Course syllabus for Parallel functional programming

The course syllabus contains changes
See changes

Course syllabus adopted 2021-02-26 by Head of Programme (or corresponding).

Overview

  • Swedish nameParallell funktionell programmering
  • CodeDAT280
  • Credits7.5 Credits
  • OwnerMPALG
  • Education cycleSecond-cycle
  • Main field of studyComputer Science and Engineering, Software Engineering
  • DepartmentCOMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
  • GradingTH - Pass with distinction (5), Pass with credit (4), Pass (3), Fail

Course round 1

  • Teaching language English
  • Application code 02133
  • Block schedule
  • Open for exchange studentsYes

Credit distribution

0112 Examination 6 c
Grading: TH		0 c0 c0 c6 c0 c0 c
  • 31 Maj 2024 am J
  • 22 Aug 2024 pm J
0212 Laboratory 1.5 c
Grading: UG		0 c0 c0 c1.5 c0 c0 c

In programmes

Examiner

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Eligibility

General entry requirements for Master's level (second cycle)
Applicants enrolled in a programme at Chalmers where the course is included in the study programme are exempted from fulfilling the requirements above.

Specific entry requirements

English 6 (or by other approved means with the equivalent proficiency level)
Applicants enrolled in a programme at Chalmers where the course is included in the study programme are exempted from fulfilling the requirements above.

Course specific prerequisites

The requirement for the course is to have successfully completed two years within the subject Computer Science or equivalent. Course participants must also have completed an introductory course in Functional programming, preferably using Haskell or Erlang. (Examples at Chalmers are TDA452 and TDA555).

Aim

The aim of the course is to introduce the principles and practice of parallel programming in a functional programming language. By parallel programming, we mean programming using multiple hardware cores or processors in order to gain speed. The course covers approaches to parallel functional programming in both Haskell and Erlang. It covers current research on these topics, and relies heavily on scientific papers as its source materials.

Learning outcomes (after completion of the course the student should be able to)

Knowledge and understanding 1. Distinguish between concurrency and parallelism. 2. Give an overview of approaches to parallelism in functional programming languages in the scientific literature. Skills and abilities 1. Write, modify and test parallel functional programs, to run on a variety of architectures such as shared memory multiprocessors, networks of commodity servers, and GPUs. 2. Interpret parallelism profiles and address bottlenecks. Judgement and approach 1. Identify when using a functional language may be appropriate for solving a parallel programming problem. 2. Select an appropriate form of parallel functional programming for a given problem, and expain the choice.

Content

The course covers the principles and practice of parallel programming in both Haskell and Erlang. Advantages of functional approaches to parallelism: immutability, absence of data races, determinism. Profiling parallel functional programs: granularity, bottlenecks, locality, data-dependencies. Parallel functional algorithms: divide-and-conquer. Approaches to expressing parallelism in Haskell: the Eval monad, the Par monad, parallel strategies, skeletons, data parallelism. Functional approaches to GPU programming. Parallelisation and distribution for Erlang. Scalability. Handling errors in a massively parallel system. Case studies of industrial parallel functional programming, such as map-reduce and scalable no-SQL databases. Guest lectures by leading researchers and practitioners.

Organisation

The course is given in the form of lectures by Chalmers staff and by external experts. Students complete obligatory laboratory assignments.

Literature

Selected scientific papers. See the course home page.

Examination including compulsory elements

The grade is determined by performance on a written exam. Completion of obligatory laboratory assignments is also necessary for a pass.

The course examiner may assess individual students in other ways than what is stated above if there are special reasons for doing so, for example if a student has a decision from Chalmers on educational support due to disability.

The course syllabus contains changes

  • Changes to course rounds:
    • 2023-11-30: Examinator Examinator changed from Mary Sheeran (ms) to John Hughes (rjmh) by Viceprefekt
      [Course round 1]