An integrated course on parallel and distributed processing

Cunha, José C.; Lourenço, João

doi:10.1145/273133.274300

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…However, these tools are designed primarily for students and professionals that have "previous exposure to classical concurrency issues at the operating system level and basic knowledge of computer networks" [5]. The implication is that students are not equipped to comprehend or correctly manage parallel processes until sufficiently conversant with system level software.…”

Section: Tools For Parallel Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring concurrency using the parallel analysis tool

Rague

2012

Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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Laboratory work in the CS classroom is intended to solidify essential concepts and core design principles. Because of recent advances and the widespread adoption of multicore technologies, one area of investigation that has become increasingly important across all levels of CS instruction is parallel computing. This paper describes the initial version of the Parallel Analysis Tool (PAT), a pedagogical tool designed to assist undergraduate students in visualizing concurrency and effectively connecting parallel processing to applied coding strategies. The PAT is a complete Java development environment, with an emphasis on (1) helping students to identify appropriate code locations where parallelization can be applied and (2) allowing students to subsequently examine the practical performance tradeoffs of these parallelization decisions in a laboratory setting. The Parallel Quotient (PQ), a fundamental dimensionless metric generated by the PAT, supports the student's conceptual understanding and analysis of the relative benefits of employing various parallel programming strategies.

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Section: Tools For Parallel Instructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring concurrency using the parallel analysis tool

Rague

2012

Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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“…The ACM CS2008 Curriculum update recommends a Parallel Computation class that "cuts across several advanced courses" [6]. Students learning parallelism are expected to have some "previous exposure to classical concurrency issues at the operating system level and basic knowledge of computer networks" [13]. The implication is that students are not equipped to comprehend or correctly manage parallel processes until sufficiently conversant with system level structure and software.…”

Section: Parallelism and Cs Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring CS1 perceptions of parallelism

Rague

2011

2011 Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

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Educators in Computer Science (CS) generally agree that teaching concurrency can be difficult. CS programs typically offer parallel and distributed computing topics as advanced courses. A potential alternative approach is to provide instruction on parallelism early in the undergraduate curriculum, emphasizing conceptual design rather than implementation issues. This introduction of "parallelthinking" to beginning CS undergraduates represents an innovation and significant extension to existing standard Computer Science curricula. The research described in this paper investigated the feasibility of integrating parallel computing concepts into a first-year CS course. To quantitatively assess student comprehension of parallel computing, an experimental two-factor mixed group design educational study was conducted to evaluate a control group and two instructional interventions: (1) lecture only, and (2) lecture with laboratory work using a software visualization Parallel Analysis Tool (PAT) specifically designed for this project. The Perceptions of Parallelism Survey (PoPS), a new evaluation instrument developed for this study and modeled after the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), was used to measure student learning. The results from this educational study show a statistically significant main effect among the repeated measures. PoPS results measured during the ninth week of the course reveal that performance levels remained high compared to precourse performance scores.

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“…Many examples exist where industry-standard libraries like PVM [13] or OpenMP [31] have been employed in the classroom [10,18,24]. However, all of these industrialstrength packages suffer from the same problem: while their primitives may be few and simple, correct and safe application of them can be surprisingly hard.…”

Section: Learning Should Be Constructivementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards concrete concurrency

Jacobsen

Jadud

2005

Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

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In a world of ad-hoc networks, highly interconnected mobile devices and increasingly large supercomputer clusters, students need models of computation that help them think about dynamic and concurrent systems. Many of the tools currently available for introducing students to concurrency are difficult to use and are not intrinsically motivating. To provide an authentic, hands-on, and enjoyable introduction to concurrency, we have ported occam-π, a language whose expressive powers are especially compelling for describing communicating dynamic reactive processes, to the LEGO Mindstorms.

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An integrated course on parallel and distributed processing

Abstract: be found in [2] but 'it doesn't discuss parallel computing, and its focus is more on, the operating system level.

Cited by 17 publications

References 15 publications

Exploring concurrency using the parallel analysis tool

Exploring concurrency using the parallel analysis tool

Measuring CS1 perceptions of parallelism

Towards concrete concurrency

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