Physics 608
Core Skills for Computational Science
Fall 2015
3 credit

Instructor: David Newman
Office: 112 NSCI
Office Phone: 474-7858
Home Phone: 458-8576 (if all else fails!! But please not after 11 PM)
Email: denewman@alaska.edu

ARSC Help Desk, 450-8602, consult@arsc.edu

Office Hours:

Monday 4:00-5:00pm in 112 NSCI

Wednesday 2:00-4:00pm in 112 NSCI

This syllabus is located at: http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/608.fall2015.html

Course Description

This course provides students of computational sciences an introduction to the basic skills required to operate in the modern high performance computing (HPC) environment offered at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC). Topics include an introduction to HPC, basic Unix/batch/scripting skills, performance programming, shared and distributed memory parallelism, code profiling and debugging, data storage and management, and data visualization.

• Course Syllabus

In approaching this (and all) classes, please note the following ancient chinese proverb:

Teachers can open the door,
but you must enter by yourself.

Prerequisites: Graduate standing in physical sciences; experience with FORTRAN or C programming language; or permission of instructor.

Materials Needed:

Required Text:	Lecture notes
Supplemental references	Unix for Dummies - Quick Reference (IDG Books) Unix in a Nutshell (O'Reilly) Linux in a Nutshell (O'Reilly) Fortran 90/95 Explained, Metcalf & Reid, Oxford Univ Press, 1999 Fortran 90 for Engineers and Scientists, Larry Nyhoff and Sanford Leestma, Prentice-Hall, 1997 Parallel Programming in OpenMP (Chandra et al) Using MPI (Gropp, Lusk, & Skjellum) Parallel Programming with MPI (Pacheco)

Lectures: Note room : West Ridge Research Building 009, Tuesday/Thursday, 9:30 - 11:30am

Assignments: will include reading excerpts from science education text and science education research journal articles as preparation for group discussion and presentation of classroom and lab teaching strategies. Students will also give presentations on topics relevant to course content, which will include preparation of sample work such as quizzes or active learning materials. Each student will give approximately 3 presentations, with supporting sample work, per semester.

Grading: The course grade will consist of the following components:

Homeworks 40 %

Semester project 30 %

Mid-term 20 %

Attendance and Participation 10 %

Contacting Me: I have office hours as listed above. You can drop by at other times if I'm not busy, or make an appointment. I am (almost) never available before class.

Special Needs: The Office of Disability Services implements the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and insures that UAF students have equal access to the campus and course materials. We will work with the Office of Disabilities Services (203 WHIT, 474-7043) to provide reasonable accommodation to students with disabilities.

Plagiarism etc: Plagiarism and cheating are matters of serious concern for students and academic institutions. This is true in this class as well. The UAF Honor Code (or Student Code of Conduct) defines academic standards expected at the University of Alaska Fairbanks which will be followed in this class. (Taken from the UAF plagiarism web site, which has many links with good information about this topic)

Complaints and Concerns: You are always welcome to talk to me about anything, however, if you have a non-subject matter question or concern that cannot be resolved by me, contact the department chair, Dr. Wackerbauer, Physics Department Office, room 102 NSCI.

Tentetive course schedule:

Last updated 9 December, 2015