Is my code fast? Can it be faster? Scientific computing, machine learning, and data science are about solving problems that are compute intensive. Choosing the right algorithm, extracting parallelism at various levels, and amortizing the cost of data movement are vital to achieving scalable speedup and high performance. In this course, the simple but important example of matrix-matrix multiplication is used to illustrate fundamental techniques for attaining high-performance on modern CPUs. A carefully designed and scaffolded sequence of exercises leads the learner from a naive implementation to one that effectively utilizes instruction level parallelism and culminates in a high-performance multithreaded implementation. Along the way, it is discovered that careful attention to data movement is key to efficient computing. Prerequisites for this course are a basic understanding of matrix computations (roughly equivalent toWeeks 1-5 of Linear Algebra: Foundations to Frontiers on edX) and an exposure to programming. Hands-on exercises start with skeletal code in the C programming language that is progressively modified, so that extensive experience with C is not required. Access to a relatively recent x86 processor such as Intel Haswell or AMD Ryzen (or newer) running Linux is required. MATLAB Online licenses will be made available to the participants free of charge for the duration of the course. Join us to satisfy your need for speed!
An excellent online course offered by edX: how it works
edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practise the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. Where applicable, online laboratories are incorporated into the course.
edX offers certificates of successful completion and some courses are credit-eligible. Whether or not a college or university offers credit for an online course is within the sole discretion of the school. edX offers a variety of ways to take courses, including verified courses where students have the option to audit the course (no cost) or to work toward an edX Verified Certificate (fees vary by course). edX also offers XSeries Certificates for completion of a bundled set of two to seven verified courses in a single subject (cost varies depending on the courses).
An edX learning programme under Other Experiences
