Teaching Parallel Programming Using Java

This paper presents an overview of the "Applied Parallel Computing" course taught to final year Software Engineering undergraduate students in Spring 2014 at NUST, Pakistan. The main objective of the course was to introduce practical parallel programming tools and techniques for shared and distributed memory concurrent systems. A unique aspect of the course was that Java was used as the principle programming language. The course was divided into three sections. The first section covered parallel programming techniques for shared memory systems that include multicore and Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) systems. In this section, Java threads was taught as a viable programming API for such systems. The second section was dedicated to parallel programming tools meant for distributed memory systems including clusters and network of computers. We used MPJ Express-a Java MPI library-for conducting programming assignments and lab work for this section. The third and the final section covered advanced topics including the MapReduce programming model using Hadoop and the General Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU).Comment: 8 Pages, 6 figures, MPJ Express, MPI Java, Teaching Parallel Programmin

Parallelism detection using graph labelling

Usage of multiprocessor and multicore computers implies parallel programming. Tools for preparing parallel programs include parallel languages and libraries as well as parallelizing compilers and convertors that can perform automatic parallelization. The basic approach for parallelism detection is analysis of data dependencies and properties of program components, including data use and predicates. In this article a suite of used data and predicates sets for program components is proposed and an algorithm for computing these sets is suggested. The algorithm is based on wave propagation on graphs with cycles and labelling. This method allows analyzing complex program components, improving data localization and thus providing enhanced data parallelism detection

Programming enviroments for parallel programming

Programming environments are used to bridge the gap between actual computers ad developement of their application programs. Most parallel programming environments currently in use focus on a specific parallel programming tool. This paper examines programming environments. language, tools, and techniques used for programming of parallel computers.In this paper, several topics are examined. First, a brief survey of parallel computer architectures and typical application programs is performed. Then, a survey of available environments, languages, and tools is conducted to determine how parallel programming is currently performed. Finally, by considering architectures, applications, and environments, an attempt is made to find desirable characteristics for a parallel programming environment and a useful set of parallel programming tools

Bridging the gap between cluster and grid computing

The Internet computing model with its ubiquitous networking and computing infrastructure is driving a new class of interoperable applications that benefit both from high computing power and multiple Internet connections. In this context, grids are promising computing platforms that allow to aggregate distributed resources such as workstations and clusters to solve large-scale problems. However, because most parallel programming tools were primarily developed for MPP and cluster computing, to exploit the new environment higher abstraction and cooperative interfaces are required. Rocmeμ is a platform originally designed to support the operation of multi-SAN clusters that integrates application modeling and resource allocation. In this paper we show how the underlying resource oriented computation model provides the necessary abstractions to accommodate the migration from cluster to multicluster grid enabled computing

Survey of Different Data Dependence Analysis Techniques

Dependency analysis is a technique to detect dependencies between tasks that prevent these tasks from running in parallel. It is an important aspect of parallel programming tools. Dependency analysis techniques are used to determine how much of the code is parallelizable. Literature shows that number of data dependence test has been proposed for parallelizing loops in case of arrays with linear subscripts, however less work has been done for arrays with nonlinear subscripts. GCD test, Banerjee method, Omega test, I-test dependence decision algorithms are used for one-dimensional arrays under constant or variable bounds. However, these approaches perform well only for nested loop with linear array subscripts. The Quadratic programming (QP) test, polynomial variable interval (PVI) test, Range test are typical techniques for nonlinear subscripts. The paper presents survey of these different data dependence analysis tests

Parallel computing on heterogeneous Networks: Challenges and Responses

In the paper, we analyse challenges associated with parallel programming for common networks of computers (NoCs) that are, unlike dedicated parallel computer systems, inherently heterogeneous and unreliable. This analysis results in description of main features of an ideal parallel program for NoCs. We also outline some recent parallel programming tools, which try and respond to some of the challenges

Cost-effective HPC clustering for computer vision applications

We will present a cost-effective and flexible realization of high performance computing (HPC) clustering and its potential in solving computationally intensive problems in computer vision. The featured software foundation to support the parallel programming is the GNU parallel Knoppix package with message passing interface (MPI) based Octave, Python and C interface capabilities. The implementation is especially of interest in applications where the main objective is to reuse the existing hardware infrastructure and to maintain the overall budget cost. We will present the benchmark results and compare and contrast the performances of Octave and MATLAB

FooPar: A Functional Object Oriented Parallel Framework in Scala

We present FooPar, an extension for highly efficient Parallel Computing in the multi-paradigm programming language Scala. Scala offers concise and clean syntax and integrates functional programming features. Our framework FooPar combines these features with parallel computing techniques. FooPar is designed modular and supports easy access to different communication backends for distributed memory architectures as well as high performance math libraries. In this article we use it to parallelize matrix matrix multiplication and show its scalability by a isoefficiency analysis. In addition, results based on a empirical analysis on two supercomputers are given. We achieve close-to-optimal performance wrt. theoretical peak performance. Based on this result we conclude that FooPar allows to fully access Scala's design features without suffering from performance drops when compared to implementations purely based on C and MPI

The Modeling of the ERP Systems within Parallel Calculus

As we know from a few years, the basic characteristics of ERP systems are: modular-design, central common database, integration of the modules, data transfer between modules done automatically, complex systems and flexible configuration. Because this, is obviously a parallel approach to design and implement them within parallel algorithms, parallel calculus and distributed databases. This paper aims to support these assertions and provide a model, in summary, what could be an ERP system based on parallel computing and algorithms.ERP Systems, Modeling, Parallel Calculus, Incremental Model