Software Support for Multicore Architectures

CISC 879 - Software Support for Multicore Architectures

Professor	John Cavazos
Class Time	TR, 3:30pm-4:45pm
Room Number	Smith Hall 102A
Office Hours	TR, 11am-12pm
Held in	Smith Hall 326 (SMART Lab)
Course Number	CISC 879

For two decades, software developers enjoyed an increase in application performance due to a doubling of transistors in processers about every 2 years, in accordance with Moore's Law. Much of this performance gain resulted from increasing clock speeds. However, due to temperature concerns, this is no longer possible. The industry now agree that the future of architecture designs lies in multicores, i.e., processors with simpler cores running at lower frequencies. As a consequence, all computer systems today, from embedded devices to high-end servers, are being built with multicore processors. Thus software developers can no longer sit idly by ("the La-Z Boy Era") and wait for application performance to improve. In fact, application performance is likely to degrade given future generations of multicores with ever more simple cores.

Although researchers in industry and academia are exploring many different multicore hardware design choices, most agree that software for execution on multicore processors is the major unsolved problem. Unlike earlier generations of hardware evolution, this shift will have a major impact on how software is designed and developed. Developers will have to learn how to properly design their applications to utilize multicore parallelism. Opportunities to address the problem span multiple levels of the software stack. This course will focus on the entire spectrum of the software stack as it applies to multicore architectures, including libraries, tools, programming languages, compilers, runtime systems, operating systems, and hypervisors.

The first part of the course will consist of discussions about current multicore architecutures and parallel programming models. The second part of the course will involve discussing several research papers (chosen by students) pertaining to multicores. Each student will be asked to present one or two papers to the class. The third and last part of the course will consist of presentations by students of programming projects. Students will have a variety of multicore architectures available for their class projects, including Sony PlayStation 3s (containing Cell processors) and Intel Quad-core systems accelerated with GPUs.

Lecture (Tenative Outline)	Slides	Scribed notes	Papers / Resources / Notes
2/12 The Multicore Revolution	Slides (PPT)	No Scribe Today.	Read this paper or watch the Single-Threaded vs. Multi-Threaded video.
2/14 A General Discussion on Parallelism	Slides (PPT)	No Scribe Today.	Read Chaps. 1-3 and 5-7 from this paper.
2/19 Laws, Equality, and the Cell	Slides (PPT)	Varun NotiBala/Sameer Kulkarni Notes (PDF)	Read Chaps. 1-3 from this paper and all of this paper.
2/20 Recommended Talk : Margaret Martonosi	(Talk Abstract)		Computer Arch. Princeton Prof.
2/21 Nvidia CUDA Programming Basics	Slides (PPT)	Pujan Kafle/Scott Grauer-Gray Notes (PDF)
2/26 Patterns for Parallel Programming I	Slides (PPT)	John Tully Notes (PDF)	Read this paper.
2/26 Recommended Talk : Writing Successful Papers	(Talk Description)
2/28 Patterns for Parallel Programming II	Slides (PPT)	Karthik Ravindra Notes (PDF)
3/4 Open MP Programming	Slides (PDF)	Navreet Virk Notes (PDF)
3/5 Recommended Talk : Ewing ("Rusty") Lusk	(Talk Abstract)		Leads MPI standardization.
3/6 How to Read, Critique, Write, and Present a Paper	Slides (PPT)	Geoffrey Gerfin Notes (PDF)
3/11 Cell Programming Details	Slides (PPT)	Brice Dobry Notes (PDF)
3/13 Student Paper Presentations Patterns for Parallel Programming III	Brice Dobry (PDF) Patterns III (PPT)	Dimitrij Krepis Notes (PDF)	Paper Presented By: Brice
3/18 Student Paper Presentations	Geoffrey Gerfin(PDF) John Tully(PDF)	Bryan Samuel Youse Notes (PDF)	Geoffrey John
3/20 Student Paper Presentations	Scott Grauer-Gray (PDF) Sameer Kulkarni (PDF)	Deephan Mohan Notes (PDF)	Scott Sameer
3/25 Student Paper Presentations	Bryan Youse (PDF) Dimitrij Krepis (PDF)	Ying Yu Notes (PDF)	Bryan Dimitrij
3/27 Student Paper Presentations	Kishen Maloor (PDF) Ying Yu (PDF)	Yuanyuan Ding Notes (PDF)	Kishen Ying
4/1 - 4/3 Spring Break
4/8 Student Paper Presentations	Pujan Kafle (PDF) Deephan Mohan (PDF)	Kanik Sem Notes (PDF)	Pujan Deephan
4/10 Student Paper Presentations	Xuan Yu (PDF) Yuanyuan Ding (PDF)	Keyur Malaviya Notes (PDF)	Xuan Yuanyuan
4/15 Student Paper Presentations	Chris Adamopoulos (PDF)	Tom St. John Notes (PDF)	Chris
4/17 Recommended Project Plan Student Paper Presentations	Project Plan (PDF) Thomas St. John (PDF) Navreet Virk (PDF)	Kishen Maloor	Thomas Navreet
4/22 Student Paper Presentations	Samuel Moelius (PDF) Anil Nair (PDF)	Deepthi Andi Notes (PDF)	Samuel Anil
4/24 Student Paper Presentations	Keyur Malaviya (PDF) Varun NotiBala (PDF)	Chris Adamopoulos	Keyur Varun
4/29 Student Paper Presentations	Kanik Sem (PDF) Karthik Ravindra (PDF)	Xuan Yu Notes (PDF)	Kanik Karthik
5/1 Student Paper Presentations	Deepthi Andi (PDF)	Anil Nair Notes (PDF)	Deepthi
5/6 Student Paper Presentations	Andew Russo()	Kishen Maloor	Andrew
5/6 Cyclops 64 Presentation Lecture: The Chapel Language	Cyclops 64 Hardware(PDF) Cyclops 64 Software(PDF) Chapel Slides (PDF)	Pujan Kafle Notes (PDF)	Read this paper.
5/13 Project Reports Scott G., Deepthi A.,Varun N.,Sameer K. Xuan Y.,Yuanyuan D.		Andrew Russo
5/15 Project Reports Tom St J.,Ying Y., Geoff G.,John T. Bryan Y.,Karthik R., Chris A.,Dimitrij K.
5/20 Project Reports Brice D.,Andrew R., Kanik S.,Keyur M. Kisen M.,Navreet V.,Anil N. Deephan M./Pujan K.
Projects Most of your grade will come from two projects which will total 60% of your grade. Both projects are mandatory. Each student is encouraged to form or find a group. We are aiming for groups of 2 to 4 developers. Plan on checkpointing your project with the instructor (showing your progress) at various stages during your project. You must checkpoint at least once for the first project and at least twice for the second part of the project. These checkpoints will be part of your grade. You are not required to stay with the same group for both projects. Check the syllabus for more details. Complete project descriptions are now available.
Class Resources: Papers To Choose From For Student Presentations Template for Talks Signup Dates for Talks and Scribes (Updated) Template for Reviews Project 1 Handout (New Due Date: 3/18) README for PS3 Programmers Templates to use for Project Report Project 2 Handout (Due Date: 5/21) General Class Syllabus Scribe notes template (LaTeX) Multicore/Parallel OpenMP Specification LLNL pthreads tutorial An Introduction to Programming with Threads Thinking Parallel Blog Cell Specific Cell Full-Day Workshop (Slides and Video) IBM Journal Issue on Cell Cell Developer's Corner Cell Articles and Useful Links Cell Workshop 2006 2007 CorePy: Python package for Cell Supercomputer at LANL using Cell GPU Specific General-Purpose Computation Using Graphics Hardware AMD/ATI Stream Computing Resources NVIDIA Developer Zone BrookGPU GPU Talks at AstroGPU Workshop