This will be the first in a series of workshops on Parallel Programming as part of the iHub Cluster's efforts to spread use of HPC's in Kenya's markets. The session starts at 9 am and ends at 12 pm at the iHub Cluster, 1st Floor, Bishop Magua building. Snacks will be served. There will be a short overview presentation on what the Cluster has been up to, which projects are running and how you can help. 

The workshops will be conducted by Conrad Akunga, a seasoned entrepreneur, Software Developer who is also a Microsoft MVP (Most Valued Professional) for several years running. 

• • What is parallel programming
  • • Need for performance
    • Barriers in traditional programming
    • Concurrency, parallelism & distribution
    • Opportunities (security, data mining, AI, multimedia, modeling, etc)
      
  • Parallel hardware and software
  • • Basics (caches, memory, instruction parallelism)
    • Processes, tasks & threads
    • SIMD, MIMD, interconnected networks
    • Issues for consideration & performance
  • Shared memory programming with threads
  • • Creating, starting, stopping, suspendng
    • Shared data structures
    • Controlling access to data structures (semaphores, locks, mutexes, etc)
    • Thread safety
  • Shared memory programming with OpenMP
  • Other shared memory programming models
  • Distributed memory programming (MPI)
  • Parallel program development
• Attendance Requirements & Considerations
• • Basic appreciation of programming
  • Note taking
  • Code samples will be in C++, C#, F# & VB.NET