BCS THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT
BCS HIGHER EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS
BCS Level 6 Professional Graduate Diploma in IT
DISTRIBUTED & PARALLEL SYSTEMS
Tuesday 2nd April 2013 - Afternoon
Answer any THREE questions out of FIVE. All questions carry equal marks
Time: THREE hours
Answer any Section A questions you attempt in Answer Book A
Answer any Section B questions you attempt in Answer Book B
The marks given in brackets are indicative of the weight given to each part of the question.
Calculators are NOT allowed in this examination.
Section A
Answer Section A questions in Answer Book A
A1.
a)
You have been hired by a weather forecasting service to build a custom multi-core
processor. They hope that this will significantly increase the speed at which
their critical weather forecasting application runs, since it currently takes 15 hours to
complete. Their software engineers have determined that 20% of the instructions in
their application are inherently serial. What is the maximum speedup that can be
achieved, assuming there is no limit to the number of cores that can be employed,
and how quickly might their application run on the new processor?
(5 marks)
b)
As we increase the number of processor cores used to solve a computational
problem from 1 to 100, we may experience sub-linear, linear or super-linear
speedup relative to the number of cores added. Sketch a graph, with fully labelled
axes, showing these three scenarios and briefly describe a situation that may lead
to each.
(10 marks)
c)
Briefly describe a situation that could lead to parallel slowdown.
(5 marks)
d)
How does the concept of efficiency differ from that of speedup?
(5 marks)
Turn Over]
A2.
a)
Briefly describe the different roles of name and file servers in a distributed
system.
(5 marks)
b)
Which undesirable system state is a distributed lock manager intended to prevent?
Provide a pseudo code fragment showing locks being used to prevent this state
from occurring.
(10 marks)
c)
Outline the role of ports in the provision of distributed services, and distinguish
between reserved and non-reserved ports.
(5 marks)
d)
Distinguish between client-server and peer-to-peer distributed computing
architectures.
(5 marks)
A3.
a)
Provide five advantages and five disadvantages of cloud computing.
(10 marks)
b)
Provide five advantages and five disadvantages of desktop virtualization.
(10 marks)
c)
Explain how Groschs law, which proposes that a computer costing twice as much
should be four times as fast, applies to single-CPU and cluster computers
differently.
(5 marks)
Section B
Answer Section B questions in Answer Book B
B4.
a)
Distinguish between distributed shared memory (DSM) and message passing
approaches to implementing a distributed system.
(10 marks)
b)
What does it mean to say that thread algorithms are either blocking or nonblocking?
(5 marks)
c)
Distinguish between high availability and high performance compute clusters,
outlining an example situation where each would be used.
(10 marks)
B5.
You have been asked to give a 30-minute talk on the following topic:
Factors that Limit the Performance of Parallel Computer Systems
Sketch out approximately 8 content-rich presentation slides, with associated notes, that you
would use for your talk.
Please note: your answer will be assessed for its quality of approach, accuracy of content,
clarity of expression, range of discussion, and depth of argument.
(25 marks)
