Making Learning Parallel Processing Interesting

The abundant availability of multi-core computers makes "parallel computers" a common place and teaching Computer Science students to be able to design and develop parallel algorithms an urgent task. Most students recognize the needs of developing skills in parallel programming. However, since their Computer Science related curriculum are mostly taught based on sequential computers, introducing a new way of analysis and solving problems can be difficult. Making students interested in the subject can have a pivotal effect in the learning outcomes. In this short paper, we show several approaches we have been using to excite our students about learning parallel processing at our Concurrent Systems class, where parallel processing and parallel programming are taught. Some approach include showing students algorithms with an appeared impossible high performance, showing them simple steps to achieve 100% CPU utilization on multi-core computers, combining sequential algorithms they learned in the past to create new parallel algorithms, and challenging them with implementing some rather complex parallel algorithms.