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Hands-On Exploration of Parallelism for Absolute Beginners W ith Scratch

Hands-On Exploration of Parallelism for Absolute Beginners W ith Scratch. Third NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar-13) May 20 th , 2013. Steven Bogaerts Department of Mathematics & Computer Science Wittenberg University Springfield, OH.

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Hands-On Exploration of Parallelism for Absolute Beginners W ith Scratch

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  1. Hands-On Exploration of Parallelism for Absolute Beginners With Scratch Third NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar-13)May 20th, 2013 • Steven Bogaerts Department of Mathematics & Computer Science • Wittenberg UniversitySpringfield, OH NSF grant CCF-0915805, SHF:Small:RUI:Collaborative Research: Accelerators to Applications – Supercharging the Undergraduate Computer Science CurriculumPIs: Eric Stahlberg, Melissa Smith, Steven Bogaerts

  2. Outline Steven Bogaerts The context of this work Introduction to Scratch Hands-on exercises on parallelism with Scratch Outcomes

  3. PDC at Wittenberg Steven Bogaerts • The integration effort continues… • CS1 • Key concepts, message-passing paradigm, race conditions, blocking commands, … • CS2 • Threads, divide and conquer parallelism, efficiency • Languages • Shared memory (OpenMP) and message passing (MPI) in C • Algorithms • Sequential and parallel algorithms for various tasks, asymptotic complexity • Software design • Sequential and parallel design patterns • Hardware • FPGA programming • Artificial intelligence • Parallel alpha-beta pruning, neural network training • Cybersecurity • Botnets, distributed denial of service attacks • …

  4. Computer Literacy Steven Bogaerts • Audience • Entirely non-majors (does not count towards CS major) • Occasionally a student will move on to CS1 and perhaps a minor or major • Many students with great unease in math and computing • Three roughly 5-week (15 contact-hour) parts • Excel • Design of spreadsheets to capture relevant data and calculations to facilitate real-world decisions • Access • Database design • Queries • Keys, referential integrity • Programming • Get an introduction to what programming is…

  5. Programming in Scratch • Not literally in parallel • Code executes concurrently, sharing a single execution thread through context switches. Steven Bogaerts • Developed at the MIT Media Lab in 2007 • In use at various institutions as a first language for both majors and non-majors, and in K-12 education • Visually-oriented, fun introduction to key programming concepts • Similar to Alice – dragging and connecting blocks, manipulating “sprites”

  6. The Situation Steven Bogaerts • I have 15 hours of contact time to give students a first taste of programming. • To be truly “literate” in computing today requires some basic understanding of parallelism. • Most literacy courses don’t include hands-on parallel programming exercises. • Question • With no prerequisites and little time, how can I give non-majors hands-on experience in parallelism?

  7. Illustrations of Parallel Computing with Scratch Steven Bogaerts Parallelism and communication for clean solutions Race conditions Blocking and non-blocking commands Shared and private variables

  8. Parallelism and Communication for Clean Solutions • Option 1 • Option 2 Boy Ball Boy Ball ? ? • Complex relationship of values • Simple relationship of values The world is naturally parallel Let parallelism arise naturally as the best solution Task: Animation of a boy walking and dribbling a ball

  9. Race Conditions Ball First? Later? Paddle Later? Later? • Arbitrary interleaving – some blocks may immediately end execution! • Exercises • Determine interleaving through observation • Fix code through waits or blocking until receipt of a signal Steven Bogaerts Parallelism also brings added challenges Not truly parallel, so actually this is unexpected program behavior occurring due to the arbitrary interleaving of concurrent code

  10. Blocking and Non-Blocking Commands • A sample broadcast exercise: Sender Recipient Blocking Non-Blocking Steven Bogaerts

  11. Shared and Private Variables Q W E R A S D F • Private variable • Each mole’s state (up or down) • Shared variables • Score counter • Game difficulty parameters Steven Bogaerts Whack-A-Mole

  12. Outcomes Steven Bogaerts Material was very easy to integrate into the class in a level-appropriate manner. Strong performance (mostly A’s and B’s) on parallelism assignments and exam questions. General parallelism discussions - students report very good understanding (4.0 / 5.0) and enjoyment (4.0 / 5.0). Parallelism in Scratch – students report high understanding (4.7 / 5.0) and enjoyment (4.4 / 5.0).

  13. Summary Steven Bogaerts • Context • A very short time in a literacy course • Maybe at the start of CS1 • Hands-on exploration of parallelism with Scratch • Parallelism and communication for clean solutions • Race conditions • Blocking and non-blocking commands • Shared and private variables • Outcomes – successful integration in literacy course

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