CSCI 3366 (Parallel and Distributed Computing):
Lecture Topics and Assignments

The table below shows planned topics, readings, and assignments. Readings are from the textbook unless otherwise indicated. Homeworks are due at 11:59pm on the date shown, unless otherwise indicated.

Lecture date Topics Reading Assignments
August 25 (W) About the course (Notes)    
August 30 (M) No class 1 (skim), 2.1 through 2.7  
September 1 (W) Overview of hardware, programming models (Notes)    
September 6 (M) Holiday    
September 8 (W) More overview; multithreaded programming and OpenMP (Notes) Appendix A (updated version, okay to skim all but first four sections)  
September 13 (M) Multithreaded programming and OpenMP, continued (Notes)    
September 15 (W) Message passing and MPI (Notes) Appendix B (updated version) (okay to skim later sections)  
September 20 (M) No class    
September 22 (W) Multithreaded programming and Java (Notes) Appendix C (updated version); Dr. Lewis's video lectures on Java for Scala programmers   Homework 1: HTML, PDF  
September 27 (M) No class    
September 29 (W) Introduction to OpenCL (Notes) Appendix D (updated version)    
October 1 (not a class day, make-up lecture) OpenCL, continued (Notes)    
October 4 (M) No class    
October 6 (W) Design patterns; overview of pattern language (Notes) 1.3, 1.4 (review)  
October 8 (not a class day, make-up lecture) Example applications (Notes) 4.3  
October 11 (M) More about Homework 2 (Notes)    
October 13 (W) More about evaluating correctness and performance (Notes)    
October 18 (M) No class
(use time to work on HW02)
   
October 20 (W) No class
(use time to work on HW02)
  Homework 2: HTML, PDF  
October 25 (M) No class    
October 27 (W) No class    
November 1 (M) No class; use time to read
(Finding Concurrency patterns)
3  
November 3 (W) No class; use time to read
(Algorithm Structure patterns)
4  
November 8 (M) No class; use time to read
(Supporting Structures patterns
)
5  
November 10 (W) No class; use time to read
(Implementation Mechanisms)
6  
November 15 (M) No class    
November 17 (W) No class    
November 22 (M) No class    
November 24 (W) Holiday    
November 29 (M) No class   Reading Quiz 1: HTML, PDF,
Reading Quiz 2: HTML, PDF,
Reading Quiz 3: HTML, PDF,
Reading Quiz 4: HTML, PDF  
December 1 (W) Heat-diffusion equation example revisited; Homework 3 (Notes)    
December 6 (M) Course wrap-up and evaluations (Notes)    
December 15 (W) Not a class day   Homework 3: HTML, PDF
(accepted without penalty through 12/17)