IN 4026 Examination guide

Note: To pass the course you need to have a

sufficient grade for the written exam (Part
I+II) and passed the labcourse.
Part I (Q3: Architectures)
Required materialThe following course material is required to
prepare yourself for the examination of Part I:
The contents of the Lectures 1- 7 in Q3 as presented in the
power point slides;
2.
The Chapters 1 to 5 from Grama et al (from Chapter 3 only
Sections 3.1 and 3.6).
ChecklistTo give you an idea about the topics we expect you to have
been mastered, the following list serves as a checklistduring the
preparation for the examination.You should be able
1.

the architecture and properties of the various parallel architectures,

including abstractions such as PRAM;

to understand, explain and apply basic complexity notation;

to have a basic knowledge of the topology of static and dynamic

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networks and their properties (diameter, connectivity, bisection,

cost);
be able to analyze communication costs in parallel machines using
either store-and-forward or cut-through routing techniques;
be able to analyze these communications costs for basic
communication operations;
understand, explain, and apply basic performance metrics in
analytical modeling of parallel programs;
understand, explain, and apply basic scalability metrics of parallel
systems;
understand the principles of the decomposition and mapping
process from parallel program to parallel machine.

Part II (Q4: Algorithms)

Required materialThe following course material is required to
prepare yourself for the examination of Part II:
Handout of Chapter 1 (Introduction) from Jaja, except for Section 1.7
Handout of Chapter 2 (Basic Techniques) from Jaja, except for

sections 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.7.3

Handout of Chapter 8 (Arithmetic Computations) from Jaja, Section

8.1 - 8.2.1 only

The contents of the Lectures 1- 7 as presented in the power point
slides;

Lecture 1, 2, all slides

Lecture 3, all slides except slides 34+35

Lecture 4, all slides

Lecture 5, all slides

Lecture 6, slide 13-23 only

Lecture 7, slide 15-23 (test exam)

ChecklistTo give you an idea about the topics we expect you to have
been mastered, the following list serves as a checklist during the
preparation for the examination.
You should be able
to understand, explain, and apply basic principles of parallel

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algorithmssuch as balanced trees, divide and conquer,

partitioning, pipelining,and accelerated cascading;
present and analyze algorithms using the WT-framework;
construct and analyze various algorithms for matrix and vector
operations;
develop and analyze parallell algorithms for linear (matrix)
recurrences;
understand, analyse and apply sorting networks.
understand, analyse and apply merge-sort algorithms

Additional Information
If you need additional information about algorithmic principles and
techniques we have taken for granted in this course you might consult
the following literature:
T.H.Cormen,C.E.Leiserson,and R.L.Rivest. Introduction to Algorithms.

MIT Press, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1990.This book is an

excellent introduction to basic algorithmic techniques; if you are
not that familiar with solving recurrence relations needed for
determining worst case complexity of algorithms or you want to
know more about the big -O notation, this is definitely the book
for you.
J. Kleinberg & Eva Tardos, Algorithmic Design, Addison Wesley, 883

pages, 2006This book is used in our computer science bachelor

curriculum and provides all the basic algorithmic stuff you should
familiar with.
G. Brassard and P. Bratley, Fundamentals of Algorithmics, PrenticeHall, Englewood Cliffs, 524 pages, 1996.Another nice introduction
to algorithmic techniques.