15-495 Spring '02
Notes on Assignments and Exams

You will run your programs for the assignments on SGI Origin 2000 machines at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). More information about these machines can be found here.

In the following, the term HOME495 refers to the home directory for the course, namely /afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15495-s02/public.

The following information is in reverse order of assignment, i.e., the most recent assignment appears first.

Exam 2

• Exam 2 will be held on Tuesday, April 23rd, from 9:00am-10:20am.
• The exam will be open-book, open-notes.
• The exam will focus on the lecture materials that have been covered since Exam 1. This includes the notes that were handed out in class as well as the following chapters in the book (note that there have been a few changes relative to the original course syllabus):
  • Ch 6.1-7, Ch 5.5, Ch 7.9, Ch 8.8, Ch 7.1-8, Ch 11.1, Ch 11.6, Ch 10.1-10, Ch 11.7-9.
• It would be a good idea to bring a calculator to the exam.

Exam 1

• Exam 1 will be held on Tuesday, March 5th, from 9:00am-10:20am.
• The exam will be open-book, open-notes.
• The exam will cover all of the lecture materials that have been presented so far in class. This includes the notes that were handed out in class as well as the following chapters in the book (note that there have been a few changes relative to the original course syllabus):
  • Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4.1, Ch 4.3, Ch 5.1-5.4, Ch 8.1-8.2, Ch 9.1.
• Here are some exercises in the book that may help you study for the exam:
  • Ex 4.2, Ex 4.6, Ex 4.11, Ex 5.2, Ex 5.3, Ex 5.4, Ex 8.3, Ex 8.7, Ex 9.15, Ex 9.20, Ex 9.21.
  • NOTE: It is not necessary to complete all of these exercises to be ready for the exam, and unfortunately we will not be able to hand out solutions to them prior to the exam. However, feeling confident about answering these questions should help you feel confident going into the exam.
• It would be a good idea to bring a calculator to the exam.

Assignment 3 (ps, pdf)

• Issued on Tuesday, Feb. 19; due on Thurssday, Feb. 28, 9:00AM.
• The files you need for this assignment can be found in the directory HOME495/asst/asst3.
• Input files can be found in HOME495/asst/asst3/input
  • NOTE: Rather than using the "distances" file (which contains only 12 cities), please use a larger problem size to get longer execution times: either dist13 or dist14.
• The problem you are solving for this assignment is the same as that for Assignment 2 (except the programming model is different), so everything said below about the input applies here as well.

Assignment 2 (ps, pdf)

• Issued on Thursday, Feb. 7; due on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 9:00AM.
• The files you need for this assignment can be found in the directory HOME495/asst/asst2.
• Input files can be found in HOME495/asst/asst2/input:
  • Start with smaller input files when you are debugging your code (e.g., dist4) before working your way up to 12 cities (distances).
  • Feel free to also try the larger input files beyond 12 cities: i.e. dist13 and dist14.
  • The citylocations file shows the coordinates of the cities in 2D space, in case you are curious. (You do not need this information for your program.)

Assignment 1 (ps, pdf)

• Issued on Tuesday, Jan. 29; due on Thursday, Feb. 7, 9:00AM.
• The files you need for this assignment can be found in the directory HOME495/asst/asst1.
• Here are some useful links regarding the NCSA Origin machines that you will be using in this assignment:
  • NCSA SGI Cray Origin2000 top-level info page
  • Architecture and configuration of the Origin machines
  • Running jobs on the Origins
  • FAQs:
    • Technical Summary
    • Running Jobs

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