Computational Physics Resources at SDSU

• Look here for information on the SDSU Physics computational research.

Physics Laboratory

Location: P-247. Open to physics majors and graduate students.
Dual-boot Pentium machines winXP and Fedora Core 4 Linux installed with:
GNU gfortran FORTRAN 77/90 compiler.
Intel ifort FORTRAN 77/90/95 compiler.
xmgrace and gnuplot for plotting.

Getting started:

All students, both undergraduate and graduate, are encouraged to get a ROHAN computer account and campus e-mail, even if you have another e-mail account on sciences. This way you can also

• How to get a campus computer account (ROHAN)
• Student computing center information
• Remote access information
• Advanced resources for computational physics (including notes on Linux and Fortran)
• CSRC links

Resources for computational physics

The recommended platform for computational physics is Linux, and the preferred programming language is Fortran. MatLab is only suitable for baby calculations and not for serious number-crunching. C and C++ are wonderful languages for operating systems and manipulating complex data structures, but are mediocre for number crunching. And, most importantly, the current computational physicists (Baljon, Bromley, Johnson, Weber) all use Fortran.

The main dialects of Fortran used today are Fortran 77 and Fortran 90/95. Linux comes with GNU Fortran, or g77, which is a rather tepid compiler.

We recommend using the free (for academics) Intel F90 for Linux compiler, which you can download here.  You can find the manuals for Intel F90 here.

Most experts agree the best commercial compiler available is the Portland Group compiler.   We have limited access to this compiler due to it's cost.