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CHPC National Meeting 2011
We are pleased to invite you to the Centre for High Performance Computing National Conference to be held from 7 to 9 December 2011 at the CSIR International Convention Centre (ICC) in Pretoria.
Events
Invitation: Parallel Processor Architecture and Parallel Computing
21 July 2011
From 3–5 August 2011 the CHPC will host a lecture series on Parallel Processor Architecture and Parallel Computing by Peter McMahon. Discussions will centre around the design of modern microprocessors (which now exploit parallelism in a variety of ways), and try to understand the impact of computer design on the performance of software.
The course will introduce parallel programming on multi-core processors and on clusters. We will also study GPU accelerations of computer programs, especially scientific codes. In particular we will try to understand, “Where do parallel speedups come from?”, and “What are the limits to speedups on different architectures?”.
Specific topics we may cover are:
- A review of traditional computer architecture
- Caching, memory and compiler optimizations for single-core CPUs
- Parallel programming using Pthreads and OpenMP
- Finding and exploiting parallelism, including case studies
- Shared memory multi-core processor design
- Acceleration using GPUs and FPGAs
There will be a series of practical exercises to reinforce the concepts taught during the lectures.
Intended Audience
The course is open to:
- Computer Science
- Electrical Engineering
- Computational science (Physics, Bioinformatics, Climate Science, Applied Mathematics, etc.)
- Undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers.
Required Background:
- Proficiency in C/C++ programming.
- Basic understanding of computer architecture.
- Basic understanding of linear algebra.
About the lecturer:
Peter McMahon is currently a research assistant at Stanford University. His most recent work is primarily on experimental quantum computation, but he continues to be involved in classical parallel computing and scientific computing research. Peter spent several months at the University of Illinois in 2006, and at the University of Edinburgh in 2007, working on reconfigurable computing for scientific applications. He subsequently spent a year at the University of California, Berkeley building radio astronomy instrumentation for pulsar and radio transient experiments, and an FPGA bioinformatics accelerator. He then spent a year at Stanford on a project to accelerate Deep Belief Nets using FPGAs. Peter graduated with a B.Sc. (Eng) in Electrical and Computer Engineering, an M.Sc. in Computer Science and an M.Sc. (Eng) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cape Town. He received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2010, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate.
HPC School 2011
31 May 2011
A funded eight-day graduate course for South African students who wish to advance their expertise in high performance computing (HPC), parallel programming and related research topics which would potentially rely on HPC techniques.
3 to 10 July 2011
Hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST).
Topics to be covered include:
- Introduction to HPC Architectures and Parallel Programming
- Introduction to Multicore & SMP Systems with OpenMP
- Parallel Programming with MPI
- Introduction to GPU Programming
and more.
Download the full application form in MS Word format.
Download the full application form in Open Office format.
CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: Monday 20 June 2011
NOTE: Only applications in DOC, RTF or ODT format sent by email to the address indicated in the application form will be accepted.
HPC School and CHPC National Conference 2010
12 November 2010
A funded two-week graduate course and conference for South African students who wish to advance their expertise in high performance computing (HPC) and related research topics which would potentially rely on HPC techniques.
29 Nov. – 10 Dec. 2010
Hosted by the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC CHPC) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR CSIR) and funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST DST).
Download the full outline and schedule here.
CHPC National Meeting 2010
16 September 2010
Dear Colleague
We are pleased to invite you to the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) National Conference 2010 to be held from 7 to 9 December 2010 at the Westin Grand Hotel in Cape Town.
As one of the major pillars within the Department of Science and Technology’s (DST’s) Cyberinfrastructure initiative, the core mission of the CHPC is to increase the competitiveness of South Africa through promoting the adoption of High Performance Computing (HPC) and data technology tools across all sectors. In order to address DST’s grand vision, the CHPC works to foster a multi-array of vibrant and productive computational research communities alongside experientialists. The CHPC aims to leverage its computational platform, expertise and resources to facilitate the advancement of South Africa.
The theme of the conference this year is “Advancing Research and Development through the National Cyberinfrastructure Initiatives”. The event is aimed at advancing research networking, collaboration and competitiveness through an integrated South African National Cyberinfrastructure Initiatives programme. There will be a number of exciting domain specific breakaway sessions taking place during the conference. Additionally, the conference will be followed by advanced tutorials in high-level HPC tools and applications.
The meeting will be preceded by the HPC School, from 29 November to 6 December 2010, which is aimed at recent B.Sc. (Hons) or B.Eng. graduates, and new M.Sc. or Ph.D. students in the fields of computational sciences. The HPC School is an intense graduate level course that will cover the concepts and theory of parallel computers, and programming for parallel systems with MPI, OpenMP and CUDA, using the C, Fortran or python programming languages.
The CHPC National Meeting intends to explore the contributions and expectations of policy makers, research communities, Information Communication Vendors, Industry and Academia through a series of contributed and invited papers, presentations and open discussion forums. Both local and international stakeholders and key players will have the opportunity to harness synergies, in an effort to promote and appreciate the role of Cyberinfrastructure in advancement of Science and Engineering in South Africa.
Important dates:
Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 October 2010
HPC School Applications Deadline: 29 October 2010
Notification of Acceptance: 15 November 2010
Registration Deadline: 19 November 2010
For more information and registration, visit www.chpcconf.co.za