About the Course/Instructor
CSC 213 - Operating Systems and Parallel Algorthms - Professor Jerod
Weinman
1 About the Course
- Q:
- When will we be using the NVIDIA GPUs? And how much parallel
programming will we be doing on both the GPUs, and standard C on the
old fashioned CPU?
- A:
- We'll do one lab in weeks 10-12 on the GPU. Many other labs
will be parallelized on the multicore CPUs.
- Q:
- Also, I was wondering if you would address the average or
expected length (wrt to time spent) for laboratory assignments in
the class. I'm sure it is variable, as there are labs with multiple
parts, but I was just curious (if there's even a meaningful answer).
- A:
- This is a great question. While I hope the coding of the assignments
are straightforward, debugging race conditions can be tricky and will
require careful thought, discussion with your partner, and perhaps
prompt interaction with the mentor or the instructor. Write-ups are
not designed to be big ordeals, but practicing the discipline by explaining
empirical results is just as important as writing code. (That didn't
answer your question directlly-I welcome statements of the form "We
spent X amount of time on this lab" in your submissions.)
- Q:
- Will they be holding review sessions prior to the exams and
the final?
- A:
- Good question! I bet that can be arranged.
- Q:
- Do we need to write a very small and basic OS for this class?
- A:
- We won't be writing an entire OS. You'll write a shell, and
otherwise deploy your understanding of OS concepts.
- Q:
- What will the non lab homework assignments look like?
- A:
- Reading journals.
- Q:
- Can you give a couple example topics for Significant Bits
talks?
- A:
- Follow the links given on the SigBits page - there are systems
developments happening every day! Some of the talks from the last
time I taught the course (four years ago), were the debut of Google's
chrome browser (and how it handled threading versus processes), GPGPU
computing (one of my favorites from that semester due to its cleverness),
ZFS, chaotic logic gates, a new branch prediction technique, etc..
2 About Me
- Q:
- What are some hobbies you have? And what do you like to do
in your free time(if it's not too personal)?
- A:
- I barbecue whenever I can (including Turkish!). I've started
reading a lot of fiction as of February before last. I usually read
a novel every week or two. (This week I finished Robert Harris's The
Fear Index, which was not nearly as good as Neal Stephenson's REAMDE.)
I don't usually read Sci-Fi, but I like a good thriller and other
novels that take me to new places. I also like to fish from my kayak
or small motorboat (both are 14').
- Q:
- As a computer science student, should I focus more on academic
stuff like algorithms, or more applied things like application development?
(Its more like a life question.)
- A:
- One thing Grinnell does well is teach you the fundamentals
of computing very well (i.e., algorithms and theory), while also giving
you some practical design experience (i.e., in 323 and 325). Your
critical thinking and writing skills will enable you to learn specifics
of application development, which are changing constantly.
- Q:
- You were a visiting professor at another college this past
year, right? Where was that and what cool things were you doing?
- A:
- Yup! I was at UMass Amherst doing vision research, submitted
a journal article on scene text recognition and continued to develop
my project on making historical map images searchable for scholars
(or the curious).
- Q:
- I dont have any questions pertaining directly
to the course, but I am interested in knowing what got you interested
in computer science.
- A:
- Mostly I'm a guy who likes constructive, logical thinking,
solving problems, and building things. There's a certain amount of
creativity to the whole thing to, that helps keep me balanced.
- Q:
- And do you know the gender of your baby yet?
- A:
- Nope.
- Q:
- What is one of the more important ethical questions to be
asked of/about the field of artificial intelligence?
- A:
- Oooh! I love that question. I teach a whole tutorial on it.
I think the question of moral responsibility in agency is fundamental.
This summer Sebastian Thrun was asked (at CVPR 2012) "Who's responsible
when a Google self-driving car crashes?" I was horribly disappointed
by his (non)answer. "We just have to engineer them well enough so
they don't." (A paraphrase, but not far from his original remarks.)
- Q:
- Why do the colored girls go doo do doo do doo do do doo?
- A:
- Probably ought to ask Mr. Reed.