For those enrolled in ECS 158 or on the waiting list for it: CS Undergraduate Staff Adviser Thao Pham has informed me that the official UCD records show the 158 prerequisites as only consisting of RECOMMENDED courses ECS 150 and 154B, whereas it should be 150 REQUIRED and 154B recommended. She is concerned that some students enrolled in 158 may not even have had ECS 50. As I have mentioned before, the most important prerequisite for ECS 158 is strong programming ability. If you have in your previous courses needed a lot of hints as to how to do a programming assignment, 158 is probably not the course for you. 70% of the course grade consists of weekly quizzes which consist almost entirely of programming. However, having said that, it is also important for me to point out that 158 is not "only" programming. Consider: 1. The purpose of parallel programming is to achieve fast computational speed. 2. In turn, fast computational speed requires a good knowledge of computer systems -- operating systems issues and high-level hardware structure. 3. In turn, OS issues and high-level hardware structure are taught in ECS 50 and 150. You should know things like the following: bits and bytes processor/memory (and I/O) bus memory addresses and word size; C/C++ pointers as memory addresses the notion of an OS process; the Unix (Linux, Mac) 'ps' command; timeshare If you had a good ECS 50 course, it would be enough for the above; if not, you really need 150. Norm