How to Build a Fast HPC n-Body Engine From Scratch

Volume 8, Issue 2 (August 2017), pp. 37–45

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@article{jocse-8-2-6,
  author={Eric Peterson and Max Kelly and Dr. Victor Pinks II},
  title={How to Build a Fast HPC n-Body Engine From Scratch},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2017,
  month=aug,
  volume=8,
  issue=2,
  pages={37--45},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/8/2/6}
}

Communicating and transferring computational science knowledge and literacy is a tremendously important concept for students at all levels of education to understand. Computational knowledge is especially important due to the tremendous impact that computer programming has had on all scientific and engineering disciplines. As technology evolves, so must our educational system in order for society to evolve as a whole. We undertook direct instruction of a computational science course, and have developed a curriculum that can be expanded upon to provide students entering technical disciplines with the background that they need to be successful. The course would provide insight to the C programming language as well as how computers function at a more basic level. Students would undertake projects that explores how to program simple tasks and operations and ultimately ends in a final project aimed at assessing the knowledge accumulated from the course.