Introducing parallel computing concepts in computer system related courses

All semiconductor market domains are converging to concurrent platforms. This trend has certainly led real challenge to develop applications software that effectively uses these concurrent processors to achieve efficiency and performance goals. This paper argues that the Computer System related courses are natural places to introduce the parallelism, and the earlier to parallel computing concepts will have a wide reach. This paper showed how digital logic classes can motivate topics from parallel computing through common logic structures. We provided an alternative view of the digital logic topics, including: binary representation of integers using decision tree with recursive thinking; use a carry look-ahead adder to show how sequential operations can be parallelized. Another part to introduce parallel concepts focused on write high performance code with specific emphasis on graphic processing unit (GPU). In our teaching experience, parallel pattern teaching has been confirmed to be a useful pedagogical method for teaching parallel concepts. Finally, we report course experience in teaching parallel computing injected course, which resulted in positive student feedback.