Course on parallel computing presented by Stanford's Olukotun

In a effort to advance high performance computing utilising new forms of parallel computing, the Advanced Computer Engineering Lab (ACELab), in association with the CHPC, hosted Professor Kunle Olukotun of Stanford University for a week-long course in September 2009, entitled 'Parallel computer architecture and programming'.

Olukotun has been a researcher in and proponent of chip multiprocessor technology since the mid- 1990s. Olukotun is well known for leading the Stanford Hydra research project which developed one of the first chip multiprocessors with support for thread-level speculation (TLS). He also founded Afara Websystems to develop high-throughput, low-power server systems with chip multiprocessor technology. Afara was acquired by Sun Microsystems; the Afara microprocessor technology, called Niagara, is the basis of systems that have become one of Sun's fastest ramping products ever. Olukotun is actively involved in research in computer architecture, parallel programming environments and scalable parallel systems and directs the Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL) which seeks to proliferate the use of parallelism in all application areas.

The course - attended by over 35 students from a number of disciplines, as well as members of industry - was a resounding success and was enjoyed by all attendees. Principles and tradeoffs in the design and programming of parallel computers were discussed. Topics included the varieties of parallelism in current hardware (e.g., fast networks, multicore, accelerators such as GPUs), the importance of locality, implicit vs. explicit parallelism, shared memory, cache-coherence, synchronisation mechanisms (locking, atomicity, transactions, barriers), and parallel programming models (threads, data parallel/streaming, transactions, and nested parallelism). ACELab staff were trained in the principles and exercises needed to be tutors for the course.

On his departure, Olukotun expressed his appreciation for the week of South African hospitality he had experienced. He confirmed that the ACELab was vital in the growth of HPC in the CHPC/CSIR and in South Africa as a whole. Collaborations between the ACELab and Stanford University as well as Olukotun's PPL group were next steps, he stated.