Extreme Computing

Extreme Computing is about making the most of a computing cluster, be it processing huge data sets or serving high-volume websites. The course covers high-performance computing at several levels of the stack:
Motivation:
Big data problems, the memory hierarchy, latency requirements, performance considerations, and economics
Algorithms:
Processing large amounts of data, sharding, streaming, query processing, and randomised algorithms
Infrastucture:
Distributed file systems, fault tolerance, replication, job scheduling, and MapReduce/Hadoop
We aim to make students aware of topics using large (> 1000 node) clusters, but not be tied to particular vendors whereever possible. If you want to understand how companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter work, then this is the course for you.

Time

Lectures are Mondays and Thursdays 17:10-18:00 in Appleton Tower Lecture Theatre 4. Labs start week 3.

Cluster

First, get inside informatics:
ssh student.ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk
Then log in:
ssh scutter$(seq -w 1 12 | shuf -n 1)
If this gives permission denied, make sure you're registered then wait 24 hours.

Who to Contact

Piazza
Almost Everything. Including all questions about the labs or assignments outside lab sessions.
Informatics Teaching Organisation
Assignment extensions
Student portal
Lab signup
Computing Support
Lab and cluster logins (DICE account)
/dev/null
Harsh marking
Private Piazza
Clear marker error (i.e. failed to add marks correctly, missed a solution). Marks can go up or down.
Volker Seeker
Marker error appeals. Include link to private Piazza post. Marks can go up or down.
Lecturer: Kenneth Heafield
Lecturer: Volker Seeker primary contact for students
Office: 1.21, Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street
E-mail: volker dot seeker at ed dot ac dot uk (but please use Piazza)

Prerequisites

Students should be familiar with the Unix command line and ssh. Information systems provides a primer on the command line.

We do not require a particular programming language. Examples are mostly in Python and Java with occasional C++.

The is a Level-11 course, normally taken in Year 4. It is open to all 4th year, MInf, and MSc students in Informatics.

We will expect you to know and apply algorithms and data structures, such as those taught in the Year 2 course Inf 2B.

Mailing List

Announcements regarding the course will be posted to the course mailing list. All students taking the course are automatically subscribed to this list. Previous postings can be accessed using the mailing list archive.


Home : Teaching : Courses : Exc 

Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK
Tel: +44 131 651 5661, Fax: +44 131 651 1426, E-mail: school-office@inf.ed.ac.uk
Please contact our webadmin with any comments or corrections. Logging and Cookies
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh