Runtime support for stencil data-parallel applications on multicore architectures

In the field of structured parallel programming we study and implement a shared-memory runtime support for stencil data-parallel applications expressed according to the virtual processor formalism. It is a novel approach to introduce some optimizations that cannot be provided at compile time. The effectiveness of our runtime support is then evaluated with respect to optimized hand-written data-parallel applications

Enhancing the general background of CS students through a computing history course

The Italian Association of Automatic Computing (AICA) promotes the introduction of academic courses on the computing history. Also the University of Udine participates in this project by offering an elective course in the CS and IT programs. After the first two years of this new experience, we attempt to outline what is emerging from the analysis of the students' answers to a couple of specifically designed questionnaires and to the examination tests. A major point of interest is that the course helps us to get some insight on our students' general background and attitude toward culture. In particular, the first observations seem to indicate that they are rather curious about the technological artifacts, but come with a poor historical picture and then have difficulty putting science and technology in a historical perspective. Although our analysis reveals some positive trends, it is not easy to assess the course effectiveness in this respect because of the lack of suitable benchmarks