Computational Physics Resources

Contents

• Programming References
• Reading Lists
• Specific Texts
• Websites (course pages, etc.)

Programming References

• General Tutorials
  • Little Unix Programming Group (LUPG) has a variety of useful tutorials on compiling C/C++ on Unix, debugging with gdb, using makefiles, and more advanced topics as well.
• C programming
  • Summary of the "C" language (from CSEE at UMBC)
  • Programming in C and Subroutines using C
• C++ programming
  • Cprogramming.com -- " Cprogramming.com is a web site designed to help you learn C or C++ and provide you with C and C++ programming resources. The Getting Started with C++ section gives advice about learning C++. Learn from our C++ tutorials, or test your programming knowledge with the C++ MegaQuiz.
  • Scientific C++
    • C++ Programming for Scientists
  • C++ Programming Pitfalls
    • C++ Pitfalls --- Cay S. Horstmann
    • C++ Pitfalls -- from KDE Developer site
    • Common C++ Pitfalls and ways to avoid them by Blake Madden
• C++ Libraries
  • Blitz++ Numerical Library
    • "Blitz++ is a C++ class library for scientific computing which provides performance on par with Fortran 77/90." Blitz++ homepage.
    • Template Numerical Toolkit (TNT)
  • Lapack++
• Makefiles
  • LUPG tutorial
• Gnuplot
  • GNUPLOT - Manual and Tutorial (from Duke Civil and Environmental Engineering)
• GNU Scientific Library (GSL)
  • GSL homepage
  • Online reference manual.
  • Index of GSL by concept --- this may be the quickest place to start to find a particular routine
  • Some sample codes that exercise GSL routines.
• Linux and Unix
  • SciLinux --- "Environment for Scientific Computing on GNU-Linux" (links to freely available software for scientific computing on gnu-linux
    • The Numerical Methods and Libraries page is particularly useful
  • Little Unix Programming Group (LUPG) has a variety of useful tutorials on unix systems
• Dev-C++
  • Programming with wxDev-C++
  • Installing Dev-C++ on Windows
• MPI
  • The MPI home page is http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/, which has links to tutorials and other documentation. A good tutorial is "Tuning MPI Applications for Peak Performance" at http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/tutorial/perf/index.html
  • The MPICH home page is http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/mpich/, which includes manual pages for the MPI commands and routines (the C names) at http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/www/.
  • The Ohio Supercomputing Center (OSC) runs a website dealing with cluster computing: http://www.osc.edu/hpc/cluster_ohio/index.shtml. You can follow the link to "Parallel Programming with MPI" under "Training" or go directly to: http://oscinfo.osc.edu/training/mpi, where there are tutorial materials in various formats.
  • A good (but dated) online introduction to MPI is Chapter 8 "Message Passing Interface" of Ian Foster's online "Designing and Building Parallel Programs" at http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/dbpp/text/book.html. The rest of the book is an accessbile introduction to parallel processing.
  • A website with various MPI examples in C++ is: http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/hpc/prog/par/mpi/examples/.
  • Specific information on MPI with C++ can be found at: http://parallel.ru/docs/Parallel/mpi2/node21.html.

Reading Lists

• Computational Science Reading List --- also includes links to relevant sites
• Books on Computational Physics

Specific Texts

• Computational Physics
  • The 2005 "Computational Physics" lecture notes [pdf] by Morten Hjorth-Jensen from the University of Oslo.
  • Computational Physics: Problem Solving with Computers by Rubin H. Landau and Manuel J. Paez. The webpage includes tutorial includes tutorial links and errata lists.
  • Numerical Methods for Physics, 2nd Ed. by Alejandro L. Garcia. The 2nd edition has C++ program listings, as well as fortran and Matlab.
• C++ For Scientific Applications
  • A First Course in Computational Physics and Object-Oriented Programming with C++ by David Yevick is a new book (published 2005) that looks very useful. Contents and excerpts are available on Amazon.com.

Websites (course pages, etc.)

• Numerical Recipes Home Page and on-line books
• Courses on Computer Simulation, Computational Physics, and Complex Systems
• Computational Physics -- 3rd/4th Year Option --- Angus MacKinnon
• Developing Undergraduate Computational Physics Curriculum The CPUG Project at Oregon State University
• Physics 303/503: Computational Physics --- Charlotte Elster
• Projects in Computational Physics
• Advanced Methods in Scientific Computing --- from the University of Utah Dept. of Computer Science
• Computational Physics II --- At the University of Buffalo

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