15-418 Spring '08
Notes on Assignments and Exams

In the following, the term HOME418 refers to the home directory for the course, namely /afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15418-s08/public.

Exam 2

• Exam 2 will be held on Tuesday, April 15th, from 12:00-1:20pm.
• The exam will be closed-book, closed-notes.
• The exam will cover all of the lecture materials that have been presented in Lectures 18-28. This includes the notes that were handed out in class as well as the following chapters in the book:
  • Ch 9.1, Ch 6.1-7, Ch 5.5, Ch 7.9, Ch 8.8, Ch 7.1-8, Ch 10.1-10, Ch 11.1, Ch 11.6, Ch 11.7-9.
• Here are some exercises in the book that may help you study for the exam:
  • 9.15, 9.20, 9.21, 5.12, 5.13, 5.16, 5.18, 5.21, 6.12, 6.14, 6.18, 7.1, 7.7, 10.2, 10.5, 10.6, 11.1, 11.3, 11.15, 11.21, and 11.28.
  • NOTE: It is not necessary to complete all of these exercises to be ready for the exam, and unfortunately we will not be able to hand out solutions to them prior to the exam. However, feeling confident about answering these questions should help you feel confident going into the exam.
• It would be a good idea to bring a calculator to the exam. (No computers or wireless devices, however.)

Assignment 3 (pdf)

• Issued on Tuesday, Feb. 26; due on Thursday, Mar. 6, noon.
• The files you need for this assignment can be found in the directory HOME418/asst/asst3.
• Input files can be found in HOME418/asst/asst3/input
• Here is a brief tutorial on using MPI: PDF.
• Here are some online courses/tutorials on using MPI:
  • NCSA's online course "Introduction to MPI"
  • Lawrence Livermore National Lab's MPI Tutorial

Exam 1

• Exam 1 will be held on Tuesday, February 26th, from 12:00-1:20pm.
• The exam will be closed-book, closed-notes.
• The exam will cover all of the lecture materials that have been presented in Lectures 1-17 (i.e. up to and including Directory-Based Cache Coherence, and also including the guest lecture on the earthquake simulation). This includes the notes that were handed out in class as well as the following chapters in the book:
  • Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4.1, Ch 4.3, Ch 5.1-5.4, Ch 8.1-8.2.
• Here are some exercises in the book that may help you study for the exam:
  • Ex 4.2, Ex 4.6, Ex 4.11, Ex 5.2, Ex 5.3, Ex 5.4, Ex 8.3, Ex 8.7.
  • NOTE: It is not necessary to complete all of these exercises to be ready for the exam, and unfortunately we will not be able to hand out solutions to them prior to the exam. However, feeling confident about answering these questions should help you feel confident going into the exam.
• It would be a good idea to bring a calculator to the exam. (No computers or wireless devices, however.)

Assignment 2 (pdf)

• Issued on Thursday, Feb. 7; due on Thursday, Feb. 21, noon.
• The files you need for this assignment can be found in the directory HOME418/asst/asst2.
• Input files can be found in HOME418/asst/asst2/input:
  • Start with smaller input files when you are debugging your code (e.g., dist4) before working your way up to 16 cities (distances).
  • The citylocations file shows the coordinates of the cities in 2D space, in case you are curious. (You do not need this information for your program.)

Assignment 1 (pdf)

• Issued on Thursday, Jan. 24; due on Thursday, Feb. 7, Noon.
• Additional Handouts (be sure to read these):
  • OpenMP Tutorial [pdf]
  • Tutorial on using NCSA and PSC machines [pdf]
    • NOTE: this handout has been revised to reflect the fact that cobalt at NCSA does not support AFS. Please use scp instead.
• The files you need for this assignment can be found in the directory HOME418/asst/asst1.
• In addition to our own OpenMP tutorial, here are some useful links regarding OpenMP:
  • NCSA online course on OpenMP
  • another concise OpenMP tutorial (from Lawrence Livermore)
  • OpenMP.org
• Here is some information about the machines that you will be using:
  • NCSA SGI Altix machine (cobalt)
  • PSC HP AlphaServer (rachel)

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