Pedagogy and tools for teaching parallel computing at the sophomore undergraduate level

As the need for multicore-aware programmers rises in both science and industry, Computer Science departments in universities around the USA are having to rethink their parallel computing curriculum. At Rice University, this rethinking took the shape of COMP 322, an introductory parallel programming...

Celý popis

Uložené v:
Podrobná bibliografia
Vydané v:Journal of parallel and distributed computing Ročník 105; s. 18 - 30
Hlavní autori: Grossman, Max, Aziz, Maha, Chi, Heng, Tibrewal, Anant, Imam, Shams, Sarkar, Vivek
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Elsevier Inc 01.07.2017
Predmet:
Autograding
Education
Java
JVM
MPI
Multi-threading
Parallel
Pedagogy
JVM
Java
Autograding
Pedagogy
Education
MPI
Tools
Parallel
Multi-threading
ISSN:0743-7315, 1096-0848
On-line prístup:Získať plný text
Tagy: Pridať tag
Žiadne tagy, Buďte prvý, kto otaguje tento záznam!
Popis
Shrnutí:As the need for multicore-aware programmers rises in both science and industry, Computer Science departments in universities around the USA are having to rethink their parallel computing curriculum. At Rice University, this rethinking took the shape of COMP 322, an introductory parallel programming course that is required for all Bachelors students. COMP 322 teaches students to reason about the behavior of parallel programs, educating them in both the high level abstractions of task-parallel programming as well as the nitty gritty details of working with threads in Java. In this paper, we detail the structure, principles, and experiences of COMP 322, gained from 6 years of teaching parallel programming to second-year undergraduates. We describe in detail two particularly useful tools that have been integrated into the curriculum: the HJlibparallel programming library and the Habanero Autograder for parallel programs. We present this work with the hope that it will help augment improvements to parallel computing education at other universities. •An overview of parallel computing pedagogy at Rice University, including a unique approach to incrementally teaching parallel programming: from abstract parallel concepts to hands-on experience with industry-standard frameworks.•A description of the HJlib parallel programming library and its applicability to parallel programming education.•A description of the motivation, design, and implementation of the Habanero Autograder, a tool for providing automated and immediate feedback to students on programming assignments.•A discussion of unexpected benefits from using the Habanero Autograder as part of Rice University’s core parallel computing curriculum.
ISSN:0743-7315
1096-0848
DOI:10.1016/j.jpdc.2016.12.026