http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414446 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414446 Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT 2414446 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414447
Much of computing education research is devoted to introductory computer science. The articles in this special issue look at the other end of the spectrum: learning advanced subjects, here, concurrent, parallel and distributed computation. The articles present four approaches for teaching these subjects using infra-structure that is feasible for educational institutions to acquire: MapReduce in a cloud, remote computing on a multicore system, a network of gaming consoles, and software modeling using formal specification.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT 2414447 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414448
We describe our experiences teaching MapReduce in a large undergraduate lecture course using public cloud services and the standard Hadoop API. Using the standard API, students directly experienced the quality of industrial big-data tools. Using the cloud, every student could carry out scalability benchmarking assignments on realistic hardware, which would have been impossible otherwise. Over two semesters, over 500 students took our course. We believe this is the first large-scale demonstration that it is feasible to use pay-as-you-go billing in the cloud for a large undergraduate course. Modest instructor effort was sufficient to prevent students from overspending. Average per-pupil expenses in the Cloud were under $45.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT 2414448 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414449
With the advances in computing power, high-performance computing (HPC) platforms have had an impact on not only scientific research in advanced organizations but also computer science curriculum in the educational community. For example, multicore programming and parallel systems are highly desired courses in the computer science major. However, the high cost of HPC equipment and maintenance makes it hard to be adapted into a conventional computer science curriculum. Specifically, teaching-oriented institutions cannot afford an HPC system due to the high cost, lack of experience, and smaller research infrastructure. The main objective of this article is to present an affordable and easy-to-use high-performance cluster system for teaching-oriented computer science curriculums.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT 2414449 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414450
We present Xipx, the first port of a major educational operating system to a processor in the emerging class of many-core architectures. Through extensions to the proven Embedded Xinu operating system, Xipx gives students hands-on experience with system programming in a distributed message-passing environment. We expose the software primitives needed to maintain coherency between many cores in a system lacking specialized caching hardware. Our proposed series of laboratory assignments adds parallel thread execution and intercore message passing communication to a well-established OS curriculum.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT 2414450 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2414451
We present an undergraduate course on concurrent programming where formal models are used in different stages of the learning process. The main practical difference with other approaches lies in the fact that the ability to develop correct concurrent software relies on a systematic transformation of formal models of inter-process interaction (so called shared resources), rather than on the specific constructs of some programming language. Using a resource-centric rather than a language-centric approach has some benefits for both teachers and students. Besides the obvious advantage of being independent of the programming language, the models help in the early validation of concurrent software design, provide students and teachers with a lingua franca that greatly simplifies communication at the classroom and during supervision, and help in the automatic generation of tests for the practical assignments.]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00:00 GMT 2414451