Transfer of Science or Research, Studies and teaching

Instructing the course in English will be Dr. Peter Tröger, a senior researcher in the HPI research group Operating Systems and Middleware. Online registration for the course is already open at: https://openhpi.de/course/parprog2014.

“The new course will present the essential theoretical and practical foundations of parallel programming,” said Tröger. Participants will learn about important concepts such as synchronization, concurrency and deadlock, while also being introduced to the architecture of modern parallel hardware. Further topics covered will include programming models, message-oriented coordination, functional programming, programming patterns and typical optimizations.

“The course is aimed at anyone who wishes to gain a greater understanding of the fundamentals of parallel programming, without being forced to choose a specific programming language. Participants should have a basic knowledge of software development; there are no further prerequisites,” said the HPI researcher. Tröger and doctoral candidate Frank Feinbube are also giving a lecture course at HPI on parallel programming during the current winter semester.

Processing cores are increasingly used in game consoles and computer systems

The subject is particularly relevant because manufacturers of the latest generation of game consoles and producers of state-of-the-art supercomputers are increasingly integrating processing cores into computer systems. There is a good reason for this: the laws of physics prevent the speed of a single processing core from being increased much further. When applied correctly, parallel processing techniques that use multiple processors can achieve a huge improvement in performance, for example when it comes to analyzing vast amounts of business or medical data rapidly or in areas such as weather forecasting or computer games.

Researchers can try out and assess the latest generation of such hardware and software solutions free of charge in an HPI laboratory. HPI offers a unique combination of state-of-the-art hardware that is unrivalled anywhere in the world, for example a 1,000 core cluster with 25 terabytes of memory capacity and the latest accelerator cards.

The Internet educational platform openHPI.de has already had some 95,000 enrolments for its free, six-week-long massive open online courses (MOOCs). Almost 60,000 active online learners from more than 114 countries have registered on the learning site. HPI is inviting the 100,000th person to enroll to attend the openHPI Forum, which will take place on February 21, 2014 in Potsdam, Germany. The event will provide an opportunity for those interested in developing and implementing online learning resources to meet with experts from this field.

openHPI: Modelled on massive open online courses (MOOCs)

HPI’s Internet educational platform, openhpi.de, offers free, open-access online courses that attract large numbers of participants. There are no admission requirements. What makes the platform unique worldwide is its focus on information technology and computer science and the fact that the courses are taught in both German and English. openHPI follows in the footsteps of massive open online courses, which have been offered since 2011, first at Stanford University and then at other leading U.S. universities.

In contrast to “traditional” lecture portals, courses at openhpi.de follow a fixed six-week syllabus with a defined set of educational content such as instructional videos, texts, self-tests, regular homework and exam questions. These offerings are integrated into a social platform where participants have the opportunity to interact with instructors and fellow learners, get answers to questions and discuss topics in depth. The participants decide themselves about the type and scope of their learning activities. They are able to make their own contributions to the course, for example in blog posts or tweets, which they can announce in the forum. Other learners then have the chance to comment on, discuss or expand on what has been said. Learners, teachers and content thus become linked with each other in a social learning network.

About the Hasso Plattner Institute

The Hasso Plattner Institute for Software Systems Engineering GmbH (HPI) in Potsdam is Germany’s university excellence center for IT Systems Engineering. It is the only university institution in Germany to offer a bachelor’s and a master’s degree program in IT Systems Engineering – a practical and engineering-oriented study program in computer science, in which 470 students are currently enrolled. The HPI School of Design Thinking is Europe’s first innovation school and modeled on the Stanford d.school. It offers 240 places per year on its postgraduate program. A total of ten HPI professors and over 50 visiting professors, lecturers and contract teachers work at the Institute. HPI carries out research noted for its high standard of excellence in its nine topic areas, as well as at the HPI Research School for PhD candidates, which has research branches in Cape Town, Haifa and Nanjing. HPI teaching and research focus on the foundations and applications of large-scale, highly complex and interconnected IT systems. The development and exploration of user-driven innovations for all sectors of life is an additional area of importance. HPI always earns the highest positions in the CHE university rankings.

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Weitere Informationen:
https://openhpi.de/course/parprog2014 - Login for the new openHPI Course
http://www.openHPI.de - Educational Internet platform of the German Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam