Parallel Programming: Introduction to OpenMP

Prerequisites

This course is part of the Scientific Computing series.

This is a simple introduction to using OpenMP for writing parallel programs to run on multi-core systems, for the purposes of "high-performance computing". It will cover the principles of OpenMP, and teach the use of the basic facilities (i.e. the ones that are used in most HPC applications), so that attendees will be able to write serious programs using it. It will describe some other features that may be useful, but not teach their use.

All University and College staff and students with advanced prerequisite computer knowledge

• Significant programming experience with production code in Fortran, C or C++; the course will assume that attendees are reasonably fluent in their chosen language, and have experience with adding diagnostic output statements to their program for debugging.
• Participants should have attended Parallel Programming: Options and Design
• Basic knowledge of the Unix command line as might be gleaned from the UNIX: Introdcution to the Command Line Interface course.
• Those attending should also be able to use a plain text editor (e.g. emacs, gedit, pico, vi) on a Unix system, as covered on the Emacs or Vi Introductions.

Number of sessions: 4

• Purposes and basic design of OpenMP
• Use for SIMD applications
• Synchronisation and SPMD
• Guidelines for practical use
• Other facilities in OpenMP

Presentations, demonstrations and practicals

gcc and gfortran on MCS Linux

• There is no significant difference between how to use OpenMP under Unix, Microsoft Windows or any other system, so it is equally relevant to users of other systems that want to learn OpenMP
• More information may be found in http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/courses/OpenMP

Two full day sessions