Introduction

The Scientific Computing course, P573, provides a general broad introduction to the Art of Scientific Computing, for an Art it is. You will become acquainted with numerous computing tools used by scientists in their every day work. These will cover 

• symbolic manipulation systems (e.g., Maxima, Maple and Mathematica, cf. Section 2.1),
• data maintenance and storage utilities (e.g., HDF, cf. Section 2.3)
• Fortran, the primary programming language of science and engineering (in its most advanced, Fortran-95 and High Performance Fortran reincarnation, cf. Section 2.2.1)
• mathematical libraries (e.g., LINPACK, FFTPACK, NAG, IMSL, PESSL, cf. Chapter 3)
• high level languages for numerical computations (e.g., Octave and Matlab, cf. Section 2.6)
• scientific graphics from simple plots (e.g., with Gnuplot, cf. Section 2.2.6) through 3D visualisations (e.g., with BoB, AVS and/or CAVE)
• using batch processing systems (e.g., LoadLeveler, Load Sharing Facility, Network Queueing System - this section will also cover some simple elements of shell programming, and timing the execution of your own program, cf. Chapter 3)

We will also talk about

• characteristics of numerical methods in common use (cf. Section 2.2)
• IEEE arithmetic (cf. Section 2.6)
• performance analysis
• organisation, documentation, and maintenance of scientific codes (cf. Section 2.4)
• hardware architectures (e.g., vector processors, microprocessors, organisation of memory, MPPs, SMPs, and, yes, Merced will be covered too!)
• quantum computing
• scientific publishing (cf. Section 2.4)

The course is addressed to two groups of students: 

1.

Computer Science students interested in learning about specifics of scientific computing

2.

students from other Science schools interested in learning about tools that may help them in their research work

The interests of these two groups, as well as their skills are not exactly the same, but there is a sufficient overlap to let us proceed with a course that should be of use to both. All scientific and computing material will be introduced in a way that should make the course self-contained.