Peachy Parallel Assignments (EduHPC 2018)

Peachy Parallel Assignments are a resource for instructors teaching parallel and distributed programming. These are high-quality assignments, previously tested in class, that are readily adoptable. This collection of assignments includes implementing a subset of OpenMP using pthreads, creating an animated fractal, image processing using histogram equalization, simulating a storm of high-energy particles, and solving the wave equation in a variety of settings. All of these come with sample assignment sheets and the necessary starter code.Departamento de Informática (Arquitectura y Tecnología de Computadores, Ciencias de la Computación e Inteligencia Artificial, Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos)Facilitar la inclusión de ejercicios prácticos de programación paralela en cursos de Computación Paralela o de alto rendimiento (HPC)Comunicación en congreso: Descripción de ejercicios prácticos con acceso a material ya desarrollado y probado

Teaching HPC systems and parallel programming with small-scale clusters

In the last decades, the continuous proliferation of High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems and data centers has augmented the demand for expert HPC system designers, administrators, and programmers. For this reason, most universities have introduced courses on HPC systems and parallel programming in their degrees. However, the laboratory assignments of these courses generally use clusters that are owned, managed and administrated by the university. This methodology has been shown effective to teach parallel programming, but using a remote cluster prevents the students from experimenting with the design, set up and administration of such systems. This paper presents a methodology and framework to teach HPC systems and parallel programming using a small-scale cluster of single-board computers. These boards are very cheap, their processors are fundamentally very similar to the ones found in HPC, and they are ready to execute Linux out of the box. So they represent a perfect laboratory playground for students experiencing how to assemble a cluster, setting it up, and configuring its system software. Also, we show that these small-scale clusters can be used as evaluation platforms for both, introductory and advanced parallel programming assignments.This work is partially supported by the Spanish Government through Programa Severo Ochoa (SEV-2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (contracts TIN2015-65316-P and FJCI-2016-30985), by the Generalitat de Catalunya (contract 2017-SGR-1414), and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreements 671697 and 779877).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft