I am working with some of the brightest folks here at Intel, our subject matter experts and architects, such as Clay Breshears, Michael Wrinn, Bob Chesebrough and Tim Mattson (amongst others).  I will also be working closely with the indomitable Wolfgang Rosenberg, manager of the Intel Academic Community. 

My job is to reach out to educators and researchers around the world, to connect them with Intel experts and to help foster development of a curriculum to educate the next generation of programmers and engineers on the newest compute platforms.

Hopefully, this blog will go a long way to opening up channels of communication 

We have a number of events and initiatives planned for this year. 

We have already started our monthly Academic Community Curriculum Webinar Series.  During these webinars, we discuss the newest curriculum topics.  It is a great way to speak directly with our course architects.  I moderate the series and I very much look forward to speaking with you there soon.

The next in the series is on May 15 on multi-core design patterns.  Please Register below.

 Register or view past event here.

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We are creating quite a few short videos supporting our academic efforts.

 I'm in the process now of filming a series on threading topics with an emphasis on game development and visual computing.  So far only the first title on Optimizing for DirectX is posted, but the rest will be available soon.

Is this type of content useful?  Are there better ways to scale out our knowledge and build conversation?  I'd like to hear that from you.

 I've asked around internally as to how folks like to consume information.  As you might imagine, there were a wide-range of responses.  Tim Mattson just rolled his eyes when I started to talk about videos and webinars.  While he is a great presenter, his own preference is to just download the PowerPoint or code and have done with it.

Others, myself included, prefer a richer content set.  For me, nothing beats the immediacy of a live event.  That is one reason we have our monthly webinars.  I am also quite interested in convening smaller conversations, perhaps using something like Communicator or Live Meeting, to discuss specific topics or curriculum ideas.  Let me know by responding to this blog.

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Finally, I've become very interested in different forms of new media.  I'm often available on Twitter -find me as @psteinb.

I am the owner of the Intel Software Second Life Island. 

IM me on Second Life as Peretz Stine.

Check out our launch video.

Over the last year, we ran an event series on our Second Life island dedicated to engaging engineers and professionals around the world in conversation on this unique environment.  That program, sadly, is ended, but you can still view much of it here:

Are you interested in meeting on Second Life or other virtual worlds?  It can be arranged.

 Well that's enough for now -you have you orders -tell me how best to foster dialogue.  I'll be working as hard as I can, but you are the whole point.  Let's start the conversation.

The Multi-core Training Workshop was held in the National Electrical and Electronic Teaching Base of Wuhan University, China Friday Apr. 11- Thursday Apr. 17, 2008. The workshop was sponsored by Intel and arranged by Wuhan University that brings teachers and scholars together with Intel specialists to make progress in the teaching contents and experience on multi-core related courses. There were approximately 46 attendees from 22 member universities in the China, most of the attendees are titled with associate professor and focus on teaching, and will directly take charge of the curriculum building of Multi-core Related course. All those universities have adopted multi-core content to their syllabus now and will start teaching the multi-core content at Fall 2008. By that time, the undergraduate/graduate students of more than 100 universities in the China will benefit from the Intel Multi-core University Program and, "it is of great meaning to make those future software engineers start understanding the multi-core architecture and multi-threaded programming technologies at university NOW - the multi-core computing era", said by Richard Wang from Intel.

Thanks for the great support from Intel Education Team, Intel SSG, and Intel ISC, it has taken Jolly Wang so much time to prepare for the workshop tomake the event smoothly, Hai Shen and Selwyn You have made some valuable suggestions for the training agenda, Nick Bao, Stanley Wang, Xiaoping Duan and Feilong Huang, have come to the workshop and made wonderful speeches or worked as instructors.

The workshop took 7 days, with 8 class hours per day and 3 hours free lab time per evening, and consists of three panels: the introduction of Intel Multi-core University Program, the multi-core training, and the teaching symposium.

The first panel's presentations focusing on the development of Intel Multi-core University Program in China, Intel Software and Solutions Group (SSG) and, the University Program registration flow were given by Nick Bao and Stanley Wang.

The Training Panel's presentations were delivered by Jianfeng Yang(WHU), Qingsong Shi(ZJU), Xiaoping Duan and Feilong Huang(Intel). Here the Intel standard training module was adopted on this panel and we add some other useful topics such as parallel architecture, MPI. The lab environment was maintained by Yinbo Xie (WHU). The key contents of training panel include:

• Parallel Architecture Parallel Programming Technologies
• Core 2 architecture Threading Concepts
• OpenMP
• Programming with Windows/POSIX threads
• Threaded programming methodology
• Intel Tools
  • Intel Compiler
  • Intel VTune Performance Analyzer
  • Intel MKL
  • Intel Thread Checker
  • Intel Thread Profiler
• Scalability of threaded applications
• MPI
• TBB

At the third panel, we discussed how to integrate multi-core contents to the syllabus, teaching contents and emphasis. Prof Ting Wang of NUDT was invited to give a keynote speech of curriculum building experience of undergraduate course "Compiler Principle", the National Module Curriculum. Presentations by Dr. Qingsong Shi from Zhejiang University and Dr. Jianfeng Yang from Wuhan University delivered the curriculum (Intel-MOE Module Curriculum) building experience to the participations also. And at the symposium, each university and each teacher introduced the curriculum building status of multi-core related course and their research interests. The discussion made the participants understand each other and increased the friendship among faculties.

Curriculum CD and Courseware were donated to the all participating universities, and from the feedback forms, all the attendances were satisfied with the workshop.

A special thank you goes out to all who attended and contributed to a very successful event.

Adobe© and Intel© have come together to change the way creative professionals work, to optimize design productivity and allow creative genius to reign free. We finally see, based on your inputs and feedback, that film schools will enhance their curricula by using revolutionary technologies to express even most ambitious creative visions without compromise.    

Given that context, it was startling to hear a panelist at IPDPS (in Miami, a couple of weeks ago) assert that parallel-processing topics have been disappearing from CS curricula in recent years. As anecdotal evidence, he pointed out the topic’s removal in the 2^nd edition of Introduction to Algorithms (the elegant tome otherwise known by its authors’ initials, CLRS).

Could this possibly be true? Before rushing off to blog, I had to check. First, find an old copy of CLRS, oops, CLR in those days. Sure enough, there was a whole chapter called “Algorithms for parallel computers” which had gone missing in the current edition. Hmm, perhaps parallel concepts were infused into the overall approach? After a couple of long evenings getting reacquainted with CLRS, I had to conclude: no, it’s simply disappeared.

But perhaps this example is a weird one-off, a singular anomaly offset by broader trends? After all, schools like UC Berkeley introduce concurrency in the freshman course, and we here at ISC work with many schools on this topic. Further, googling the obvious keywords pops over a million hits, so things would appear to be, reassuringly, busy.

No. The panelist’s observation is accurate. If anything, the situation is worse than described. Here are some unhappy details:

Way back in 1995, IEEE Computer published an article, Parallel Computing in the Undergraduate Curriculum, by profs at Colgate. As stated in the abstract, “The author describes how parallel computing can be integrated into courses throughout the computer science undergraduate curriculum.”

Good stuff. So, what is Colgate doing now, 13 years later? There is one course on the topic, at the advanced level only, and it is NOT required for the CS major.

Still 1995: the First Wellesley Forum on Parallel Computing Curricula. Brown university presents a paper called Integrating Parallelism into the First Theory Course

Good stuff. So, what is Brown doing now, 13 years later? They list a single grad course, offered occasionally -- btw NOT this year.

Forward a couple years, to ITiCSE ’97. George Washington University presents a paper, Concurrent programming CAN be introduced into the lower-level undergraduate curriculum. They even refer back to ACM standardization efforts in this area, from 1991.

Good stuff. So what is GW doing now, 11 years later? At last, something: in one required course, called Software Paradigms, we read among the topics: “concurrent software design paradigms and patterns”. Excellent. I’m going to contact this prof, Michael Feldman, maybe buy him a beer – uh, hold that thought, Feldman is listed as retired…

One more. Forward to the OOPSLA 1998 Educators’ Symposium, where Loyola of Chicago is arguing: “that a computer-science curriculum should introduce the principles of concurrent programming in an integrated, coherent, and application-independent fashion early in the major.”

Good stuff. So, what is Loyola doing now, 10 years later? Sigh. One advanced class, NOT required for the CS major. No evidence of concurrency in other courses.

The pattern is monotonously repetitive. Forward-looking academics looked at the parallel computing challenge a decade ago, announced they would champion a solution, and saw their efforts, for the most part, defeated. What happened??

I’m headed to ITiCSE ’08, in Madrid this summer, to tilt at this windmill myself. Those of us looking to retire the now-obsolete sequential assumptions, baked into 50 years of CS curricula, do enjoy one serious advantage not available to those courageous predecessors: multicore computing platforms are now the norm. Recognizing that reality, let’s make the adjustment time short.

The second new face is me. My name is Wolfgang Rosenberg, I am your Academic Community Manager, located in Munich – Bavaria, an area of Germany with a fabulous landscape, mountains, lakes and that all mixed with a lot of history, culture and related buildings. Quite an inspiring surrounding! If you are interested in more details about me, please check my bio or write me an e-mail.   

Coming back to the first face. Just wanted to make you aware about our offering. You should have access at you finger tips to a wide variety of material, which will help you to enhance you curriculum.

• Content sections for non-editable and editable courseware form Intel and other universities
• Software Tools Licenses. Through providing your curriculum title and an annual student-forecast you also can get access to a free floating class room license package, which can be renewed after 12 months   
• Academic Forum section, to address technical questions
• Academic Blog site, to share opinions about ‘hot’ topics
• Video section. These short ‘Take 5’ videos are intended to provide an overview about new topics and technologies.
• Webinars, these are intended for any college instructor who will be working with students in the disciplines of Engineering, Physics,  Mathematics and Computer Science.  During the webinar we will show the Course Design Document for the materials, providing an intimate roadmap of its objectives, content and hands-on labs. Further, discussions and feedback will be invited and discussed.  We look forward to seeing you there. Follow this link to Register for this free seminar series or to view past webinars.
• Through your membership you also will have access to the other Intel Software Network services.

We also are extremely interested in linking or publishing content from you, which will be of interest to the Academic Community. I am very interested to hear back from you. We are open to suggestions on how we better can support you. 

Enjoy your day 

Wolfgang   

I asked Dr Dennis (Prf Emeritus CS at MIT) his thoughts on what should be taught to undergrads to prepare them for a many core future. This was a lunchtable conversation and not a true curriculum planning session - but none the less - Dr Denis did not hesitate to mention functional languages as one of the first things that should be taught. I don't think he was implying that a functional language is the magic bullet or one size fits all solution to bringing new developers to the discipline.

The reasons he articulted for teaching a functional language are that:
1) it is a model for parallel prgramming that avoids the sunchroonization hazards associated with threading - data races etc.
2) version of parallel languages are already being taught in many schools already so there s a low barrier to entry
3) Examples of functional languages can already be found in industry

I would argue that there will still be a need to teach students about threading (but not with as high a priority). If you teach them about threading, you have to teach them about the associated hazards. This does not contradict that we should also teach them a functional language.

On other fronts here at IPDPS I talked to Keshav Pingali from the University of Texas, and Vivek Sarkar from Rice University who were panelists here Wednesday night. These panelists discussed how the current parallel computation community could pass their learnings on to a new generation of develpoers just starting out in multicore. After the panel discussion, Michael Wrinn & I were able to get their take on essentially the same question I asked of Dr Dennis. They indicated that there still is some value in teaching functional programming to the new crop of developers. Keshav in particular indicated that his early exposure to functional languages has influenced his coding style in positive ways - years later. They acknowledged that some implentations of functional languages have been poor performers on sequential machines in the past and so they have not really caught on in industry (Erlang is the excetion to this statement) and also they cited some difficulties with cache locality & dealing with multidmensional arrays from a developers perspective. However, they also indicated that several groups have been adding extensions to these lanuages, I think Haskell was mentioned, to allow for improved handling of arrays and to address locaility issues.

So here are my musings after havng these discussions. Warning controvesial road ahead - use caution when entering - Here's a controversial perspective on appropriateness of functional languages as we move into many core land. Maybe the locaility issues that caused functional languages to be discounted wont be so significant in a time when we are utilizing hundreds of cores. Why? In sequential programming days and in early days of multicore - 2 cores could possibily give you a 2X speedup. But the tax we pay for poor cache locality might be hypothetically ~10X - the number thrown around here in our conversations with these disinguished professors from Texas. So any language that could gain you 2X by parallelism - but lose you 10X thru poor locality probably would die a natural death. BUT - improve cache locality fo these languages and apply to many more cores. Suppose in future we have 100 cores and that compilers for the functional languages get a second look and get needed optimizations so that we reduce cache locality issues to be a 50% penalty rather than 10X (50% penalty means we run at 1.5X speedup). Now assume that we approach 100X due to parallelism but pay 1.5X tax. Thats a net gain ~66X speedup. Compiler writers might be persuaded to optimize a functional language if there was a decent pay off. 66X might do it. If the industry had frozen in a past instant of time at only 2 cores and if compiler writers at that time thought that they might be able to reduce locality penalty to 50% would it have been a worthwhile endeavor? 2X gain/1.5X loss 1.3X net - that a 30% gain in performance - not so clear that compiler writers would be enthusiastic to do all the work required because the potential pay off would not be that large. But maybe for 66X gain thay may consider it.

Caveat - I know I am assuming no overhead here and we likley wont scale perfectly or anywhere near it at 100 cores etc. But if there are no synchronization hazards - and we reduce the locality penalties maybe these things will scale better than we imagine - does anyone have a quantitaive way to address this? Quick - can someone whip out an equation from Hannesy & Patterson?

My point is that perhaps we should keep an open mind ot the possiblity of functional languages and hope that the "economy scale" and clever compiler writers might be able to bring a solution. The payoff ultimately would be fundamentally easier approaches to parallelism.

Who knows?

bobc