EECE 571e (Fall 2014) (Massively) Parallel Computing Platforms

1. EECE 571e (Fall 2014)(Massively) Parallel Computing Platforms Matei Ripeanu matei @ ece.ubc.ca

2. Contact Info Course page: http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~matei/EECE571/ Office hours: after each class or by appointment (email me) Email: matei @ ece.ubc.ca Office: KAIS 4033

3. EECE 571e: Course Goals Primary Gain an understanding of fundamental issues that affect the design of: Parallel applications Massively multicore processors Survey the main current research themes, hardware and software trends. Secondary By studying a set of outstanding papers, build knowledge of how to do & present research Learn how to read papers & evaluate ideas

4. What I’ll Assume You Know You are familiar with system-level C programming, Basic notions of parallelism, synchronizations, Computer Architecture Basics If there are things that don’t make sense, ask!

5. This class • Weekly schedule (tentative) • Note: the dates are tentative • But always on Mondays 5-8pm, KAIS 4018 • Possible travel: Nov 17th – we’ll use some other day for a make-up course (Dec 1st?). • Department ‘distinguished lecture’ series: Mondays 4pm

6. Course Organization/Syllabus/etc.

7. Administravia: Course structure • Paper discussion (most classes) & Lectures • Student projects • Aim high! Have fun! It’s a class project, not your PhD! • Teams of up to 3 students • Project presentations at the end of the term

8. Administravia: Grading • Paper reviews:25% • Class participation 15% • Discussion leading: 10% • Project: 50%

9. Administravia: Paper Reviewing (1) • Goals: • Think of what you read • Expand your knowledge beyond the papers that are assigned • Get used to writing paper reviews • Reviews due by 12am the day of the class (this is Monday at noon) • This gives you a chance to read everyone else’s reviews before the class • Have an eye on the writing style / Be professional in your writing • Clarity & brevity • Logic arguments • Detect (and stay away from) trivial claims. E.g., 1st sentence in the Introduction: “The tremendous/unprecedented/phenomenal growth/scale/ubiquity of the Internet…”

10. Administravia: Paper Reviewing (2) Follow the form provided when relevant. • Summarize the main contribution of the paper • Critique the main contribution: • Significance: • Discuss the significance of the paper and explain your rating I a couple of sentences • Rating: 5 (breakthrough), 4 (significant contribution), 3 (modest contribution), 2 (incremental), 1 (no contribution or negative contribution). • Discuss how convincing the methodologyis. • Do the claims and conclusions follow from the experiments? • Are the assumptions realistic? • Are the experiments well designed? • Are there different experiments that would be more convincing? • Are there alternatives the authors should have considered? • (And, of course, is the paper free of methodological errors?) • What is the most important limitation of the approach?

11. Administravia: Paper Reviewing (3) • What are two/three strongest and/or most interesting ideas in the paper? • What are two/three most striking weaknesses in the paper? • Name two questions that you would like to ask the authors. • Detail an interesting extension to the work (not mentioned in the future work section). • Optional comments on the paper that you’d like to see discussed in class.

12. Administravia: Discussions Leading • Come prepared! • Background and related work • Prepare a 5-10 minute background / summary of the paper • With slides if you want • Keep in mind who is your audience: they have already read the paper. • Prepare a discussion outline • Prepare questions: • “What if”s; e.g., What if you drop this assumption? • What else: What else could the authors have done to prove/disprove the same hypothesis • Unclear aspects of the solution proposed • … • Similar ideas in different contexts • Initiate short brainstorming sessions • Leaders do NOT need to submit paper reviews • Your goals: • Keep discussion flowing • Keep discussion relevant • Engage everybody

13. Administravia: Projects • It’s just a class, not your PhD. • Aim high! • Goal: With one/two extra months of work you project should be ready to be submitted to a decent workshop / publication • It is doable! • Combine with your research if relevant to this course • Get informal approval from all instructors if you overlap final projects: • Don’t sell the same piece of work twice • You can get more than twice as many results with less than twice as much work • Past projects available form course webpage

14. Administravia: Project timeline (tentative) • 3rd week – 2-slide idea presentation: • S1: “What is the (research) question you aim to answer?”, “What is the hypothesis you try to prove” • S2: “Why is this important / relevant?” & “How do you plan to go ahead?” • 5th week: 1-page project proposal • 8th week: 2-3-page Midterm project due • Have a clear image of what’s possible/doable • Report preliminary results • Includes related work • Final week [see schedule] in-class project presentation • Presentation • Demo, if appropriate • 4-6-page preliminary write-up. Final project report at the end of the term ACM formatting guidelines

15. Project example ideas • Past project reports: http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~matei/EECE571/PastReports/ • Some directions: • Port a ‘challenging’ application to a ‘new’ architecture. • e.g., a graph processing (BFS, or Totem engine) on AMD Fusion • challenging application: one that does not have good parallel structure – e.g., graph processing, genomic read alignment; one that’s hard to load-balance – e.g., MRI • Model a hardware extension • e.g., add NVRAM to a discrete GPU. Evaluate performance, energy impact • Take an existing code and optimize it. Implement existing algorithm • e.g., graph clustering on discrete GPU Wisconsin Multifacet Project

16. Next Class (Mon, 15/09) • Note room change: KAIS 4018 • Discussion of • Project ideas • Papers To do: • Subscribe to mailing list (see instructions on class webpage) • Come prepared with 2+project ideas to discuss • One paper to review

17. Questions?