[Beowulf] RE: programming multicore clusters

[Joe Landman]

Greg Lindahl wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 09:57:08AM -0400, Joe Landman wrote:
> 
>> First, shared memory is nice and simple as a programming model. 
> 
> Uhuh. You know, there are some studies going where students learning
> parallel programming do the same algorithm with MPI and with shared
> memory. Would you like to make a bet as to whether they found shared
> memory much easier?

I don't know which "studies" you are referring to.  Having taught 
multiple graduate level courses on MPI/OpenMP programming, I can tell 
you what I observed from my students.  They largely just "get" OpenMP. 
It won't get them great overall performance, as there aren't many large 
multiprocessor SMPs around for them to work on.  Be that as it may, they 
had little problem developing good code.  Compare this to MPI, and these 
same exact students had a difficult time of it.


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Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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