Fall-12: Using C++11 to teach Concurrency and Parallelism Concepts

In our current undergraduate curriculum, the Operating Systems (OS) course provides in-depth understanding of concepts related to concurrency and parallelism. Typically, the laboratory exercises and programming projects in this course are performed in C-language under Linux, an OS that is unfamiliar to many students. Most of the students primarily have only Java experience under WindowsTM. Consequently they experience steep, multifaceted learning curves that distracts them from focusing on core concepts in the course. In an endeavor to address this issue, the Fall 2012 offering of this course, adopted C++11 as the programming language to build on the object oriented skills of the students, utilize Standard Template Library (STL) containers, and algorithms to ease programming while maintaining focus on concepts related to concurrency and parallelism. In addition to leveraging standard C++ threads and parallelized STL algorithms, the course utilized several newly introduced libraries and design patterns to explore modern solutions to many standard multithreading and synchronization issues. This paper and poster presents experiences with using C++11 language and standard libraries to teach several concurrency and parallelism concepts in the OS course. The paper also summarizes data from direct assessments, indirect assessments, and student evaluations which indicates that use of C++11 standard enabled maintaining focus on core concepts, motivated learning of novel object oriented design patterns, and facilitated effective application of concurrency and parallelism concepts. Keywords-Operating System, C++11, Concurrency & Parallelism, Standard Template Library (STL), STL algorithms