Programming Techniques for Scientific Simulations

This lecture provides an overview of programming techniques for scientific simulations. The focus is on advances C++ programming techniques and scientific software libraries. Based on an overview over the hardware components of PCs and supercomputer, optimization methods for scientific simulation codes are explained.

Lecture slides

A printed version of the lecture slides will be handed in at the beginning of every lecture. Additionally, a digital version will be published here the day before.

• Week 01a: Introduction (PDF, 274 kB)
• Week 01b: Intro to C++ (PDF, 1.2 MB)
• Week 02a: More basic C and C++ (PDF, 1.0 MB)
• Week 02b: Numerical integration (PDF, 258 kB)
• Week 03: Templates and generic programming (PDF, 2.7 MB)
• Week 04: Introduction to classes (PDF, 2.5 MB)
• Week 05: Operators, Function objects, More about templates (PDF, 650 kB)
• Week 06: An introduction to the hardware of your PC (PDF, 1.4 MB)
• Week 07&08: Algorithms and Data Structure in C++ (PDF, 1.8 MB)
• Week 09: Inheritance, Exceptions, and a C++ review from modular to generic programming (PDF, 788 kB)
• Week 10: To code or not to code? (PDF, 1.5 MB)
• Week 11: Monte Carlo Integration and Random Numbers (PDF, 847 kB)
• Week 12: Optimization in C++ (PDF, 1023 kB)
• Week 13: Introduction to parallel computing in C++ (PDF, 1.1 MB)

Exercises

Credit requirement

Every week, there will be an exercise sheet; if you hand in the solution before Tuesday at noon of the following week, we will correct your exercise and give you some feedback.
The exercises will be thematically grouped in four blocks A, B, C, D: each exercise will be labeled with the corresponding block, so that you will be able to sort them out.
Upon completion of the last exercise of each block, we require you to hand in a short report summarizing the results of the block.

Computer account

Exercise classes are in a computer room, and to use them you need a D-PHYS account. If you don't have this account yet, you can apply with this online form.

How to hand in exercises

We ask you to send your solutions to the teaching assistants email address programming_techniques@phys.ethz.ch. Source code can be mailed directly as attachment, or as an archive directory (.zip, .tar, ...) in case you have multiple files.
Figures are accepted in pdf, png and jpeg format, and for the report we require a pdf document.
Update: Please, hand in your exercises before Tuesday afternoon, so that we have time to correct and give you useful feedback at the exercise class.

Exercise sheets

Solutions

Solutions will be provided through the lecture Subversion repository. (see lecture notes for more details)

Useful references for this course

• VI editor for dummies (external link)
• LATEX for dummies (external link)
• A PYTHON tutorial (external link)
• A C++ tutorial (external link)
• Installation guide for OpenMPI