Announcements

Intro to Parallel Programming Promotion: Sponsored by NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services

ParallelProgrammingWe were really excited to launch our Intro to Parallel Programming course today! A big thanks to the instructors John Owens, David Luebke and Cheng-Han Lee who have dedicated their time to make this course a great learning experience!

In addition to announcing the course launch, we wanted to let you know that Amazon Web Services and NVIDIA are sponsoring two promotions that students in Intro to Parallel Programing should be really excited about.

Amazon Web Services is generously supporting students by providing up to 30 hours of credit for on-demand access access to GPU compute instances on Amazon EC2 to qualifying students. While not necessary to take the course, these instances will allow you to experiment further with parallel and distributed programming.  To take advantage of this, you simply have to:

  • Be one of the first 5,000 students to complete Unit 1, including the Unit 1 problem set
  • Be one of the first 1,000 students to complete all units and problem sets through Unit 7

This is only for a limited time — the promotion runs from February 4, 2013 – May 30, 2013 (or till the credit run out) and the credits will be valid for two years. Please refer to the promotion page and the terms for AWS for more details.  Those documents specify the conditions you must meet to be eligible (e.g., you must set up an AWS account with a credit card to claim your credit hours).

Additionally, NVIDIA is sponsoring four separate contests for opportunities to win a Kepler GPU. The winners of each contest will be selected based on performance on problem sets within the course.  Here’s a little more detail:

Red

  • Who is eligible: Students who complete Units 1-2 by Feb. 18
  • Who Wins: Top 6 performers on Unit 2 Problem Set
  • Prizes: Kepler GPU (6 total, 1 per winner)

Green

 

  • Who is eligible: Students who complete Units 1-4 by March 4
  • Who Wins: Top 8 performers on Unit 4 Problem Set
  • Prizes: Kepler GPU (8 total)

Blue

 

  • Who is eligible: Students who complete Units 1-6 by March 18
  • Who Wins: Top 10 performers on Unit 6  Problem Set
  • Prizes: Kepler GPU (10 total)

Alpha

  • Who is eligible: Students who complete Units 1-7 by March 25
  • Who Wins: Top 12 performers on Unit 7 Problem Set
  • Prizes: Kepler GPU Card (12 total)

There are some restrictions, for example, you need to be at least 18 years old, you can only win once, and other terms and conditions apply — see the NVIDIA rules for Red, Green, Blue, Alpha and additional details. You can also refer to the promotion page for more details.

The main thing to remember is, these are really awesome opportunities that AWS and NVIDIA are providing, which will allow you to extend and practice what you’ll learn in Intro to Parallel Programing.  So enroll today if you haven’t already, start taking the class, and make sure you stick with it so you can make the most of these promotions (and learn lots in the process)! Class has started, what are you waiting for?