FutureGrid education: using case studies to develop a curriculum for communicating parallel and distributed computing concepts

  • Authors:

  • Jerome E. Mitchell;Judy Qiu;Massimo Canonio;Shantenu Jha;Linda Hayden;Barbara Ann O'Leary;Renato Figueiredo;Geoffrey Fox

  • Affiliations:

  • Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana;Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana;University of Piemonte, Orientale, Vercelli, Italy;Lousiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA;Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, North Carolina;Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana;University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida;Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment: Bridging from the eXtreme to the campus and beyond
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

The shift to parallel computing -- including multi-core computer architectures, cloud distributed computing, and generalpurpose GPU programming -- leads to fundamental changes in the design of software and systems. As a result, learning parallel, distributed, and cloud techniques in order to allow software to take advantage of the shift toward parallelism is of important significance. To this end, FutureGrid, an experimental testbed for cloud, grids, and high performance computing, provides a resource for anyone to find, share, and discuss modular teaching materials and computational platform supports. This paper presents a series of case studies for experiences in parallel and distributed education using the FutureGrid testbed. Building on previous experiences from courses, workshops, and summer schools associated with FutureGrid, we present a viable solution to developing a curriculum by leveraging collaboration with organizations. Our approach to developing a successful guide stems from the idea of anyone interested in learning parallel and distributing computing can do so with minimum assistance from a domain expert, and it addresses the educational goals and objectives to help meet many challenges, which lie ahead in the discipline. We validate our approach to developing a community driven curriculum by providing use cases and their experiences with the teaching modules. Examples of some use cases include the following: hosting a workshop for faulty members of historically black colleges and universities, courses in distributed and cloud computing at universities, such as Indiana University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Piemonte Orientale.