SCV Tutorials
Tutorials developed by SCV Staff
Live Tutorials
At the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters and also generally during the Summer, we offer free live tutorials to the BU community.
The top group of links below are to the slide materials (generally in PowerPoint format) from the most recent incarnation of our current tutorials. The bottom group are tutorials offered in the past for a special event or which have been retired but may still remain useful.
If you wish to be sure to get email when we next offer live tutorials, please submit this form.
- Current Tutorials
- Slide Sets from Computer Programming Tutorials
- Introduction to Fortran Programming (combines parts one, two, and three) (PowerPoint Format) and Solutions File (.zip File)
- Introduction to C Programming (combines parts one, two, and three) (PowerPoint Format) and Solutions File (.zip File)
- Introduction to MATLAB (PowerPoint Format)
- Slide Sets from High Performance Computing Tutorials
- Code Tuning and Optimization (PowerPoint Format)
- Parallelization with OpenMP (PowerPoint Format)
- Tuning MATLAB Codes For Better Performance (PowerPoint Format)
- Introduction to MPI (combines parts one and two) (PowerPoint Format)
- MATLAB Parallel Computing Toolbox (PowerPoint Format)
- Slide Sets from Visualization Tutorials
- Introduction to Scientific Visualization (PowerPoint Format) (also available as a much smaller PDF File)
- Scientific Visualization Using ParaView (PowerPoint Format) and Course Materials File (.zip File)
- Graphics and Images for Publication and Presentation (PowerPoint Format)
- Graphics Programming in C/C++: OpenGL and OpenSceneGraph (PowerPoint Format), with OpenGL course materials and OpenSceneGraph course materials.
- Scientific Visualization Using VTK (PowerPoint Format) and Course Materials File (.zip File)
- Scientific Visualization Using MATLAB (PowerPoint Format) and Course Materials File (.zip File)
- Slide Sets from Computer Programming Tutorials
- Past and One Time Events Tutorials
- Integrating R and C/C++ – Special tutorial offered to members of the Medical School at BU on running C and C++ programs from the R statistical package. Introduction to C (PDF file), Integrating R and C (PDF file), Optimization and Metropolis Algorithms (PDF file), and Examples Files (Zipped Tar file) – offered in May 2012
- This is a brief tutorial to introduce BU’s Scientific Computing Facility (SCF) for new users who have no Unix experience. Included are descriptions of SCF hardware and software, account information, some basic Unix and emacs commands, and an introduction to the batch system on the blade server. Introduction to Boston University’s Scientific Computing Facility (PowerPoint file) (and associated text file) – offered in March 2011
- Data Wrangling – offered in Fall 2010
- Code Tuning and Parallelization – offered in Fall 2010
- Introduction to Scientific Visualization Tutorial – February, 2010
Web Tutorials
These courses are self-paced and offered entirely over the web. You can access each tutorial by simply selecting the appropriate link. We hope you find these useful and let us know if you have comments or suggestions.
- Introduction to Image Files
- Introduction to Scientific Visualization
- Using IDL to Manipulate and Visualize Scientific Data
- Multiprocessing by Message Passing MPI (a separate Alliance tutorial is also available)
- Introduction to MATLAB
- Using MATLAB to Visualize Scientific Data
- MATLAB Parallel Computing Toolbox
- Using VTK to Visualize Scientific Data
- Using ParaView to Visualize Scientific Data
- Introduction to Plotting Packages
National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) Tutorials
The following courses were generally developed by the Alliance PACS training team. These courses are self-paced and web-based. The subject matter is generally covered in substantial detail, along with quizzes and answers. They are meant for general audiences, i.e., they are not targeted specifically at the Boston University community. Platform-specific issues are relegated to various Alliance sites, including Boston University.
The full list of NCSA tutorials is here. Below are listed only the tutorials we expect to be of greatest interest to our users and those to which our staff contributed.
- Introduction to MPI (requires registration)
- Intermediate MPI (requires registration)
- Introduction to OpenMP (requires registration
- Parallel Numerical Libraries (requires registration)
- Multilevel Parallel Programming (requires registration)
- Performance Tuning for Clusters (requires registration)
- Introduction to Visualization (requires registration)
Other Tutorials
For additional tutorials (not written here at Boston University) on individual software packages we support, please consult the appropriate help pages as we will generally link to the best tutorials and other help resources we have found for each package.
- MATLAB video tutorials
- OpenMP – written by Blaise Barney, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- In addition to the tutorials linked to on this page, we have an archive of in person presentations given by our staff or that we expect to be of special interest to our user community.
- Additional IS&T tutorials are available as well, on subjects such as Microsoft Word, WordPress, Unix skills, etc…