Tasks

18.1 Emerging Tech and Careers- Bioinformatics and Bionics

• Watch The New Bionics that Let Us Run, Climb, and Dance [18:47] - Long, but important enough to show.

18.2 Systems Design - Sequential, Parallel vs Distributed Systems

• Discuss the efficiency of various solutions using stock market trading and/or crypto-currencies as an example.
• Sequential computing is a computational model in which operations are performed in order one at a time.
• Parallel computing is a computational model where the program is broken into multiple smaller sequential computing operations, some of which are performed simultaneously.
• Distributed computing is a computational model in which multiple devices are used to run a program.

Discuss the benefits and challenges of the types of systems

• Comparing efficiency of solutions can be done by comparing the time it takes them to perform the same task.
• A sequential solution takes as long as the sum of all of its steps. 
• Parallel computing consists of a parallel portion and a sequential portion. A parallel computing solution takes as long as its sequential tasks plus the longest of its parallel tasks. 
• The “speedup” of a parallel solution is measured in the time it took to complete the task sequentially divided by the time it took to complete the task when done in parallel.
• Solutions that use parallel computing can scale more effectively than solutions that use sequential computing.
• Distributed computing allows problems to be solved that could not be solved on a single computer because of either the processing time or storage needs involved.
• Distributed computing allows much larger problems to be solved quicker than they could be solved using a single computer.
• When increasing the use of parallel computing in a solution, the efficiency of the solution is still limited by the sequential portion. This means that at some point, adding parallel portions will no longer meaningfully increase efficiency.

18.3 Student Activity:  Sequential, Parallel and Distributed Systems Experiment

• Have students complete this ‘experiment’ in small groups.  
• Note that it requires 20 stacking objects per group so you may want to run the groups ‘sequentially’.
• Found in folder 2.5 - Year 2: Theory.

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Continue to Unit 2: Day 4 »