2016-17 Academic Catalog

As multi-core machines become more prevalent, different programming paradigms have emerged for harnessing extra processors for better performance. This course explores parallel computation for both shared memory and distributed parallel programming paradigms. In particular, we will explore how these paradigms affect the code we write, the libraries we use, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Topics will include synchronization primitives across these models for parallel execution, debugging concurrent programs, fork/join parallelism, example parallel algorithms, computational complexity and performance considerations, computer architecture as it relates to parallel computation, and related theory topics. Prerequisite: Computer Science 200 or 201