Parallel Computing Concepts

SDSC hosted webinar on "Parallel Computing Concepts" presented by Robert Sinkovits, Direction of Scientific Computing Applications at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), UC San Diego.

Description: All users of advanced cyberinfrastructure, whether they develop their own software or use 3rd party applications, should understand fundamental parallel computing concepts. In this webinar we cover supercomputer architectures, the differences between threads and processes, implementations of parallelism (e.g., OpenMP and MPI), strong and weak scaling, limitations on scalability (Amdahl’s and Gustafson’s Laws) and benchmarking. We also discuss how to choose the appropriate number of compute cores or nodes when running your applications and, when appropriate, the best balance between threads and processes. This webinar does not assume any programming experience and is suited for a wide audience, including current and prospective users of parallel computers, anyone who expects to write a proposal for computer time or those who are simply curious about parallel computing.
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Robert Sinkovits, Ph.D. leads the scientific applications efforts at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. He has collaborated with researchers spanning many fields including physics, chemistry, astronomy, structural biology, finance, ecology, climate, immunology and the social sciences, always with an emphasis on making the most effective use of high end computing resources. Before returning to SDSC, he was the primary developer of the AUTO3DEM and IHRSR++ software packages used for solving the structures of icosahedral and helical macromolecular structures, respectively. He is the co-PI for the NSF Comet and Voyager supercomputer awards, co-PI of the XSEDE project and the co-lead of the Human Vaccines Project’s Bioinformatics Hub. He’s also an avid cyclist and mountain climber, having summited more nearly 400 peaks.