MSc in High-Performance Computer Systems
Gothenburg, Sweden
DURATION
2 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Request earliest startdate
TUITION FEES
SEK 160,000 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* tuition fees for non-EU/EEA students
Introduction
High-performance computers will become ubiquitous in the coming years. With applications ranging from autonomous vehicles to data centers and the internet of things, the challenge for the industry is to design software and hardware that can keep up with the high demands for power and energy that will follow. Successfully developing and exploiting such systems and bringing them to market will be the key to the success of future computing.
If those challenges sound enticing, and you want to gain the cutting-edge skills, in-depth knowledge, and methodologies required to face them, then this is the program for you. The fundamental goal of education is to investigate how the needs of future industries, reliant on high computational performance and energy efficiency, can be met. How can systematic methods based on the latest research results in the field of computer systems engineering contribute to these developments?
For this, a holistic view is essential. This could combine, for example, how algorithms specified in a high-level language can best make use of particular computational structures, and how computational resources should best be designed, managed, and organized. The program focuses on hardware-software co-design aspects, to develop domain-specific architectures related to current emerging applications such as AI and deep learning.
The program is for students who want to lead and participate in software and hardware development, and carry out cutting-edge development work in computer architecture, parallel programming sustainability, and energy efficiency. It is also ideal for those who aim to pursue specialized topics such as parallel and reconfigurable architectures, real-time systems, and computer graphics.
The program also offers the possibility to dive deep into innovation and entrepreneurship, with a special emphasis on how technical ideas can be transformed into viable businesses, either as startups or as part of existing organizations.
In addition to the depth of the compulsory and specialization courses, students will also have a wealth of elective courses to choose from, increasing their breadth of knowledge into related areas such as computational science and machine learning.
Career
The master's program in High-performance computer systems has been designed to be relevant to a growing industrial and governmental ICT sector (e.g. computer game industry, database systems, and, more relevant, all applications for machine learning such as autonomous vehicles). The program gives a unique opportunity to combine academic training with engineering work experience, as well as entrepreneurship skills. As such a student is prepared to become:
- Co-Founder, Chief Architect, and/or Product Owner for a product or startup company that brings a research idea into a product
- Chief Technology Officer who takes responsibility for the company’s technological development plan and influences its competitiveness in the market
- Systems Architect and Designer who builds HPC systems either as a new product or from available COTS
- HPC Architect and Performance Engineer who builds HPC systems and evaluates the performance and tunes applications for such systems.
- Systems Administrator who manages an HPC system as well as monitors and evaluates application performance
- Project Manager responsible for driving specific projects by choosing technical directions and leading people
- Software Engineer who develops hardware-aware optimized software for either Cloud Function as a Service (FaaS) software, libraries, or runtimes.
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
Scholarships are a great source of funding for Master's students who are liable to pay tuition fees. Some of these are administrated by Chalmers and others by external institutions. Additional scholarships may be appended to the list and applicants are therefore encouraged to check this webpage regularly.
Please visit the university website for more information.
Curriculum
Compulsory courses year 1
During the first semester the programme starts with three compulsory courses that form a common foundation in High-performance computer systems.
- Computer architecture
- High-performance parallel programming
- Sustainable computing
Computer architecture
Computer architecture is the engineering discipline on computer design, which conveys principles for how to convert the raw speed of transistors into application software performance through computational structures that exploit the parallelism in software. This course covers the important principles for how to design a computer that offers high performance to the application software.
High-performance parallel programming
In this course, the students will not only learn the parallel programming paradigms, languages, and development environments for High-performance computer systems (e.g. OpenMP, MPI, CUDA,) but also be exposed to performance problem-solving techniques and methodologies as to improve the execution time of parallel programs and exploit the full potential of the underlying parallel systems.
Sustainable computing
The aim of the course is to make students aware of the importance of sustainability in computing and to show techniques to achieve it at the different levels of a computer system. The course gives an overview of the energy efficiency aspects of computer systems and computing, ranging from the electronic circuits up to the applications for systems ranging from small IoT devices to large data centres. For instance, students will learn about approaches to measuring and estimating the energy consumption of different architectural components as well as architecture and software techniques to save energy in the system.
Compulsory courses year 2
In the second year you must complete a master's thesis in order to graduate. The thesis may be worth 30 credits or 60 credits depending on your choice.
- Technical writing
- Master's thesis
Technical Writing
This course aims to develop the student's awareness of the underlying structure of scientific and engineering research papers and to improve proficiency in reviewing and writing scientific research papers as well as presenting such papers in public. Ethical issues in connection with scientific writing, e.g. plagiarism and authorship, is an important part of the course.
Master's Thesis
Students may perform their thesis work in an industrial context or within a research group at Chalmers. Students who want to write a research-oriented thesis may apply for an additional 15 credit research project or extend their research thesis work to 60 credits.
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
The master's program in High-performance computer systems has been designed to be relevant to a growing industrial and governmental ICT sector (e.g. computer game industry, database systems and, more relevant, all applications for machine learning such as autonomous vehicles). The programme gives a unique opportunity to combine academic training with engineering work experience, as well as entrepreneurship skills. As such a student is prepared to become:
- Co-founder, Chief Architect, and/or Product Owner for a product or startup company that brings a research idea into a product
- Chief Technology Officer who takes responsibility for the company's technological development plan and influences its competitiveness in the market
- Systems Architect and Designer who builds HPC systems either as a new product or from available COTS
- HPC Architect and Performance Engineer who builds HPC systems evaluates the performance and tunes applications for such systems.
- Systems Administrator who manages an HPC system as well as monitors and evaluates application performance
- Project Manager responsible for driving specific projects by choosing technical directions and leading people
- Software Engineer who develops hardware-aware optimized software for either Cloud Function as a Service (FaaS) software, libraries, or runtimes.