Note
This is the planned sequence for Fall 2026. Topics may shift as the semester develops; assignment and exam dates will be added before classes begin. The official Wofford holidays are already included.
Classes begin Wednesday, September 2. Because this course follows a Tuesday/Thursday pattern, our first planned meeting is Thursday, September 3.
Foundations
Week 1 · September 2–4
- Thursday, September 3: Course introduction; why parallel computing?
- Prepare: Read the syllabus and textbook Chapter 1
Week 2 · September 7–11
- Tuesday: C refresher and the Linux development workflow
- Thursday: Measuring performance and identifying parallel work
Week 3 · September 14–18
- Tuesday: Parallel architectures and decomposition
- Thursday: Distributed-memory programming with MPI
Distributed memory
Week 4 · September 21–25
- Tuesday: MPI processes and point-to-point communication
- Thursday: Collective communication
Week 5 · September 28–October 2
- Tuesday: Data distribution and reduction
- Thursday: Measuring communication cost
Week 6 · October 5–9
- Tuesday: MPI program design
- Thursday: MPI performance workshop
Week 7 · October 12–16
- Tuesday: Cluster architecture and remote workflows
- Thursday: Midterm exam 1 (planned)
Supercomputing and hybrid programs
Week 12 · November 16–20
- Tuesday: Supercomputer architecture and allocation basics
- Thursday: SLURM jobs and reproducible runs
Week 13 · November 23–27
- Monday–Friday: Thanksgiving Holiday — no class
Week 14 · November 30–December 4
- Tuesday: Running and monitoring jobs on a supercomputer
- Thursday: Scaling experiments and performance reports
Week 15 · December 7–11
- Tuesday: Hybrid MPI + OpenMP programming
- Thursday: Course synthesis and final review
Final examinations · December 14–17
The final-exam date and time will be added after the College publishes the applicable section schedule.