Parallel processing is a new and fast growing field of computer science. It is a comprehensive discipline, covering fundamental concepts and techniques of parallel architecture, programming, and algorithms. The rapid development of parallel processing in recent years has been incurring a significant impact on college education. This project is a nine-day workshop on Parallel Processing: Architecture and Programming, bringing together 35 college and university faculty members from all over the country to learn the basic theory and practice in this new field of Computer Science and discuss the issues of enhancing the undergraduate curriculum by Parallel Processing. The workshop introduces the participants to topics that can be used to enhance undergraduate courses in computer organization, computer architecture, computer systems, parallel processing, programming languages, concurrent programming, design and analysis of algorithms, and theory of computation. The workshop emphasizes practical programming activities in Applied Parallel Processing and Graphics Laboratory at California State University-Fresno, the establishment of which has been supported by NSF Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement Program. The workshop offers six two-hour tutorial lectures by Lan Jin, Shigeko Seki, and Lan Yang. Each lecture is followed by a one-hour discussion and three-hour laboratory work. The lectures address fundamentals of parallel processing, shared-variable and message- passing programming, parallel algorithms, and major parallel architectures. Three panel discussions are organized on the topics such as curriculum design and teaching methodologies, laboratory development, and trends of development of parallel processing. The workshop pays great attention to follow-up activities including an active electronic forum throughout the academic year after the workshop.
