Modules for introducing threads
David P. Bunde* * Knox College
Abstract
This chapter presents a pair of modules for introducing students to parallel programming. Each module is built around an exploratory exercise to parallelize an application, which can be used in a laboratory or a lecture. They illustrate fundamental concepts such as speedup, race conditions, privatizing variables, and load balance. Variations teach students about explicit threading (in C, C++, or Java) and OpenMP (in C/C++).
Keywords
Threads
OpenMP
Shared memory
Race conditions
Load balancing
Parallel overhead
Relevant core courses: Systems, CS2.
Relevant parallel and distributed computing topics: Shared memory: compiler directives/pragmas (A), libraries (A); ...
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