Consider reordering/making optional some episodes

[steve-crouch]

Should we move the "advanced communication techniques" and/or "common communication patterns" to the end of the course as optional episodes (i.e. more advanced, for those interested)? Would this be a good idea to avoid detail overload?

[steve-crouch]

From Ed:

On the two MPI courses I’ve been on, they talked about some of the advanced communication content. So they mentioned derived types, which are the first two sub-sections of that episode. Neither of them talked about MPI_Pack or MPI_Unpack, which is the final part of the episode. One of the courses mentioned common communication patterns, but didn’t go into a lot of detail.

So, I think we could make some of it optional. But I would be inclined to at least keep the first section of the advanced communication episode as part of the core content. But off the top of my head, I’m not sure where that would fit in with the rest of the lesson.

IIRC I also remember one of the DiRAC reviewers (Peter Draper, I think?) thought it was important we mentioned derived types