Purpose:
The purpose of our seminar series is to familiarize ourselves with recent and important research topics and advances in the field. This research oriented study has numerous advantages. To name only a few would be the ability to use your background knowledge for further study in an area, preparation for graduate level research, familiarity with recent advances in the field, self study in an interest area, and the opportunity to communicate research ideas to others.

Projects will be carried out by individuals You will be graded based on your work, organization, and clarity of your presentation. Depending on the number of students in class, we may form teams per projects/topics.

You may select a research topic to investigate and present to class or may choose a project to implement on a parallel computer.

Your proposal should be one typed page long describing the project briefly complete with references. It should describe what will be covered in your project.

Research Paper:
Propose a topic to study in depth. You may investigate parallel architectures, languages, compilers, algorithms, performance modeling, operating systems, synchronization mechanisms, etc. See the general topics provided.

Research Project:
Propose a project to be implemented on one or more parallel computers that you have access on. You may choose to implement an algorithm using different languages on the same or different machines, measure performance of different implementations, develop a set of bench marks, study system affects of specific architecture on performance such as caching, paging, latency, etc.

A report in your own wording on the final project is needed. For programming projects I would need an E-mail copy of the program, test data sets, and instructions for running the program. The report must explain your methods, findings, comparisons, and your learning experience. An adequate list of references should be included with each project.

Presentation:
We will organize and schedule the presentations by topics.

Propose a research project to be completed by the starting date of research presentations.
Use the seminar preparation guide (included in this hand out) to help prepare your presentation.

While preparing for your presentation, keep the following questions in mind. These are provided to give guidance for your presentation effectiveness. After you are prepared, grade yourself with a number between 0-10 on each question and give an overall letter grade (A-F) on each of the 3 areas.

I. Communication [Letter Grade =}
 

 1. Is the “problem” defined clearly?
 2. Are explanations clear?
 3. Is it clear how the system was developed?
             (i.e.: Language, Architecture, Commercial Software, Algorithms,....)
 4. Is the material well organized? (Both individual and team work)
 5. Effective visual aids?
 6. Creative and interesting?

II. Research [Letter Grade=]
 

  1. Good knowledge of the field?
  2. Clear comparison between well known related systems or topics?
  3. Has clearly identified the technical successes, failures, and limitations of their system?
 4. Relates clearly and precisely to Parallel Processing problems?
 5. Specific references to material discussed in class?
 6. Appropriate and accurate use of technical words?

III. Analysis   [Letter Grade=]
 

 1. Problem is well analyzed, bringing out the critical issues?
 2. Use of graphs, charts, statistics, equations, examples, etc.?
 3. Logical structure of the problem is well analyzed?
 4. Distinction made clearly between the use of logic versus the use of probability?