Course provider: EPCC in conjunction with SURFsara, PRACE and the University of Edinburgh
Target profile: anyone interested in leading-edge computing technology; there is no requirement to be able to write computer programs.
Date:
28 August 2017 to 29 September 2017
Registration deadline:
25 Aug 2017
Place: Online course
Course level: Open to all
Keywords: Supercomputing, computer simulation
Course description:
This free online course will introduce you to what supercomputers are, how they are used and how we can exploit their full computational potential to make scientific breakthroughs.
Over five weeks, we’ll look at:
- supercomputers: introducing supercomputing terminology and some of the largest machines in the world.
- parallel computers: how they are built from hundreds of thousands of CPUs, each similar to those in a desktop PC.
- parallel computing: using parallel processing to harness the power of all of those CPUs for a single calculation.
- computer simulation: how we can perform virtual experiments to make real-life predictions.
- case studies: how supercomputing is making scientific breakthroughs that were never possible before.
At the end of the course you will be able to:
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Describe how the performance of modern supercomputers is measured and achieved
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Explain why they are built from thousands of simple processors
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Compare the architectures of shared-memory and distributed-memory computers
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Describe the shared-variables and message-passing programming models
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Summarise why computer simulation is a fundamental component of modern scientific discovery
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Investigate simple problems and look for opportunities for parallel processing
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Discuss the limitations of parallel computing
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Identify examples of scientific areas where computer simulation is used
Application procedure:
See https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/supercomputing for full course description and registration procedure.