Changes

|<div style="background:#ffff00">[[Current SPO600 Weekly Schedule|Weekly Schedule]]</div>[[Winter 2015 Current SPO600 Participants|Participants and Project Table]]<br />[httphttps://wwwtelescope.cdot.systems Telescope]<br />[https://ict.senecacollege.ca/ssos/findWithoutSemestercourse/spo600/sict Course Outline]<br />[[media:SPO600 Course PoliciesWinter 2022 addendum.pdf|Course PoliciesWinter 2022 Addendum]]<br />[http://linaro.org Linaro]<br />[http://performance.linaro.org Linaro Performance ChallengeSPO600 Course Policies|Course Policies]<br />[http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/~chris.tyler/planet/ Planet CDOT]<br />

 <!-- {{Admon/tip|Thinking of taking this course in Fall 2015?|[[SPO600 - Information for Prospective Students|Here is some information for prospective students.]]}}{{Admon/important|Content Adjustment|This content is being adjusted from Winter 2015 to Fall 2015 -- some information may not yet be updated.}}>

Software is sometimes written to work on a specific computer architecture (type of computer), such as on Intel-compatible x86_64 PCs, or IBM Z9 Z-series mainframes. This course deals with the challenge of making software compatible with a new architecture in one of two ways:

== SPO600 in Fall 2015 Winter 2022 ==

A new computer architecture has appeared: 64-bit ARM systems (also known as "ARM64" or "AArch64"). While AArch64 is showing up in cell phones and tablets, it is also poised to pounce on the datacentre. Most of the work of porting core software to AArch64 has been completed, and at this point, just about everything that runs on x86_64 Linux systems will run an AArch64 systems. However, the x86_64 architecture has been around for many years, and software has been well-optimized to work on that architecture; but AArch64 is relatively new, and it may be possible to get better performance with additional tuning and optimization.

In Fall 2015this semester, the SPO600 course will be focused on optimizing software on AArch64 systems, and specifically on building infrastructure to make it easier to use indirect functions (similar to the glibc "LAMPifunc" stack capability) for runtime implementation selection. This technique is widely used in a few places -- Linuxsuch as in glibc, Apache, MySQL, and Python/PHP/Perl (or equivalents!) the GNU standard C library -- to make but it would be great if we could easily use it run as efficiently as possible on AArch64 systemsin other places. We will build, benchmarkThis would allow (for example) two versions of a particular function to be automatically compiled, with and profile the LAMP stack on x86_64 systems, then do the same on AArch64without support for particular hardware features (such as Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE/SVE2)), and identify areas for improvement. Then we'll experiment with compiler options, algorithm changes, and platform-specific code the best version to optimize the performancebe automatically used at runtime.

Note that, unlike some other project-based courses, the results of the projects done in SPO600 will eventually be incorporated into the actual "upstream" open source software, and have a real impact on other people. For this reason, projects must be completed in collaboration with the relevant open source communities, using relevant [[SPO600 Communication Tools|communication tools]]. Work performed in this course will be licensed using the relevant open source licenses used by the associated community.

<!-- '''Recommended:'''* Classes are held in an [[Active Learning Classroom]]. You '''should''' have a mobile device of some type (laptop, smartphone, tablet) with a wireless network connection (WiFi or mobile) and a video output (VGA or HDMI). If your video output is of a different type (VGA/DVI/DP/Miracast/MyDP/MiniDP/MiniHDMI/other) you will need an appropriate adapter.

1. '''Blog.''' Tell your professor, your colleagues, the community, and everyone else what you're doing. <u>Write a lot</u> and write well, include good technical content, and incorporate links to all relevant resources and the product of your work, and write often. Almost all of your work in this course is submitted by blogging. 2. '''Be ambitious.''' In this course, you will need to be the driving force behind your project. The community will help you, but it's up to you to supply the energy. 3. '''Work ''in'' the open source community.''' The projects we will be doing are too large and too unfamiliar for you to succeed entirely on your own. You will need to use the community's knowledge, connections, and resources to succeed well. Respect the community's standards, tell the community what you're doing, ask when you have a question, and pull your own weight within the community.

3. '''Be ambitious.''' In this course, you will need to be the driving force behind your project. The community will help you, but it's up to you to supply the energy. '''It's best to plan to make a bit of progress each day.'''

See the online [https://ict.senecacollege.ca/course/spo600 course outline] for course details, and the [[media:SPO600 Winter 2022 addendum.pdf|Winter 2022 Addendum]] for additional course details.