Steven Homer & Roscoe Giles

The first course, the one largely discussed here, examines parallel methods and their applications in the natural sciences. We begin by studying parallel models and architectures, and then go on to discuss important examples, methods and algorithms used in parallel scientific computation. Students are given assignments in which they modify, extend and experiment with programs which we write to illustrate these concepts. They use modern computational tools for scientific visualization, interactive debugging, and heterogeneous computing. The programs are run on the Connection Machine, CM-5, and students are given full access to this system via a laboratory of workstations dedicated to this curriculum. This course is the main prerequisite for the succeeding courses in our parallel scientific computation program which are computational physics, computational chemistry, computational engineering, parallel algorithms and parallel languages and architectures.