Teaching Parallel Algorithms Using the Binary-Forking Model

In this paper, we share our experience in teaching parallel algorithms with the binary-forking model. With hardware advances, multicore computers are now ubiquitous. This has created a substantial demand in both research and industry to harness the capabilities of parallel computing. It is thus important to incorporate parallelism in computer science education, especially in the early stages of the curriculum. However, it is commonly believed that understanding and using parallelism requires a deep understanding of computer systems and architecture, which complicates introducing parallelism to young students and non-experts. We propose to use the binary-forking model in teaching parallel algorithms, proposed by our previous research work. This model is meant to capture the performance of algorithms on modern multicore shared-memory machines, which is a simple abstraction to isolate algorithm design ideas with system-level details. The abstraction allows for simple analysis based on the work-span model in theory, and can be directly implemented as parallel programs in practice. In this paper, we briefly overview some basic primitives in this model, and provide a list of algorithms that we believe are well-suited in parallel algorithm courses.