Evolving PDC curriculum and tools: A study in responding to technological change

Abstract

Much has changed about parallel and distributed computing (PDC) since the author began teaching the topic in the late 1990s. This paper reviews some of the key changes to the field and describes their impacts on his work as a PDC educator. Such changes include: the availability of free implementations of the message passing interface (MPI) for distributed-memory multiprocessors; the development of the Beowulf cluster; the advent of multicore architectures; the development of free multithreading languages and libraries such as OpenMP; the availability of (relatively) inexpensive manycore accelerator devices (e.g., GPUs); the availability of free software platforms like CUDA, OpenACC, OpenCL, and OpenMP for using accelerators; the development of inexpensive single board computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi, and other changes. The paper details the evolution of PDC education at the author's institution in response to these changes, including curriculum changes, seven different Beowulf cluster designs, and the development of pedagogical tools and techniques specifically for PDC education. The paper also surveys many of the hardware and software infrastructure options available to PDC educators, provides a strategy for choosing among them, and provides practical advice for PDC pedagogy. Through these discussions, the reader may see how much PDC education has changed over the past two decades, identify some areas of PDC that have remained stable during this same time period, and so gain new insight into how to efficiently invest one's time as a PDC educator.