252-0029-00L Parallel Programming

FS 2025

T. Hoefler, B. Solenthaler

Basic Information

  • Semester: Spring 2025
  • Course Number: 252-0029-00L
  • Lecturers: T. Hoefler, B. Solenthaler
  • Edoz: Open in Course Catalogue
  • Lectures: Mo 10:15-12:00 and Tue 10:15-12:00 both in HG F 5 and HG F7
  • Exercises: Wed 16:15-18:00, Fri 10:15-12:00
  • Head TAs: Philine Witzig (first part), Timo Schneider (second part)
  • TAs: Lasse Lingens,  Till Schnabel,  Yingyan Xu,  Michael Baumgartner,  Jackson Stanhope,  Davide Corigliano,  Sergio Sancho 

News:

  • 05.02.25: The website is online

Overview

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to parallel programming. By the end of the course students will be able to design and implement working parallel programs in traditional (e.g., Java Threads) and emerging parallel programming models. Moreover, students will master fundamental concepts in parallelism and be able to reason about the correctness, performance, and the construction of parallel programs using different parallel programming paradigms (e.g., task parallelism, data parallelism) and mechanisms (e.g., threads, tasks, locks, communication channels). Finally, the course will examine how parallel programming methodologies can be applied in different algorithmic domains by investigating parallelization of algorithms.

Topics include:

  • Basic parallel programming concepts
  • Parallel programming using Java
  • Synchronization techniques
  • Case studies of building parallel programs starting from sequential algorithms

Course Content

Main text and reference book

  • Introduction to Java Programming, 2014. Daniel Liang. ISBN-13: 9780133813463
  • Java Concurrency in Practice, 2006. Brian Goetz, Tim Peierls, Joshua Bloch, Joseph Bowbeer, David Holmes, Doug Lea. ISBN-13: 9780321349606
  • The Art of Multiprocessor Programming, 2011. Maurice Herlihy, Nir Shavit. Morgan Kaufmann. Also available online in the ETH network.

Related resources, text and reference books

  • Sophomoric Parallelism and Concurrency (from: spac)
  • The Little Book of Semaphores
  • Programming concurrency on the JVM, 2011. Venkat Subramaniam
  • Structured Parallel Programming: Patterns for Efficient Computation, 2012. Michael McCool, Arch Robison, James Reinders.
  • Patterns for Parallel Programming, 2004. Timothy G. Mattson, Beverly A. Sanders, Berna L. Massingill.
  • A minicourse on multithreaded programming. Charles E. Leiserson, Harald Prokop.
  • (Optional) Inside the Java Virtual Machine. 2000. Bill Venners.

Introduction to Java books (freely available)

  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, 2012. Allen B. Downey.
  • Introduction to Programming Using Java, 2011. David J. Eck.

All material is available on Moodle.

  DateTitle
  Feb 17 Introduction & Course Overview
  Feb 18 Java Recap and JVM Overview
  Feb 24 Introduction to Threads and Synchronization (Part I)
  Feb 25 Introduction to Threads and Synchronization (Part II)
  Mar 3 Introduction to Threads and Synchronization (Part III)
  Mar 4 Parallel Architectures: Parallelism on the Hardware Level
  Mar 10 Basic Concepts in Parallelism
  Mar 11 Divide & Conquer and Executor Service
  Mar 17 DAG and ForkJoin Framework
  Mar 18 Parallel Algorithms (Part I)
  Mar 24 Parallel Algorithms (Part II)
  Mar 25 Shared Memory Concurrency, Locks and Data Races
  Mar 31 Virtual Threads
  Apr 01 Exam Preparation (First Half)

Exercises

All material (exercise slides and exercises) is available on Moodle.

All exercises start in the first week of the semester.

Wednesday 16:15 - 18:00

  • Group G-01 (Till Schnabel, German, Focus Group): ETZ E 8
  • Group G-02 (Michael Baumgartner, German): ETZ F 91
  • Group G-03 (Lasse Lingens, German): CHN D 48
  • Group G-04 (Jackson Stanhope, English): CHN E 42
  • Group G-06 (Benjamin Gruzman, German): ETZ H 91
  • Group G-07 (Jonas Wetzel, German): LFW C 11
  • Group G-08 (Vera Schubert, German, Focus Group): ETZ K 91
  • Group G-09 (Erxuan Li, German, Focus Group): ML J 34.3
  • Group G-10 (Laurence Zwahlen, German): LFW C 1

Friday 10:15 - 12:00

  • Group G-05 (Erxuan Li, German, Focus Group): LFW B 2
  • Group G-11 (Michael Baumgartner, German): HG G 26.5
  • Group G-12 (Lasse Lingens, German): ML J 34.1
  • Group G-13 (Jackson Stanhope, English): NO D 11
  • Group G-14 (Benjamin Gruzman, German): CHN D 42
  • Group G-15 (Davide Corigliano, English, Focus Group): LFW C 1
  • Group G-16 (Laurence Zwahlen, German): ML H 34.3
  • Group G-17 (Till Schnabel, German, Focus Group): CLA E 4
  • Group G-18 (Jonas Wetzel, German): IFW C 31
  • Group G-19 (Vera Schubert, German, Focus Group): NO E 11

Exercises

WeekTitleDue Date
  1 Introduction 24.02.2025
  2 Introduction to Multi-threading 03.03.2025
  3 Multi-threading 10.03.2025
  4 Parallel Models 17.03.2025
  5 Divide and Conquer 24.03.2025
  6 Task Parallelism 31.03.2025
  7 Synchronization and Resource Sharing 07.04.2025

Exams and Grading

There is a written, centralized exam after the end of the semester. Exercise sessions are not graded.

  • 100% of grade determined by final Exam