7th NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar-17)

Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) now permeates most computing activities. The pervasiveness of computing devices that contain multicore CPUs and GPUs is making even common users depend on parallel processing. The ever increasing use of web-based services and emerging applications, such as cloud computing, big data analytics, and the Internet of Things, is weaving high performance computing (HPC) and distributed computing into the fabric of modern society.  Traditional sequential programming skills are no longer sufficient even for basic programmers. These changes in the computing landscape point to the need for providing a broad-based skill set in PDC technology at various levels in the educational fabric woven by Computer Science (CS) and Computer Engineering (CE) programs as well as related computational disciplines.  However, the rapid changes in hardware platforms, devices, languages, and supporting programming environments continue to challenge educators in ascertaining appropriate content for curriculum and how to teach that content effectively.

The 7th EduPar workshop invites unpublished manuscripts from academia, industry, and research institutes on topics pertaining to the teaching of PDC/HPC topics. The emphasis of the 7th workshop continues to be on undergraduate education, although certain aspects of graduate education, if relevant to undergraduates, may be considered at the discretion of the program committee.  The workshop especially seeks papers that report on experience with implementing aspects of the NSF/TCPP or ACM/IEEE CS2013 curriculum or other novel approaches to incorporating PDC topics into undergraduate core courses that are taken by the majority of students in a program. Methods, pedagogical approaches, tools, and techniques that have the potential for adoption across the broader community are of particular interest.

This effort is in coordination with the TCPP curriculum initiative for CS/CE undergraduates supported by NSF and its NSF-supported Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER).