basically) the same paper is also available here.

   For more information on the systems described in this paper, visit the CODE homepage and the HENCE ftp site.

5. ``Designing the future of collaborative science: Argonne's Futures Laboratory,'' T. L Disz, R. Evar, M. W. Henderson, W. Nickless, R. Olson, M. E. Papka, and R. Stevans. IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology (3:2, Summer 1995, pp 14-21).

   No electronic copy of this paper is available; but if you want to know more about the work discussed here, visit the Futures Lab at Argonne National Lab.

   Here are some discussion questions to help focus your reading.