Complete Guide to Parallel and Concurrent Programming with C++

Course details

Parallel programming unlocks a program’s ability to execute multiple instructions simultaneously, increases the overall processing throughput, and is key to writing faster and more efficient applications. In this course, join instructors Barron and Olivia Chiu Stone as they introduce the basics of parallel and concurrent programming in C++, providing the foundational knowledge you need to write more efficient, performant code. Barron and Olivia explain concepts like threading and mutual exclusion in a fun and informative way, relating them to everyday activities you perform in the kitchen. To cement the ideas, they demo them in action using C++. Each lesson is short and practical, driving home the theory with hands-on techniques. By the end of this course, you'll be prepared to analyze the performance impact of parallel and concurrent programming techniques, evaluating the trade-offs and applying the appropriate programming patterns to optimize the throughput and efficiency of their C++ applications.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Learn parallel programming basics
02 - What you should know
03 - Installing Cygwin and Visual Studio Code

1. Parallel Computing Hardware

04 - Sequential vs. parallel computing
05 - Parallel computing architectures
06 - Shared versus distributed memory

2. Threads and Processes

07 - Thread versus process
08 - Thread versus process - C++ demo
09 - Concurrent versus parallel execution
10 - Execution scheduling
11 - Execution scheduling - C++ demo
12 - Thread life cycle
13 - Thread life cycle - C++ demo
14 - Detached thread
15 - Detached thread - C++ demo

3. Mutual Exclusion

16 - Data race
17 - Data race - C++ demo
18 - Mutual exclusion
19 - Mutual exclusion - C++ demo
20 - Atomic objects - C++ demo

4. Locks

21 - Recursive mutex
22 - Recursive mutex - C++ demo
23 - Try lock
24 - Try lock - C++ demo
25 - Shared mutex
26 - Shared mutex - C++ demo

5. Liveness

27 - Deadlock
28 - Deadlock - C++ demo
29 - Abandoned lock
30 - Abandoned lock - C++ demo
31 - Starvation
32 - Starvation - C++ demo
33 - Livelock
34 - Livelock - C++ demo

6. Synchronization

35 - Condition variable
36 - Condition variable - C++ demo
37 - Producer-consumer - C++ demo
38 - Semaphore
39 - Semaphore - C++ demo

7. Barriers

40 - Race condition
41 - Race condition - C++ demo
42 - Barrier
43 - Barrier - C++ demo
44 - Latch - C++ demo

8. Asynchronous Tasks

45 - Computational graph
46 - Thread pool
47 - Thread pool - C++ demo
48 - Future
49 - Future - C++ demo
50 - Divide and conquer
51 - Divide and conquer - C++ demo

9. Evaluating Parallel Performance

52 - Speedup, latency, and throughput
53 - Amdahl's law
54 - Measure speedup
55 - Measure speedup - C++ demo

10. Designing Parallel Programs

56 - Partitioning
57 - Communication
58 - Agglomeration
59 - Mapping

11. Challenge Problems

60 - Welcome to the challenges
61 - Challenge - Matrix multiply
62 - Solution - Matrix multiply
63 - Challenge - Merge sort
64 - Solution - Merge sort
65 - Challenge - Download images
66 - Solution - Download images

Conclusion

67 - Next steps