High Performance Computing for Science and Engineering

Harvard Extension School

CSCI E-205

Section 1

CRN 27108

View Course Details

As manufacturing processes approach the physical limits of transistor density, efficient code must exploit parallelism to scale with available computing resources. Scientific software developers must therefore adopt a think-parallel mindset to solve complex problems across academia, industry, and society. This course introduces parallel programming and its relationship to computer architectures, with an emphasis on high performance computing. Students develop experience with programming models such as OpenMP, MPI, and CUDA.

Credits: 4

Term

Spring Term 2026

Part of Term

Full Term

Format

Online

Credit Status

Graduate

Section Status

Open

Instructor Info

Chuck Witt, PhD

Assistant Director for Graduate Studies in Computational Science and Engineering, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Meeting Info

1/25 to 5/15

Participation Option: Online Asynchronous

Deadlines

Last day to register:

Additional Time Commitments

Optional sections to be arranged.

Prerequisites

The course assumes comfort reading and writing code in C++ and Python. Familiarity with Linux command line tools, particularly ssh and Git, is also expected. While advanced C++ knowledge is not required, the course does not teach the basics of programming.

Notes

The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences companion course Computer Science 2050. Registered students can ordinarily live stream the lectures Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:15-3:30 pm starting January 27 or they can watch them on demand. The recorded sessions are typically available within a few hours of the end of class and no later than the following business day. Class sessions for this course may include students enrolled in the FAS companion course. Accordingly, when you participate in live class sessions, you will do so alongside both Division of Continuing Education (DCE) and FAS students. If you participate in a way that causes you to appear in recordings of the class, those recordings may be shown to DCE students enrolled in this course or FAS students enrolled in the companion course, according to the policies of the two schools on accessing recordings of class sessions.

Tuition

All Sections of this Course

CRN	Section #	Participation Option(s)	Instructor	Section Status	Meets	Term Dates
27108	1	Online Asynchronous	Chuck Witt	Open		Jan 25 to May 15