BCS THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT

BCS HIGHER EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS

BCS Level 6 Professional Graduate Diploma in IT
DISTRIBUTED & PARALLEL SYSTEMS
Friday 28th March 2014 - 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 pharmaceutical company to build a custom multiprocessor system. They hope that this will significantly increase the speed at which
their critical drug simulation application runs, since it currently takes 24 hours
per run.
Their software engineers have determined that 75% of the instructions in
their application are parallelisable. What is the maximum speedup that can be
achieved, assuming there is no limit to the number of processors that can be
used, and what is the minimum theoretical execution time for their application
on the new system?
(5 marks)

b)

When the system is implemented, the software engineers conduct tests using 1 to
10 processors and report sub-linear speedup. Sketch a graph showing sub-linear
speedup as the number of processors is increased. Name and add labelled lines to
your graph to show the other two possible outcomes.
(10 marks)

c)

Describe a situation that could lead to each of the three outcomes above.
(5 marks)

d)

Sketch an efficiency graph corresponding to the three speedup scenarios identified

in part (b), above.
(5 marks)
Turn Over]

A2.

a)

Why are distributed systems usually more reliable than centralised systems?
(5 marks)

b)

Distributed parallel computing systems most often comprise a set of processing

units that are interconnected using a local area network. In contrast, traditional
parallel computing systems comprise processing elements that are interconnected
using a bus. Briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.
(10 marks)

c)

Groschs law proposes that a computer costing twice as much should be four times
as fast. How well does this law predict the performance of i. single multi-core and ii.
distributed parallel computer systems?
(5 marks)

d)

Distinguish between client-server and peer-to-peer distributed computing

architectures.
(5 marks)

A3.

a)

Briefly describe what is meant by instruction pipelining in CPU architecture.

(4 marks)

b)

Show, using an example comprising 4 stages, fetch, decode, execute and write-back
(taking 10,10, 30, and 30ns each, respectively), how pipelining can serve to improve
processor performance.
(8 marks)

c)

Using the above pipeline, compare the execution time of a code fragment comprising 8
instructions to an equivalent non-pipelined architecture.
(8 marks)

d)

Outline a scenario that may lead a pipeline to stall.

(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)

Propose a scheme for load balancing on a heterogeneous high-performance

compute cluster with a head node generating a continuous stream of variable-sized
tasks.
(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:
Security in the Internet of Things
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)