Teaching parallel processing using free resources

Author

Hartman, Janet ; Sanders, Dean

Author_Institution

Dept. of Appl. Comput. Sci., Illinois State Univ., Normal, IL, USA

Volume

3

fYear

1996

fDate

6-9 Nov 1996

Firstpage

1483

Abstract

Parallel processing can be taught effectively even though parallel hardware is not available. Free software is available to support the three major paradigms of parallel computing. Parallaxis is a software simulator that is based on the SIMD model. PVM and MPI allow one to treat a network of workstations as a message passing MIMD multicomputer with distributed memory. A locally developed shared memory simulator supports the MIMD model of computing with a common shared memory. While none of these products is superior to an actual parallel computer, each can be used in a variety of courses to give students experience with parallel algorithms

Keywords

computer aided instruction; computer science education; distributed memory systems; educational courses; message passing; public domain software; shared memory systems; teaching; virtual machines; MPI; PVM; Parallaxis; SIMD model; distributed memory; educational courses; free resources; free software; message passing MIMD multicomputer; parallel algorithms; parallel hardware; parallel processing teaching; shared memory simulator; software simulator; workstation network; Computational modeling; Computer aided instruction; Computer networks; Computer science; Concurrent computing; Education; Hardware; Message passing; Parallel processing; Workstations;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frontiers in Education Conference, 1996. FIE '96. 26th Annual Conference., Proceedings of

Conference_Location

Salt Lake City, UT

ISSN

0190-5848

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3348-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FIE.1996.568549

Filename

568549