[AG-TECH] Autumn AG Parallel Computing Course

[Don Morton]

This message is targeted at Department of Energy Labs and
universities in Department of Energy EPSCoR states (I'm
pretty sure these are the same states in NSF EPSCoR).

I am teaching a "High Performance Computing for Scientists"
course at the 400-level (advanced undergrad / beginning 
graduate) this autumn in our AG room and, I figure I might
as well try some outreach with the AGN.  This course will
be modelled in large part after the course that we collaborated
in last fall with University of Alaska (ARSC) and University of
New Mexico (UNM) and is aimed at teaching scientists with
elementary programming skills about parallel programming
(primarily using MPI and Open MP).

For this autumn, it's possible that we might have some Department
of Energy funding available to offer the instruction to folks
in DOE EPSCoR sites and DOE labs as a continuing experiment.
If this worked out, we would make the course available to 
4-5 sites at no cost to them.  Remote attendees would be treated
like regular students in the class (including feedback on 
assignments) but, of course, we would not be able to offer UM 
college credit (two reasons for this - first, I'm still not
comfortable enough with AG "emergency procedures" to be offering
a course to paying students, then have the network crap out for
a week and, given that this is still experimental, I want to keep
the admin issues down to a minimum).

My primary motivations are

- Provide outreach training in parallel programming for Joe/Jane
  Sixpack Scientist who stand to gain from a having a better
  understanding of this topic, but might not otherwise have
  access to such training.

- Continue to experiment with course delivery over the AG.  Those of
  you who went to the AG Retreat saw that there are still a lot
  of issues to be resolved.  

- Find ways for the Great Snowy State of Montana to contribute in
  the Global Village (of course, I'm, at this moment, in the Great
  Balmy State of Alaska, and passed through scorching Seattle
  yesterday where it was 96F at Sea-Tac!  Hope you enjoyed the
  heat, Randy!)

Ideally, we would have an even mix of 2-3 DOE labs and 2-3 DOE
EPSCoR universities, each with 1-4 attendees.  If you are in this
category and are potentially interested and would like to be kept
notified, would you please let me know?

Thanks,

Don
-- 
   Don Morton                      http://www.cs.umt.edu/~morton/
   Department of Computer Science       The University of Montana
   Missoula, MT 59812 | Voice (406) 243-4975 | Fax (406) 243-5139