Nankai ISC 101: Practical Parallel
Computing
LECTURE 1
Course Introduction and Lecture Plan
Course Introduction:

Computer accounts: Send email to
xiang@nankai.edu.cn to request your account.
In your email, please state the following
1. Name (first last names)
2. Preferred login name
3. Your active E-mail address



Projects: All four projects can be done on NK
Stars.
Lecture notes: All lecture notes will be emailed
to registered students.
Deng text: A book “Practical Parallel
Computing” will be ready around July. Email
dengyf@nankai.edu.cn to request a copy. Email
should contains
1. Name (first last names)
2. Current major
3. Current level(undergraduate, MS, Ph.D.,
postdoc, faculty)
4. Your active E-mail address (Book will be
sent by email)
Lecture Plan:
Note: This training is compressed from a onesemester graduate course offered at Stony Brook
(AMS530) and Hong Kong Univ. of Science and
Tech. (Math 655):
Time
Slots
9-10
1010:30
10:3011:30
12-2
2-3
Monday (March
17)
Course Intro,
Hardware Intro,
MPI: Collective
Comm.
Break
Software Intro
Performance
Measurement
Programming
models
Communication
models
3-3:30:
3:304:30
Tuesday (March
18)
Program Examples:
Calculus, Linear
Algebra
Lunch
Diff Equ.
Molecular Dynamics
Monte Carlo
Methods
Break
MPI: Single-sided
Demo:
Comm.
(1) Parallel Hello
(2) Computing π
PARALLEL COMPUTING: WHAT? WHY?
AND HOW?
What: Parallel computing is defined as
``simultaneous processing by more than one
processing unit on a single application''.
Why:
(1) Improve response time (stock market,
hospitals, battle fields, etc)
(2) Amend the total amount of work done in a
given time (fluids, QCD, proteins,
meteorology, materials: finer grid, larger
domain, and more parameters, etc)
(3) Cost-effective: 10X compared to mainframes
(everyone enjoys more money)
PROBLEMS REQUIRING PARALLEL
COMPUTING
(1) Prediction of Weather, Climate, and Global
Change
(2) Materials Science
(3) Semiconductor Design
(4) Superconductivity
(5) Structural Biology
(6) Drug Design
(7) Human Genome
(8) QCD
(9) Astronomy
(10) Transportation
(11) Vehicle Signature---Military
(12) Turbulence
(13) Vehicle Dynamics
(14) Nuclear Fusion
(15) Combustion System
(16) Oil and Gas Recovery
(17) Ocean Science
(18) Speech
(19) Vision
(20) Undersea Surveillance
BEST APPLICATION AREAS
(1) Aerodynamics: Aircraft design, air breathing
propulsion, advanced sensors,
(2) Applied Mathematics: Fluid dynamics,
turbulence, differential equations, numerical
analysis, global optimization, numerical
linear algebra,
(3) Biology and engineering: Simulation of
genetic compounds, neural network,
structural biology, conformation, drug
design, protein folding, human genome,
(4) Chemistry and engineering: Polymer
simulation, reaction rate prediction,
(5) Computer science: Simulation of devices
and circuits, VLSI, artificial intelligence,
(6) Electrical engineering: Electromagnetic
scattering
(7) Geosciences: Oil and seismic exploration,
enhanced oil and gas recovery,
(8) Materials Research: Material property
prediction, modeling of new materials,
superconductivity,
(9) Mechanical engineering: Structural analysis,
combustion simulation.
(10) Meteorology: Weather forecasting, climate
modeling.
(11) Oceanography: global ocean modeling
(12) Physics: Astrophysics, evolution of galaxies
and natures of black holes; particle physics,
quark interactions, properties of new
particles; plasma physics, fusion reaction
modeling; nuclear physics, weapon design
and modeling, remedy of nuclear
contaminations.
(13) Others: Information super highway, optical
processing, and transportation.
BASIC PHYSICS EQUATIONS
(1) Classical Mechanics---Newton's Second
Law
(2) Electrodynamics---Maxwell Equations
(3) Quantum Dynamics---Schrödinger Equation
(4) Statistical Mechanics
(5) Quantum Chromo Dynamics---Yang-Mills
Equation
How?