EduHiPC-18: Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing

December 17, 2018

Technical Program

8:30a-8:40a
Welcome
Workshop Chairs:
    Sushil K. Prasad (Georgia State University and National Science Foundation, USA)
    R. Govindranjan (Indian Institutte of Science, India)


8:40a-10:30a
Session Chair: Sheikh Ghafoor (Tennessee Tech, USA)


Invited Talks – National Initiatives (30 min each)

 
1. Ashish P. Kuvellkar (C-DAC, India)
    “Development of HPC aware manpower under National Supercomputing Mission” (abstract)
  

 
2. Sushil K. Prasad (Georgia State University and National Science Foundation, USA)
    “Developing IEEE-TCPP Parallel and Distrbuted Computing Curriculum and NSF CyberTraining Program” (abstract)
  

 

3. Seetha Rama Krishna Nookala (Intel, India)
    “Convergence of computing, enabling next gen developers to handle the upcoming challenges“ (abstract)
  

 
Poster Lightning Talks (5 min each)
 
1. Ritu Arora and Lars Koesterke (TACC, USA)
    “Teaching Parallel Programming Using an Interactive Parallelization Tool” (abstract)
  

 
2. Kazi A Kalpoma and Md. Shahriar Mahbub (AUST, Bangladesh)
    “Challenges of integrating parallel and distributed computing topics into Undergraduate CSE curriculum of AUST: Bangladesh Perspective” (abstract, slides)
  

 
3. Vaishali Shah, Venkatesh Shenoi and Sandeep Joshi (ISSC, India and C-DAC, India)
    “HPC for novices through a course in parallel programming” (abstract, slides)
  

 
4. Lakshmi Narasimhan and Tshiamo Motshegwa (University of Botswana, Botswana)
    “Parallel & High Performance Computing Education – A Botswana Perspective (abstract)
  


10:30a-11:00a
Morning Break


11:00a-12:05p
Session Chair: R. Govindranjan (Indian Institutte of Science, India)


Invited Talk – Training and Tools (30 min)

 
4. Abani Petra (SUNY, Buffalo, USA)
    “Reinventing Computing Education for the Converged HPC and Data Driven World” (abstract)
  

 
Poster Lightning Talks (5 min each)
 
5. Prasun Dewan (UNC: Chapel Hill, USA)
    “The Structure of a Project-Based Course on the Fundamentals of Distributed Computing” (abstract, slides)
   

 
6. Ajit Singh and Dr. Pavan Chakraborty (Indian Institute of Information Technology, India)
    “SimuLock – Simulator for lock based synchronization primitives on many-core processors” (abstract)
  

 
7. Sukhamay Kundu (Louisiana State University, USA)
    “Early Introduction to Parallel Computing via Applications in Data Analytics” (abstract)
   

 
8. Amarjeet Sharma, Anil Kumar Gupta and Sharda Dixit (C-DAC, India)
    “Reproducibility Framework for Scientific Application in HPC” (abstract, slides)
   

 
9. Chitra Pandian (Thiagarajar College of Engieering, Madurai)
    “Novel approach for teaching a course on “Parallel Computing Systems”(abstract, slides)
   

 
10. Deepak Aggarwal, Prashant Kumar, Harish Charan and Hemant Joshi (Institute for Plasma Research, India and Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)
    “Parallel & Distributed Computing (PDC) Using Low Cost, Compact and Portable Raspberry Pi Mini Cluster: Pradyut” (abstract, slides)
   

 
11. Prathamesh Tugaonkar (Terna Engineering College, Mumbai)
    “Augmenting Massive Hands on Labs (MHOL) in Parallel Computing Course” (abstract, slides)
   


12:05p-1:00p
Poster Session Interactive Discussion (1 hr)


1:00p-2:00p
Lunch Break


2:00p-4:00p
Session Chair: Sushil K. Prasad (Georgia State University and National Science Foundation, USA)
Invited Talks – Curricular Innovations and Adoption (30 min each)

 

5. Andrew Lumsdaine (PNNL and University of Washington, Seattle, USA)
    “The Only Constant is Change: Maintaining an Up-to-date HPC Curriculum” (abstract)

 

6. Sheik Ghafoor (Tennessee Tech, USA)
    “A Roadmap to Integrate PDC Topics in Introductory Programming Classes: An US Experience” (abstract)
   

 
7. R.K. Shyamasundar (IIT Bombay and TIFR, India)
     “Role of Concurrency and Distributed Programming in the Era of Blockchains, PGAS, GPUs” (abstract)
   

 
8. Kishore Kothapalli (IIIT Hyderbad, India)
    “Experiences of Teaching Parallel Programming to Early Undergraduates” (abstract)
   


4:00p-4:30p
Afternoon Break


4:30p-5:15p
Town Hall – EduHiPC Future Planning
Workshop Chairs
    Sushil K. Prasad (Georgia State University and National Science Foundation, USA)
    R. Govindranjan (Indian Institutte of Science, India)

CALL FOR POSTERS and PARTICIPATION (CLOSED)

 

High Performance Computing (HPC) and, in general, Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) has become pervasive, from supercomputers and server farms containing multicore CPUs and GPUs, to individual PCs, laptops, and mobile devices. Even casual users of computers now depend on parallel processing. Therefore, it is important for every computer user (and especially every programmer) to understand how parallelism and distributed computing affect problem solving. It is essential for educators to impart a range of PDC and HPC knowledge and skills at multiple levels within the educational fabric woven by Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), and related computational curricula including data science. Companies and laboratories need people with these skills, and, as a result, they are finding that they must now engage in extensive on-the-job training. Nevertheless, rapid changes in hardware platforms, languages, and programming environments increasingly challenge educators to decide what to teach and how to teach it, in order to prepare students for careers that are increasingly likely to involve PDC and HPC.

This inaugural workshop is intended to seed a workshop series on topics pertaining to HPC and PDC education and training, and foster a community of interested stakeholders – including future organizers – representing academia, industry, and government laboratories, especially from India, its vicinity, and Asia. The inaugural workshop will feature invited talks from regional and international experts and poster presentations from the education and research community, and future workshops will have open call for papers. Attendees will benefit from discussions on the needs and approaches for augmenting undergraduate and graduate education in Computer Science and Engineering, Computational and Data Science, and computational courses for both STEM and business disciplines with PDC and HPC concepts.

The workshop is particularly dedicated to bringing together stakeholders from industry (both hardware vendors and employers), government labs, and academia in the context of HiPC-18. The goal is for each to hear the challenges faced by others, to learn about various approaches to addressing these challenges, and to have opportunities to exchange ideas and solutions. This workshop will also feature invited talks on opportunities for collaboration, resource sharing, educator training, internships, and other means of increasing cross-fertilization between industry, government, and academia.

This effort is in coordination with the NSF/TCPP curriculum initiative on Parallel and Distributed Computing and the Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER). 

Topics of interest for posters include, but are not limited to:

1.    Pedagogical issues in incorporating PDC and HPC in undergraduate and graduate education, especially in core courses.

2.    Novel ways of teaching PDC and HPC topics.

3.    Data Science and Big Data aspects of teaching HPC/PDC including early experience with data science degree programs.

4.    Evidence-based educational practices for teaching HPC/PDC topics that provides evidence about what works best under what circumstances.

5.    Experience with incorporating PDC and HPC topics into core CS/CE courses and in domain Computational Science and Engineering courses.

6.    Pedagogical tools, programming environments, infrastructures, languages, and projects for PDC and HPC.

7.    Employers’ experiences with and expectation of the level of PDC and HPC proficiency among new graduates.

8.    Education resources based on higher-level programming languages and environments such as X10, Chapel, Haskell, Python, Cilk, CUDA, OpenCL, OpenACC, Hadoop, and Spark.  

9.    Parallel and distributed models of programming and computation suitable for teaching, learning, and workforce development.

10.    Projects or units that introduce students to concepts relevant to Internet of Things, networking, or other topics in mobile devices or sensor networks.

11.    Issues and experiences addressing the gender gap in computing and broadening participation of underrepresented groups.

12.    “Peachy Parallel Assignments” – high-quality assignments, previously-tested in class, that are readily adoptable by other educators teaching topics in parallel and distributed computing (inspired by nifty assignments: http://nifty.stanford.edu).

 

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We are accepting submissions for posters (1-page pdf abstract). If accepted, authors will be asked to submit their (a) 1-page camera-ready paper, and (b) a poster to be presented and published on the workshop website;  for peachy assignments, (c) assignment (the file actually given to students) and any supporting materials (given code, etc.) to be archived and maintained on CDER courseware repository  (https://grid.cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum/?q=courseware_management).

Submission Portal: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eduhipc18

IMPORTANT DATES

Poster submission deadline: Friday November 9, 2018

Poster Author notification: Friday November 16, 2018

Poster Camera Ready: Friday November 30, 2018

Early conference registration deadline: November 21, 2018

Workshop: Monday, December 21, 2018

 

Workshop Co-Chairs:

Sushil K. Prasad, Georgia State University and National Science Foundation, USA

R. Govindarajan, Indian Institute of Science, India