[TriLUG] High Performance Computing at Wake Tech

[prhodes at vdsinc.com]

> Wow!  I don't know how this one slipped thru the cracks, but I just
> landed on it by accident.

Heh. I was actually kinda surprised there wasn't more response to this
originally.  I figured somebody would at least response with a

"Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of..." joke.  LOL


> This sounds like a really cool program and perhaps, as Phil mentioned,
> a wise career investment.  I would hope there was a focus on real
> "hands-on" learning and testing, lest it become another
> pseudo-cert-like piece of paper that only impresses the most out of
> touch PHBs.

I found it interesting enough that I went ahead and enrolled in the
program.  I was already at Wake Tech doing a Computer Programming
degree, and am almost finished with that... so I went ahead and had
them sign me up for HPC and I'm overlapping the two programs the
next two semesters, until I finish my programming degree.  I'm going
to go ahead and go the extra year or so to get the HPC degree as well.

Last semester, I took their HPC-110 "Introduction to High Performance
Computing" class.  It was pretty interesting.  There was a lot of
discussion about basic PC hardware which I found pretty boring, since
I've been building PC's for about 8 or 9 years now, and am A+ and Network+
certified already... but once the class got into the hands-on part, it got
interesting.  We installed Linux on the machines, installed the Beowulf
software
(using Oscar or Scyld), and actually configured a small three node Beowulf.
Then
we compiled and ran some (pre-written) parallel programs, and ran some
benchmarks
to measure the performance of the cluster.  Then we did things like
benchmark it
using a 10MB Ethernet hub, benchmark it again with a 10MB ethernet switch,
and again with a 100MB switch, and compare the numbers...

So, anybody who's reasonably familiar with PC hardware and Linux will find
HPC-110
pretty boring at first, but I think pretty much anybody would find the
actual
cluster building interesting, if they haven't done it before.  And anybody
who takes
this class who does already know Linux and hardware well, can pretty much
consider it
an easy A, to pad the ole GPA a little. :-)


This semester, I'm taking HPC-130 "Introduction to HPC Communcation" and
HPC-140
"Introduction to HPC Architecture."  The architecture class is basically an
operating
systems class, dealing with the design of Unix. In fact, the book for the
course
is "The Design Of the Unix Operating System" by Maurice J. Bach.
Interestingly enough,
this book is being used for a 100 series class in an associate degree
program... and our
instructor says it's the same book he used in his Operating Systems course
in his
Masters degree program.  Go figure.  We haven't had our first class meeting
yet in the
Communication class, but looking at the book tends to make me believe it's
going to be
a pretty basic "intro to networking" type class... the book doesn't really
go into anything
HPC specific, as far as I can tell.


> The curriculum looks interesting, at the very least.
> http://www.waketech.edu/curred/cis/hpcday.html

For anybody too lazy to click through, here's a sampling of some of the
classes in
the program:

NET-145 - Introduction to Linux
CSC-125 - Introduction to Parallel Programming
NET-155 - Linux System Administration
HPC-162 - HPC Security
CSC-229 - MPI Programming
HPC-150 - HPC Networking Technology
HPC-262 - Advanced HPC Security
CSC-252 - Advanced Parallel Programming
CSC-275 - HPC Algorithms

and some of the electives include gems like:

CSC-160 - Perl Programming
NET-165 - Linux / Networking Security
ITN-150 - Internet Protocols
OSS-120 - Introduction to AIX
OSS-160 - AIX System Administration
SGR-110 - Scientific Graphics

etc.

Basically, there are some really cool classes that are part of this
program.  For the first time in a while, I'm actually kinda
excited about taking classes. :-)


> Thanks for the info!

Anytime.

Phil