Fall 2015 SPO600 Weekly Schedule

It's Alive!
This SPO600 weekly schedule will be updated as the course proceeds - dates and content are subject to change. The cells in the summary table will be linked to relevant resources and labs as the course progresses.

For the Winter 2015 version of the weekly schedule, see Winter 2015 SPO600 Weekly Schedule.

Schedule Summary Table

This is a summary/index table. Please follow the links in each cell for additional detail -- especially for the Deliverables column.

Week	Week of...	Tuesday	Thursday	Deliverables (Summary - click for details)
1	Sep 7	Introduction to Software Porting, Portability, Benchmarking, and Optimization / How is code accepted into an open source project? (Lab 1)	Benchmarking and Profiling	Set up accounts, and blog a comparision of code reviews in two communities (Lab 1).
2	Sep 14	Working with the code / Building	Build and benchmark a portion of the LAMP stack (Lab 2)	Blog about your baseline data (Lab 2)
3	Sep 21	Linaro Connect - No classes scheduled Prepare a presentation on a selected topic about platform-specific code.		Be prepared to present your topic.
4	Sep 28	Presentations on platform-specific code.	Presentations on platform-specific code.	Blog about your presentation.
5	Oct 5	Profiling: Finding the pain points (Lab 3)	Computer architecture overview	Blog about the profiling results and pain points discovered (Lab 3)
6	Oct 12	Compiled C Lab (Lab 4)	Compiler optimizations	Blog a commentary on the Compiled C Lab (Lab 4).
7	Oct 19	Assembly lab (Lab 5)	Inline assembly lab and Course Projects	Blog about the Assembly Lab (Lab 5) and start project investigation.
Study Week	Oct 26	Study Week - No classes! FSOSS 2015 on Thursday/Friday
8	Nov 2	Project discussion, and Reading Reference Documentation.	Project presentations - Stage 1	Blog about your project progress - this will be used to assign your 1st Project marks.
9	Nov 9	Upstreaming	Spinlocks and Tail Call Optimization	Blog about your project work.
10	Nov 16	Portable alternatives to Assembler	Project Presentations - Stage 2	Blog about your project progress - this will be used to assign your 2nd Project Marks.
11	Nov 23	Hack Session (Professor will not be present)	SIMD	Blog about SIMD/vectorization and your project.
12	Nov 30	Discussion & Hack Session	Vectorization	Blog about your work.
13	Dec 7	Project Presentations - Stage 3	Wrap-up Session	Blog about your project progress - this will be used to assign your 3rd project marks.
Exam Week	Apr 20	Exam Week - No exam in this course!

Evaluation

Category	Percentage	Evaluation Dates
Communication	20%	January 31, February 28, March 27, April 22
Quizzes	10%	May be held during any class, usually at the start of class. A minimum of 5 one-page quizzes will be given. No make-up/retake option is offered if you miss a quiz. Lowest 3 scores will not be counted.
Labs	10%	See deliverables column above.
Project work	60%	March 16 (15%), March 31 (20%), April 22 (25%)