Data Centers and High Performance Computing
Master of Science in Engineering in Computer Science
Academic Year 2018/2019
6 Credits

Teachers: Prof. Bruno Ciciani and Dr. Pierangelo Di Sanzo

Course Objectives

The Data Centers and High Performance Computing course focuses on high-end computing architectures and programming paradigms for high performance computing. The course includes lessons and seminars. Lessons focus on modern computing architectures, from single-chip level to large computer clusters, with special focus on multicore systems and massively-parallel architectures. Programming approaches for exploiting the computing power of these architectures are presented and discussed, with special attention on concurrent and distributed programming. Seminars focus on various topics, incuding data center architectures (along with concepts related to their design and management), Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, ITaaS, Flash Memory. Some topics will be presented with the support of renowned international companies.

News

• Written test: June 6, 2019 - Results

• Written test: July 4, 2019 - Results

• Written test: September 19, 2019 - Results

Exam Rules

The exam is divided in two parts:

• A written test
• A practical project

The written test must be passed before the starting of the practical project.

Attendances of the students at the seminars are recorded by the teacher. In case the student attends less than 60% of the seminars, an additional essay on one of the topics presented at the seminars is requested.

Program

• Introduction [Lecture Notes]
• Advanced Computing Architectures [Lecture Notes]
  • Parallel architectures: ILP, DLP, TLP (external link: Tomasulo's Algorithm Simulator)
  • Cache coherence (external link: MESI Protocol Simulator)
  • Memory consistency
  • Interconnect and NUMA
• Concurrent and Parallel Programming [Lecture Notes Part 1] [Lecture Notes Part 2 ], Lecture Notes on Open MP (TBA)]
  • Correctness conditions
  • Progress conditions and taxonomy
  • Speed-up performance models
  • Concurrent data structures
  • Introduction to Open MP (Open Multiprocessing)
• Transactional memory
  
  • Software Transactional Memories [Lecture Notes]
  • Hardware Transactional Memories: Intel RTM
    
    • [slides (pages: 1-15),
    • Intel TSX Simulator,
    • Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual: Chapter 15 Programming With Intel® Transactional Synchronization Extensions,
    • Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual: Chapter 12 Intel® Tsx Recommendations] 
• Data Centers
  • Traditional data center architectures
  • Cloud computing oriented data centers
• Large-Scale IT Service Management
  • ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
  • Service Strategy
  • Service Design
  • Service Transition, Service Operation
  • Continual Service Improvement
  • Disaster Recovery e Business Continuity

Seminars (tentative schedule)

February 28

• Flash memory (Ciciani, Marotta)

March 14

• Storage: Flash Solutions (Ciciani, Dell)
• HCI: Reframe the Future (Ciciani, Dell)

March 21

• ITaas (Ciciani, Dell)
• Internet of Things (Ciciani, Dell)

March 28

• Data Center Efficiency: What you should know (Ciciani, Dell)
• Technologies for Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (Ciciani, Dell)

April 4

• Oracle Engineered Systems and their deployment model (Ciciani, Oracle)

April 11

• SPARC M8 processor: Software in Silicon features for Application Acceleration Support (Ciciani, Oracle)

May 2

• DR&BC in the Cloud (Ciciani, Poate Italiane)

May 9

• Cloud Solutions, (Ciciani, Accenture)

May 16

• Capacity Planning & Consumption Optimization in the Cloud (Ciciani, Accenture)

May23

• IT Monitoring (Ciciani, Accenture)

Reference Books

The following is a list of books which cover most of the topics of the course. In any case, lecture notes are enough to prepare the exam.

• John L. Hennessy,‎ David A. Patterson, "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach". ISBN-13: 978-0123838728
• Daniel Sorin, Mark Hill, David Wood, "A Primer on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence". ISBN: 978-1-60-845564-5
• Maurice Herlihy, Nir Shavit, "The Art of Multiprocessor Programming". ISBN: 978-0-12-370591-6
• Peter Pacheco, "An Introduction to Parallel Programming". ISBN: 978-0-12-374260-5
• Rachid Guerraoui, Paolo Romano, "Transactional Memory. Foundations, Algorithms, Tools, and Applications". ISBN: 978-3-319-14720-8
• Alessandro Pellegrini, "Parallelization of Discrete Event Simulation Models". ISBN: 978-8-89-853359-6