Using Everest Platform for Teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing

The paper presents a practical approach for building high-level services for teaching parallel and distributed computing based on Everest platform. Originally designed for publication of computing applications, the platform is suitable for rapid development of services for running different types of parallel programs on high-performance resources, as well as services for evaluation of practical assignments. As was demonstrated by using Everest for teaching two introductory PDC courses, the proposed approach helps to enhance students’ practical experience while avoiding low-level interfaces and providing a level of automation necessary for scaling the course to a large number of students. In contrast to other solutions, the exploited Platform as a Service model provides the ability to quickly reuse this approach by other PDC educators without installation of the platform.