Home
This site contains lectures and practical work for the course CHP203: Parallel Optimization Techniques offered by Hugo Taboada and Gabriel Dos Santos as part of the High Performance Computing & Simulation M.Sc. program at ISTY/UVSQ. Its use is reserved for students of the Paris-Saclay University.
The Spring 2026 session will start on Tuesday, 24 March and end on Tuesday, 28 April.
Course Information
Description & objectives
This course provides an overview of common optimization techniques for modern HPC architectures, as well as giving an introduction to supercomputing tools and environments.
By the end of the course, the students are expected to have acquired a thorough understanding of the following concepts:
- Compilers, build systems, and HPC toolchains
- Parallel and distributed programming models
- Parallel and distributed profiling tools
- Performance benchmarking methodology
- Memory and data structure layout optimizations
- CPU microarchitecture optimizations optimizations
- Shared-memory parallelism performance pitfalls & optimizations
- Distributed programming performance pitfalls & optimizations
Lecture sessions
Tuesday, 13:45 - 17:00 CET, room CN2, Rabelais building, Guyancourt campus.
Lab sessions
Tuesday, 9:30 - 12:45 CET, room CN2, Rabelais building, Guyancourt campus.
Examination
This course is evaluated for the 1st Year of Paris-Saclay University's M.Sc. in High Performance Computing & Simulation.
Warning
All lecture and lab sessions are mandatory. Any absence shall be justified to the administration and the course organizers.
- ECTS credits
- 3 credits (out of 30 semester credits)
Grades
| Examination | Grading | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| Test | Mid-semester (surprise) test | TBA |
| Project | Report & presentation | TBA |
| Exam | End-semester finals | TBA |
| Total | 100% |
Staff Information
| Name | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Hugo Taboada | Instructor | hugo.taboada@cea.fr |
| Gabriel Dos Santos | Teaching Assistant | gabriel.dossantos@cea.fr |
Please contact the instructor or TA for any questions regarding the course. E-mails can be sent in either French or English at your convenience.
Be mindful when sending e-mails. If it is your first contact with the instructor or TA, don't forget to present yourself. Try to clearly and concisely express your problem. Detail the steps you have already taken and what you have tried.
Note
For filtering reasons and easier e-mail management from the teaching staff, please make sure that all e-mail subjects you send are in the form: [M1CHPS-TOP] <your subject>.
Any e-mail written in an informal manner or without proper syntax will be ignored.
Additionally, the HPCS Master has a Discord server on which students can reach the TA (handle: @gabrl), either by Private Message or through the #techniques-optimisation-paralleles channel.
Material
Lectures
Lecture slides are available here (last year's slides).
Labs
Lab material for this course is available on the following GitHub repository: TOP-26
Resources
See the dedicated page.