15-418/15-618: Parallel Computer Architecture and Programming, Fall 2026: Academic Integrity Policy

Students in 15-418/618 are absolutely encouraged to talk to each other, to the TAs, to the instructors, or to anyone else about course assignments. Any assistance, though, must be limited to discussion of the problems and sketching general approaches to a solution. Each programming project team must write its own code and produce its own writeup. Consulting another student's or team's solution (past or present) is prohibited on assignments.

You are encouraged to make use of the extensive material online, including documentation from companies, online forums such as Stackoverflow, and course material from other universities. However, you may not make use of any material specific to our assignments, such as old assignment solutions on Github. If you are uncertain about whether you can use some resource, post a question on Ed, with a link to the material you would like to use.

You may not supply code, assignment writeups, or exams you complete during 15-418/618 to other students in future instances of this course. You may not make these items available (e.g., on the web) for use in future instances of this course (just as you may not use work completed by students who have taken the course previously). We encourage you to use public source control hosts, such as Github, for your assignments; however please be sure to make your programming assignment repositories private and to keep them private even when you have completed the course.

Students who are caught plagiarizing or cheating will be given a university-level Academic Integrity Violation (AIV). The penalty for an AIV will range from getting a -100% score for the particular assignment to failing the class.

Students who provide resources to students in future instances of the course can be subject to a retroactive AIV violation in this course. This can lead to a change in grade and even a revocation of your diploma.

AI Policy

The course staff is here to support you and your learning. You are expected to understand the practice of developing software and generally be able to write and debug code. You also know how to study, and how to actively participate in lectures. AI tools (LLMs, etc.) can be helpful for supporting students who are already at this level of expertise.

There are multiple types of assignments in the course. Each has a slightly different policy based on its pedagogical role in the course.

First, please record and document all of your AI tool usage.

1. Conceptual Questions

AI tools are often missing context regarding how a topic fits within the course. However, they can help you link topics to broaden your understanding and provide other examples.

2. Written Assignments

These assignments are low-stakes preparation for exams. Therefore you should minimize your usage of AI tools. Particularly, you should not be copying and pasting, or otherwise moving the text directly into or out of any AI tool.

AI tools are prohibited during the peer grading phase of written assignments, since the point of the peer grading exercise is for you to learn the material well enough so that you can successfully peer-grade the assignment yourself.

3. Code in Programming Assignments and Final Project

AI tools are disallowed for programming assignment 1.

On programming assignments 2 through 4, you are permitted to consult AI tools to support your development through two key aspects: small-scale code generation (such as, a linked list or summation, but not a lock-free data structure or parallel reduction) and clarification of framework interface (e.g., the names and functionality of OpenMP pragmas, but not specifically which pragmas to apply).

4. Written Reports for Programming Assignments and Final Project

AI tools are suggested for helping with formatting, issues with LaTeX, or other items not directly related to your work. Tools can also help with your spelling and grammatical issues, but not rewriting whole paragraphs.

Do not use AI tools to directly analyze your results or draw conclusions.