The brand new Regensburg/Jülich QPACE computer (200 TFlop single-precision/100 TFlop double-precision)

The complexity of modern science, and modern life in general, requires to an ever larger extent large-scale computer simulations. A few examples connected to research performed at Regensburg University are:

• High energy physics: To extract the most fundamental laws of nature from the multitude of phenomena observed at large accelerators like LHC (CERN) or FAIR (Germany) typically requires input from PetaFlop-scale computers.
• Nanoscience and Physics in general: Detailed numerical simulations are often needed to decide whether observed phenomena are complicated known physics or signs of new physics.
• Genomics: Genom-sequencing has already provided an enormous amount of data, but without detailed numerical modelling their functional relevance is very hard to determine.

The exponential increase in global computing power due to this development unfortunately goes along with an exponential increase in the electric power required. PetaFlop-computing requires MegaWatts of energy. Therefore, 'Green-IT', that is the development of ecological and first of all more energy-efficient computers, has been identified as one of the great technological challenges of our time. In Regensburg we recently developed and constructed, together with our partners (IBM, Jülich Research Center, Eurotech, Knürr, DESY, Wuppertal University , Ferrara University, Milano University), a new, low-power, PetaFlop-scale computer called 'QPACE'. We presently plan the next project in this direction.

Thus in Regensburg you have the opportunity to participate both in hardware development (like for QPACE) and in practical applications of High Performance Computing (HPC), the latter especially in the fields of particle physics, nanoscience and genomics. The experience thus gained will yield the necessary qualifications for nearly all other subfields of Computational Science.

Regensburg University is heading a Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB/TRR_55, together with Wuppertal university) and a European Marie-Curie network and is involved in many other collaborations and coordinated programms.

The Bachelor course in 'Computational Physics' has two basic goals:

• It should optimize the chances to find a decent job with just a Bachelor degree. One of the strengths of the Bachelor/Master course of 'Physics' is its broad scope, which makes physicists nearly universally employable. This goal cannot be reached in just three years, which is why it is strongly debated whether terminating physics studies at the Bachelor level is advisible. In contrast, the Bachelor in 'Computational Physics' focuses on a specific part of the physics curriculum plus additional computer skills, which should ensure a high employability already at the Bachelor level.
• For those interested it should provide the optimal starting point for reaching the forefront of research during the consecutive Master course, with respect to the computational as well as the scientific aspects.

To allow for this focus, higher experimental physics is not part of the curriculum. While it is in principle possible to start a Master thesis in experimental physics after graduating as Bachelor of 'Computational Physics', this is not a very natural course of study and requires substantial additional efforts.

The course language is German by default, but we can switch to English if requested. Regensburg University in general plans to increase the percentage of courses held in English, in line with the ever increasing internationalization. The physics faculty is very much open to this suggestion:

• pro: The language of science as well as business is English. Whatever you do after your study, fluency in English will be a key requirement. Your university time is ideal for improving it, so you should do so whenever possible.
• con: Physics, Mathematics and Genomics are difficult fields, and we do not want to make things even more difficult for you by creating language problems.

Therefore, our general procedure is to leave the decision to the audience.

Since the course 'Computational Physics' was created the following developments took place:
Research in the fields of 'Genomics' and 'Applied Mathematics' where substantially strengthened at Regensburg University. Consequently it is planned to broaden the scope of 'Computational Physics' to a course that will be called 'Computational Science'.
The general structure of the Bachelor course in 'Computational Science' is

• 1. year : computational physics + applied mathematics + genomics
• 2. year : either a) computational physics + applied mathematics or b) computational physics + genomics or c) genomics + applied mathematics
• 3. year : either a) computational physics or b) genomics or c) applied mathematics

Thus 'Computational Physics' is a true subset of 'Computational Science' (option a). It is planned to replace the Bachelor course in 'Computational Physics' by 'Computational Science' in the fall of 2010, giving each third-semester student the choice to stay in 'Computational Physics' or profit from the enlarged program.

We will try to answer them
Tuesday, 20.10.2009, 16:30 in room 4.1.12 (the seminar room of particle theory)

and/or contact

Prof. Dr. Andreas Schäfer

Tel: 943 - 2007
room 4.1.07

any time you like