Day 94

Day 94

At the moment I am applying to EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) for Masters of High Performance Computing degree (God, the application form is taking me ages to complete!). I just finished writing personal statement and decided that it would be nice to post it in my blog. I apoligise in advance for the manner in which it is written and for the things like "would be an honour for me", but this is a personal statement, after all, it has to be like that. Also, I do believe in every word I have written in this letter:

My interest in High Performance Computing comes mainly from the Honours Project that I have chosen to work on during my fourth year of studies at Edinburgh University. The goal of the Project is to optimise a neural map simulator Topographica by distributing some of its heaviest computations using Message Passing Interface (MPI). Topographica is an open-source software that has been continually developed over the past ten years and is used by many scientists around the world. Distributing its computations would allow experimenting with neural networks of sizes and densities much greater than it has been possible to simulate ever before. Hopefully, this would give scientists a better understanding of how human brain functions.

Due to the complexity of Topographica, this Project was probably the most challenging programming exercise that I have ever undertaken. More importantly, it gave me an opportunity to realise the significance of Parallel Computing for both industry and science. Nowadays software requirements for processing power continue to increase while processors are not getting faster even close to as much as they used to in the past century and early 2000's. Multi-core and multi-processor machines already dominate the hardware market. However, such systems require a new approach in software development, in many aspects very different from the paradigms we are accustomed to in modern-world IT. This makes me believe that Parallel Programming is the future of Computer Science and IT Consultancy and this is why it is so important for me to acquire the skills and experience in that area. I hope that having such skills and experience will allow me to work on world-class scientific projects in areas ranging from Neuroscience to Aerospace and in my own way contribute to the bank of human knowledge.

In shared-memory models the most interesting thing for me is algorithms. I find the complexity of synchronisation problems to be very challenging and exciting. Apart from that, I find the power of modern supercomputers with hundreds or even thousands of processors to be nothing less than fascinating and having access to such machines would be an honour for me. However, not all scientific institutions around the world can afford to have such machines and this is where, I believe, the importance of distributed-memory models and Cluster Computing comes from. Being able to make a network of machines function as a “DIY” supercomputer would allow computer scientists around the world to carry out research that otherwise would have been impossible due to budget limitations. This is why it is so important for me to have knowledge and skills allowing to develop software that can take full advantage of Parallel Computing and this is what makes me believe that specialising in the area of HPC is a perfectly right choice for me.