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Description

This course covers the principles of concurrent systems and process management in Operating Systems. The major topics that will be covered are

• Parallel Computer Architecture
• Parallel Programming Models
• Performance analysis
• Process Management in Operating Systems
• Message Passing Programming
• Shared Memory Programming

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, the student should understand

• different parallel programming models and environments
• the principles of parallel algorithm design; which includes
  • using decomposition, ordering, and mapping techniques to identify concurrency and
  • organising tasks and data to choose the correct algorithm structure and supporting structures for implementation
• performance analysis, which includes topics such as efficiency, speedup, overheads analysis, and scalability
• the operating system's responsibility with regards to managing processes, including process creation, scheduling, and synchronisation.

Prerequisites

Computer Science 2

Format

3 Classes and 1 tutorial per week

Policy

• All projects and reports must be your own work. If you get stuck on a problem, you may discuss it with a friend, but always go away and use your new insight to do the assignment yourself.
• No copying of any kind is allowed. If any work is copied, all students concerned will receive a mark of 0%. It is your own responsibility to protect your work.
• No late hand-ins will be accepted.

Evaluation

This module is assessed via continues assessment. The final mark of the module will be calculated as follows: 0.25(semester test1) + 0.25(semester test2) + 0.20(class tests) + 0.30(tutorials).

If a student misses a semester test due to illness and has a valid sick certificate, the student will be assessed via an oral exam during the normal examination period. If a student misses a semester test due to any other reason, the student will receive an incomplete for the module, because the cutoff of 12% would have been exceeded.

There is a sub-minimum of 50% for the tutorials and 30% for each of the semester tests.

A final mark of at least 50% is required to pass the module, on condition that all the attendance criteria are met. A final mark of at least 75% is required to pass the module with destinction on condition that all the attendance criteria are met.

A student that misses more than 12% of the assessment opportunities will receive an incomplete for the module. For late handins 15% is subtracted for every day that it is late.

Lecturer

Cornelia P. Inggs
Office: Room M509, General Engineering Building
Phone: 021 808 4232
E-mail
-name: cinggs
-suffix: @sun.ac.za

Demi

The demi in charge of the tutorials is Francois de Villiers and his email is:
-name: devilliers.pf
-suffix: @gmail.com

Text Book

Parallel Programming, Thomas Rauber and Gudula Rünger Springer, 2010.