CSC2012 Base Technologies Theme

Coordinators:

Pere Mato, CERN
Sebastian Lopienski, CERN

This theme presents a selection of advanced underlying computing technologies which are particularly relevant in the context of scientific computing, and serve as a basis to construct higher level services services such as those offered by Grid Technologies. They include software engineering, computer architectures, computing security and networking topics

The first series of lectures describes the evolution and the state of the art of computer architectures, discusses the bottlenecks and the consequences of this evolution on software design and optimization. It presents principles for writing software that scales with the hardware, techniques for hardware and software performance monitoring and issues related to the impact of compilers on performances.

The third second topic addresses computer security with a particular focus on two aspects: cryptography, authentication and security infrastructures on the one hand, and the creation of secure software on the other hand. The latter series includes hand-on exercises.

The third topic addresses virtualization and cloud computing.

The theme is complemented by a series of lectures on networking, which presents principles, methods and techniques for improving quality of service and network performance.

Computer Architecture and Performance Tuning
Session	Description	Lecturer
Lecture 1	Understanding scalable hardware The first part of this double lecture describes the hardware architecture of a modern PC server with processors based on the Intel Core micro-architecture. Other processor architectures, such as ARM, will also be mentioned. Acceleration opportunities (but also bottlenecks) in the architecture will be covered in detail, not just inside the processor, but also related to the memory hierarchy. The aim is to give each student a good understanding of what resources are available from a hardware viewpoint.	Sverre Jarp
Lecture 2	Software that scales with the hardware In the second part of this double lecture we will discuss several strategies which can allow software to scale to the maximum resource potential in a given architecture. These strategies are based on both data and task parallelism. We will stress the importance of a Data Oriented Design and also mention the issue of “performance portability” across platforms. Some important factors related to programming styles will be reviewed. To back up everything with evidence, several scalable examples from physics will be portrayed.	Sverre Jarp
Lecture 3	Key aspects of multi-threading The vast majority of modern micro-processors come with two to several dozen computing cores, opening up new possibilities but also creating some significant challenges. This major shift in hardware has already been underway many years ago, but the software world is still struggling to take full benefit of the new features. This lecture goes into the details of key choices and compromises associated with threaded programming and scalability. New programming paradigms are demonstrated alongside real world technologies that can be used for implementations.	Andrzej Nowak
Lecture 4	Performance Optimization Considering the rise of many-core processors, performance tuning has become an even more important step in software development. Modern processor architectures often give us the benefit of being able to look inside the application from various angles, however drawing high-level conclusions is not always straightforward. The objective of this lecture is to familiarize the attendees with the topic of performance optimization “where it matters” and with common techniques used to define and improve application efficiency. Language independent performance tools for Linux will be demonstrated, in order to obtain information about program characteristics and bottlenecks.	Andrzej Nowak
Exercise 1 Exercise 2 Exercise 3	The aim of the exercises in this series is to give the attendees a practical introduction to performance oriented programming on Linux. Advanced tools will be used during the course, enabling the participants to discover how the interaction of the code and the hardware influences performance. The participants will also be given the task of correlating performance figures with certain programming decisions. In addition, the participants will understand the limits of performance optimization and the ways to establish at which point inside those limits their workload is placed. The exercises will be supported by demonstrating real world problems in production environments, including multi-threaded examples.	Sverre Jarp Andrzej Nowak
Prerequisite and References	Desirable Prerequisite Basics of modern computer architecture Basic knowledge about compilers Familiarity with Linux and the C/C++ programming languages

Creating Secure Software
Session	Description	Lecturer
Lecture 1	Introduction to computer security First lecture starts with a definition of computer security and an explanation of why it is so difficult to achieve. The lecture highlights the importance of proper threat modelling and risk assessment. It then presents three complementary methods of mitigating threats: protection, detection, reaction; and tries to prove that security through obscurity is not a good choice.	Sebastian Lopienski
Lecture 2	Security in different phases of software development The second lecture addresses the following question: how to create secure software? It introduces the main security principles (like least-privilege, or defense-in-depth) and discusses security in different phases of the software development cycle. The emphasis is put on the implementation part: most common pitfalls and security bugs are listed, followed by advice on best practice for security development.	Sebastian Lopienski
Lecture 3	Web Application Security Debriefing This lecture is dedicated to a debrief of the specific exercises on Web Application programmming.
Exercise 1 Exercise 2 Exercise 3	Avoiding, detecting and removing software security vulnerabilities In the practice session, a range of typical security vulnerabilities will be presented. The goal is to learn how they can be exploited (for privilege escalation, data confidentiality compromise etc.), how to correct them, and how to avoid them in the first place! Students will be given small pieces of source code in different programming languages, and will be asked to find vulnerabilities and fix them. The online course documentation will gradually reveal more and more information to help students in this task. Additionally, students will have a chance to try several source code analysis tools, and see how such tools can help them find functionality bugs and security vulnerabilities.	Sebastian Lopienski
Prerequisite and References	Desirable Prerequisite Basic knowledge of C and/or PHP PHP tutorial: http://php.net/tut.php Basic understanding of HTTP protocol Basic knowledge of SQL Books Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World by Bruce Schneier Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems by Ross Anderson Writing Secure Code by Michael Howard, David LeBlanc Secure Coding: Principles and Practices by Mark G. Graff, Kenneth R. van Wyk

Networking
Session	Description	Lecturer
Lecture 1	Internet QoS options Improving Quality of Service guarantees and performances in data network is a key requirement of Grid computing. Indeed, fast transfers require high-bit rate connections, and grid operation requires network predictability and high availability. On the other hand, the Internet historical technology is not naturally best suited to deterministic behaviour. This lecture explains the technical challenges and the range of options available to improve QoS guarantees in Internet-based networks.	François Fluckiger
Lecture 2	Multimedia over the Internet The Grid is not only a network of computer resources but also a network of people cooperating to use these resources. Part of the collaborative tools scientists are increasingly using include audio and video systems. They place new challenging requirements on the networking systems. The class discusses these requirements and their consequences on the end-systems as well as within the underlying network.	François Fluckiger
Prerequisite and References	Desirable Prerequisite Participants will draw maximum benefits from the lectures if they have a fair knowledge of computer network principles, in particular the concepts of Networking layering Internet transport infrastructure (e.g. mesh topology, routers, links) Internet layers (e.g. differences between PPP, IP, UDP, TCP) Books Computer Networks, Ed. 4 Andrew Tannenbaum, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-130-661023 Internetworking with TCP/IP, vol 1 Douglas E. Commer, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-130-183806 Understanding Networked Multimedia Francois Fluckiger, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-131-90992-4 Vikipedia Computer Networking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networks) Other Links Linux-Networking Concepts

Virtualisation and Clouds
Session	Description	Lecturer
Lecture 1	Introduction to virtualisation technology First lecture covers the definition and description of the various modes of virtualization techniques used in computing science, also from a historical perspective. Later we present the most recent advances and technology trends, in particular we will single out the server virtualization as a key enabling technology behind the emerging cloud computing paradigm.	Pere Mato
Lecture 2	Applications of the virtualisation technology Second lecture deals with possible applications of server virtualization technology to support LHC computing effort. We will be using the CernVM project as an example to illustrate how a virtual machine can be crafted to act as an end-user work environment as well as job hosting environment running on cloud or Grid infrastructure.	Pere Mato
Exercise 1 Exercise 2	Using a virtual machine for data analysis The student will exercise how to setup a virtual machine and perform some simple analysis task (using ROOT for example) on a local host. Later we will show how the same task can be achieved using cloud resources such as Amazon EC2.	Pere Mato Jakob Blomer Ioannis Charalampidis
Prerequisite and References	Desirable Prerequisite Very basic C++ and Linux/Unix environment is desirable. Some familiarity with ROOT will help.