HPC/PDC immunization in the introductory computer science sequence

Immunization is the process in which we fortify our immune systems by injecting just enough of an active agent so as to cause the immune system to gear up with the appropriate antibodies. This paper discusses a successful practice of "HPC/PDC Immunization" at the CS1/CS2 level. We have fou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:2014 Workshop on Education for High Performance Computing pp. 9 - 14
Main Author: Valentine, David
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: Piscataway, NJ, USA IEEE Press 16.11.2014
IEEE
Series:ACM Conferences
Subjects:
Computing methodologies > Modeling and simulation > Simulation types and techniques
Computing methodologies > Parallel computing methodologies > Parallel programming languages
Education
Games
Instruction sets
K.3.2 Computer and Information System Education; D.1.3 Concurrent Programming- Parallel Programming; I.6.8 Types of Simulation- Monte Carlo
Mathematics of computing > Probability and statistics > Probabilistic reasoning algorithms > Markov-chain Monte Carlo methods
Mathematics of computing > Probability and statistics > Probabilistic reasoning algorithms > Sequential Monte Carlo methods
Monte Carlo methods
Parallel programming
Reliability
Social and professional topics > Professional topics > Computing education > Computing education programs > Computer science education
Social and professional topics > Professional topics > Computing education > Computing education programs > Information science education
Software and its engineering > Software notations and tools > General programming languages > Language types > Parallel programming languages
D.1.3 Concurrent Programming- Parallel Programming
I.6.8 Types of Simulation- Monte Carlo
K.3.2 Computer and Information System Education
ISBN:9781479970216, 1479970212
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Immunization is the process in which we fortify our immune systems by injecting just enough of an active agent so as to cause the immune system to gear up with the appropriate antibodies. This paper discusses a successful practice of "HPC/PDC Immunization" at the CS1/CS2 level. We have found that simply exposing students to threaded versions of solutions they have already solved "fortifies" their technical expectations so they assume parallel programming will be a normal part of their educational experience. In particular we look for interesting Monte Carlo Simulation problems for students to solve conventionally. These problems already exist in the current introductory textbooks. They are CPU-bound and embarrassingly parallel. At the end of the semester, an "immunization lecture" is given, showing students that some simple-looking OpenMP pragma's can release their already working solution to run across all the available cores on their machines. Upon seeing a System Monitor report 100% of the available CPU cycles running their code, the students' "technical antibodies" are launched, and they will demand to be shown parallel programming in the later courses. This project is part of the CSinParallel.org corpus of parallel teaching materials.
ISBN:9781479970216
1479970212
DOI:10.1109/EduHPC.2014.11