Unit name | High Performance Computing (Teaching Unit) |
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Unit code | COMS30053 |
Credit points | 0 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. McIntosh-Smith |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
COMS10016 Imperative and Functional Programming and COMS10017 Object-Oriented Programming and Algorithms I or equivalent. COMS10015 Computer Architecture or equivalent. COMS20007 Programming Languages and Computation or equivalent. COMS20008 Computer Systems A and COMS20012 Computer Systems B or equivalent. COMS20010 Algorithms II or equivalent. Strong programming skills, experience with the C programming language, good knowledge of computer architecture. |
Co-requisites |
EITHER Undergraduate Year 3 must choose Assessment Unit High Performance Computing OR M-Level students must choose Assessment Unit High Performance Computing. Please note, COMS30053 is the Teaching Unit for High Performance Computing. Students can take this unit in either their third or fourth year, and must also choose the Assessment Unit for their year group. |
School/department | School of Computer Science |
Faculty | Faculty of Engineering |
The aim of this unit is to introduce and explore exciting technologies relating to high performance computing, and to offer practical hands-on use of and experience with said technologies. Students completing the unit will have learned how to develop fast, efficient applications on the very latest advanced processors, including many-core CPUs and GPUs. Students should also have had an opportunity to integrate content from other units in the programme, for example implementing high performance parallel versions of algorithms previously encountered.
Students will be exposed to the underlying trends in computer hardware that are driving development towards massive parallelism in hardware and software. They will employ widely used parallel programming languages and tools, such as OpenMP, MPI, OpenCL, debuggers and profilers, all in the context of a real supercomputer environment: the university’s multi million pound Blue Crystal cluster.
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
In addition, students taking the unit at M-level will be able to:
Teaching will be delivered through a combination of synchronous and asynchronous sessions, including lectures, practical activities and self-directed exercises.
Coursework (100%) at appropriate levels for Year 3 and M-level students.