Integrating parallel programming techniques into traditional computer science curricula

With the introduction of the Sony PlayStation 3 and its use of multi-core processors, parallel computing has left the research arena and the domain of gaming programmers and joined the mainstream of popular computing. Unfortunately, most undergraduate computing disciplines typically do not have the facilities or a comparative basis to help decide which hardware or software models to use to best integrate parallelism into modern curricula. This article enumerates various software models and programming options, to assist in integrating parallel software design techniques into the traditional software development training.