SDSU CS 662: Theory of Parallel Algorithms
Review Questions for Final Exam 1994

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San Diego State University -- This page last updated March 21, 1995
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The following are review questions for CS 662 offered in 1994. Not all topics covered then have been covered this year.

CS 662 Spring 1994 Review topics/questions for final exam

Know the ways of classifying Parallel machines: coarse-grain, shared-memory, message passing, SIMD, MIMD.

Measures of parallel algorithms: Speedup, cost, efficiency. Be able to compute the measures for an algorithm. Example: An algorithm uses N*lg(N) processors to sort N items in lg(N) time. Compute the speedup, cost, efficiency of the algorithm.

Amdahl's law. What is the law, what does it say about parallel algorithms? We have a parallel computer with one disk. All disk IO is done sequentially. We have two N*N matrices on disk. We will read in the two matrices. The two matrices will be multiplied in parallel. Independent of what parallel algorithm we use for the multiplication, what does Amdahl's law tell us about the possible speedup we can achieve multiplying the two matrices. How many processors should we use for the multiplication. Is this result reasonable.

Dags. You should be able to create a dag for a simple problem and give the size and depth of the dag. For example, create a dag for multiplying an N*N matrix and an N vector. What does the dag tell you about the minimum time required for matrix-vector multiplication.

Pram model. What is the Pram model? What is the difference between CRCW, ERCW, CREW, EREW.

What is the cost of broadcasting a datum from one processor to all processors on an N processor CRCW (ERCW, CREW, EREW) machine?

Given an algorithm that runs in O(f(N)) steps on an CRCW machine. If we port the algorithm to a EREW machine with the same number of processors as the CRCW machine, what is an upper bound on the number step required by the ported algorithm?

Rescheduling Principle. State the rescheduling principle. Given N processors the scan operator can be performed in O(lg(N)) time. How long will it take to perform the scan operator with N/K processors? What happens when K = lg(N)? Give the rescheduling of the work. Can you give another example of applying the rescheduling principle to an algorithm to make it optimal. That is by using fewer processors the cost of the algorithm is the same as the time complexity of the best sequential algorithm?

Scan operator.
Show how to implement quicksort with the scan operator.
Implement the +-scan operator.

Let


How would you compute in parallel? How many processors would you use? How long would it take?

Sorting
Describe an O(1) sort on a CRCW machine
Describe the odd-even transposition sort on a linear array of processors.
How many comparator circuits are required in the Batchers-even odd sort to sort a list of 2K elements.
What are the time complexity and cost of the above sorts.

Describe a parallel algorithm to find the k'th smallest item in a random list of integers without sorting the entire list.

What is the difference between a Las Vegas and a Monty Carlo algorithm?

You are playing a game of chance. You have a six sided die (the sides are numbered 1, 2, 3, ..., 6). You win the game if you throw the die and either a 5 or a 6 is on the top side. Give a bound on the probability of winning 10 or fewer times in 120 games. If you pay $1.00 to play the game and get $3.00 if you win the game. Give a bound on the probability of earning $50 or more profit in 100 games.

What is the diameter of a N-dimensional Hypercube? a N by K mesh? a complete binary tree with 2k-1 nodes?
Is it possible to embed a complete binary tree with 2k-1 nodes in a 2k by 2k mesh such that one edge of the tree maps to one edge of the mesh and at most one tree node is mapped to a mesh node? Why?
Is it possible to embed a complete binary tree with 2k-1 nodes in a Hypercube with 2k nodes? Why?

Describe an algorithm and give the time complexity and number of processors used to:
a) evaluate a polynomial
b) multiple matrices
c) compute A-1 when A is a full matrix, when A is a lower triangular matrix.

What is the characteristic polynomial of a matrix? How do you compute the characteristic polynomial of a matrix? How do you use the characteristic polynomial of a matrix to solve for x when Ax = b, where A is an N by N matrix and b is a vector.

Graph
How do you compute the ranks of items in a linked list?
Give an algorithm to compute suffix sums of a linked list.
Write a parallel algorithm to traverse a graph and list the nodes visited in postorder. What is the time complexity of the algorithm and how many processors do you use?