> Wow! I don't know how this one slipped thru the cracks, but I just > landed on it by accident. Heh. I was actually kinda surprised there wasn't more response to this originally. I figured somebody would at least response with a "Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of..." joke. LOL > This sounds like a really cool program and perhaps, as Phil mentioned, > a wise career investment. I would hope there was a focus on real > "hands-on" learning and testing, lest it become another > pseudo-cert-like piece of paper that only impresses the most out of > touch PHBs. I found it interesting enough that I went ahead and enrolled in the program. I was already at Wake Tech doing a Computer Programming degree, and am almost finished with that... so I went ahead and had them sign me up for HPC and I'm overlapping the two programs the next two semesters, until I finish my programming degree. I'm going to go ahead and go the extra year or so to get the HPC degree as well. Last semester, I took their HPC-110 "Introduction to High Performance Computing" class. It was pretty interesting. There was a lot of discussion about basic PC hardware which I found pretty boring, since I've been building PC's for about 8 or 9 years now, and am A+ and Network+ certified already... but once the class got into the hands-on part, it got interesting. We installed Linux on the machines, installed the Beowulf software (using Oscar or Scyld), and actually configured a small three node Beowulf. Then we compiled and ran some (pre-written) parallel programs, and ran some benchmarks to measure the performance of the cluster. Then we did things like benchmark it using a 10MB Ethernet hub, benchmark it again with a 10MB ethernet switch, and again with a 100MB switch, and compare the numbers... So, anybody who's reasonably familiar with PC hardware and Linux will find HPC-110 pretty boring at first, but I think pretty much anybody would find the actual cluster building interesting, if they haven't done it before. And anybody who takes this class who does already know Linux and hardware well, can pretty much consider it an easy A, to pad the ole GPA a little. :-) This semester, I'm taking HPC-130 "Introduction to HPC Communcation" and HPC-140 "Introduction to HPC Architecture." The architecture class is basically an operating systems class, dealing with the design of Unix. In fact, the book for the course is "The Design Of the Unix Operating System" by Maurice J. Bach. Interestingly enough, this book is being used for a 100 series class in an associate degree program... and our instructor says it's the same book he used in his Operating Systems course in his Masters degree program. Go figure. We haven't had our first class meeting yet in the Communication class, but looking at the book tends to make me believe it's going to be a pretty basic "intro to networking" type class... the book doesn't really go into anything HPC specific, as far as I can tell. > The curriculum looks interesting, at the very least. > http://www.waketech.edu/curred/cis/hpcday.html For anybody too lazy to click through, here's a sampling of some of the classes in the program: NET-145 - Introduction to Linux CSC-125 - Introduction to Parallel Programming NET-155 - Linux System Administration HPC-162 - HPC Security CSC-229 - MPI Programming HPC-150 - HPC Networking Technology HPC-262 - Advanced HPC Security CSC-252 - Advanced Parallel Programming CSC-275 - HPC Algorithms and some of the electives include gems like: CSC-160 - Perl Programming NET-165 - Linux / Networking Security ITN-150 - Internet Protocols OSS-120 - Introduction to AIX OSS-160 - AIX System Administration SGR-110 - Scientific Graphics etc. Basically, there are some really cool classes that are part of this program. For the first time in a while, I'm actually kinda excited about taking classes. :-) > Thanks for the info! Anytime. Phil -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
