The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is offering a new Web-based course, “Introduction to Multi-core Performance.” This tutorial helps current and prospective users of multi-core systems understand and use the technology to accelerate their research. Multi-core processors, which hold the promise of enhanced performance and more efficient parallel processing, are a key stepping stone on the path to petascale computation. Applications that run on multi-core systems must be optimized to take full advantage of the improved performance offered by multi-core technology.
The introductory tutorial covers topics on terminology, cache performance, multi-core and cache effects with respect to MPI using simple MPI benchmarks, and application optimization. Each section offers a statement of objectives and a brief introduction. The examples that are provided throughout the tutorial were run on three TeraGrid systems with multi-core processors, each consisting of many multi-core machines assembled as a Linux cluster. Self-tests help users check their understanding of the material presented.
