General Exercises

Summer School for Petascale Computing ExercisesMonday Afternoon Presentation Slides: [PDF]

These set of exercises, related to many of the talks you have heard this week, were developed for the workshop, and are designed to put the student into the developer's experience. Each student is encouraged to use all of the knowledge of programming and tools that is obtained throughout the week to complete these exercises.

There are two tracks that one could choose from, the Jacobi Iteration algorithm and a Molecular Dynamics algorithm.   It is recommended that if you are new to parallel programming that you choose the Jacobi Iteration Track as it is easier and is more focused on learning how to parallel program, whereas the Molecular Dynamics example is more difficult but focuses more on developing scalable code.

It is possible that students will not be able to finish these during the workshop, as these are rather advanced exercises. They are meant to go beyond the normal "learning to parallel program" model and get you thinking about how to program at the petascale. Solutions are provided at the end of each exercise, if you get stuck. Read the tips given in each exercise before starting. Both are challenging, good luck.

Shawn T. Brown is a Senior Scientific Specialist at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. He has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Georgia and is a former developer of the parallel quantum chemistry program Q-Chem. He is a contributing author on several parallel applications in chemistry is currently involved in using High Performance Computing in chemistry, biology and epidemiology. As a founding member of the HPC University, Dr. Brown has contributed to education and outreach programs for moving researchers closer to petascale computing. Currently, Dr. Brown is the lead of the TeraGrid Common User Environments Working group and the Chief Information Officer of the University of Pittsburgh MIDAS Network Center of Excellence.