Welcome to the Course!

This is a course about writing high-performance, high-quality software for scientific and engineering applications. What we learn in this course has wide applicability both within scientific computing and in other fields that rely on high-performance or low-latency software (e.g., finance, games, telecom, AV processing, etc.).

To make the most of the available hardware, one needs to program "close to the metal." C++ gives us the capability to get to this level, but the language by itself is not enough. We must also understand some aspects of computer hardware and operating systems. This semester will provide a survey of some of the most important topics from these subjects as they pertain to writing optimized scientific software.

C++ is an evolving language, with its modern "era" starting in 2011. Since then, the language has been updated on a three-year cycle, most recently with C++23. The aim of this course is to present a "C++-first" modern treatment of the language. We will start with C++ from scratch, so no prior knowledge in the language (or for that matter, C) is required. Of course, having some programming experience, for example from another course, is helpful.

Course registration

Answers to administrative questions, for example course registration, application to examinations, re-examinations and similar, can be found at the Student desk offices. You can contact the Student Office via email: studentoffice@math.kth.se. In particular, to maintain access to the course you must register by the deadline, see Course registration.

Course content

Assignments

This course has four mandatory programming assignments that can be done in groups of at most two students. The assignments may also contain some theoretical parts related to the material. Information about each assignment will be made available during the course.

The assignments will be due on the following dates:

Assignment 1: Fri, Sep 12
Assignment 2: Fri, Oct 10
Assignment 3: Mon, Nov 3
Assignment 4: Thu, Nov 27

Each assignment will be posted the same week that the previous assignment is due (at the latest).

Project

In addition to the homeworks, the course contains a project to be completed in groups of up to four people. A list of papers that can be used for the projects will be provided. However, students are also welcome to bring their own ideas (if you want to do this, please check first with the teachers that your idea is feasible and a good candidate for a project). PhD students may want to choose something from their area of research.

The project consists of a presentation and a short written report (around one page) + source code. There are two presentation slots (Thu, Dec 11 and Fri, Dec 12, both from 10:00-12-00). You are encouraged to attend both slots but you should at minimum be present for the duration of your assigned slot. If you cannot attend one of these days, you should let the teachers know as soon as possible.

Students that cannot attend the presentations (with a good reason) will need to hand in a longer (individual) report about their project.

More information about the projects will be available later.

Exam

For previously given exams, see Exam Info.

Grades

For students taking SF2565:

The course consists of two components, PRO1 and TEN1. To pass the course, PRO1 must be completed with a P grade and TEN1 has to be completed with at least a grade E.

PRO1 (P/F)
- There will be four assignments to be completed at home. Each assignment is graded on a scale 0-10. Late assignments will be accepted at a 50% penalty the first week past the due date. After this, you are allowed to hand in the assignment for completion, but no bonus points for the exam will be given (see below). To pass PRO1, at least 5 points on each assignment (before deductions) is required. Each take-home assignment gives up to 1 bonus point on the exam (score * 0.1)
- In addition to the assignments, students must complete a project that is graded pass/fail, with pass required to complete PRO1. See more detailed information about the project above. Successful and timely completion of the project awards 1 bonus point towards the exam.
TEN1 (A-F) - final exam 40 pts. Preliminary point cut-offs for different grades are as follows:

A: 34 (85%)
B: 30 (75%)
C: 26 (65%)
D: 22 (55%)
E: 18 (45%)
Fx: 16 (40%)
F: <16

Students receiving an Fx grade will be given a chance to raise their grade to an E.

For more info and past exams, see Exam info.

Plus-ing

Plus-ing (retaking the exam for a higher grade if you have already passed) is allowed. However, any bonus points accumulated from the assignments during HT24 will be valid only for the HT24 exam and re-exam. Please reach out to the Student Office for info on how to register, etc..

For students taking FSF3565:

The course is graded P/F. For a passing grade, the home assignments and project must be completed to a satisfactory level (at least 7/10 points on each assignment, and a passing grade on the project), and a grade of at least C is required on the final exam. The exam for FSF3565 is given as a take-home exam.

AI Policy (ChatGPT, Copilot, Cursor, etc.)

All use of generative AI is prohibited in the course's examination and graded assignments. Please familiarize yourself with the course AI policy as it is your responsibility to make sure you follow it.

Communication and groups

You can find all announcements posted via Announcements.

Under the People tab, you can find the groups you are a part of in this course.

Contact information

Instructor: Björn Wehlin. Email: bwehlin@kth.se. Office: 3726 (Lindstedtsvägen 25, Floor 7).
TA: Sebastian Myrbäck. Email: smyrback@kth.se.
Examiner: Katarina Gustavsson. Email: katg@kth.se.

Emails from students are most welcome: please allow us at least 48 hours to respond. I always try to respond well before that but it may sometimes not be possible. This means that last-minute emails about assignments or similar might go unanswered before the relevant deadline has passed—try to do things a bit in advance so that you have enough time to get your questions answered.

Support for Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities may have the right to certain compensatory support, for example during examination. This is centrally coordinated at KTH by Funka; please contact Funka at funka@kth.se for information about the support they can offer.

Literature

The main reference for this course is: Gottschling, P. "Discovering Modern C++" (2nd ed). Addison-Wesley Professional, 2021. ISBN 978-0-13-667764-2
For some low-level aspects, we will read sections of:
- Eijkhout, V., Chow E., and van de Geijn R. "The Science of Computing," 2022. Freely available online (https://github.com/VictorEijkhout/TheArtofHPC_pdfs/blob/main/vol1/EijkhoutIntroToHPC.pdf) or here.
- Matthews, S. J., Newhall, T., & Webb, K. C. "Dive Into Systems: A Gentle Introduction to Computer Systems" No Starch Press, 2022. Freely available online (https://diveintosystems.org/)
Additional references:
- Lippman, S.B., Lajoie, J., Moo, B.E. "C++ Primer" (5th ed.). Addison-Wesley, 2013
- Josuttis, N. M. "The C++ standard library: a tutorial and reference" (2nd ed). Addison-Wesley, 2012.
- Meyers, S. "Effective C++: 55 specific ways to improve your programs and designs." Pearson Education, 2005.
- Meyers, S. "Effective modern C++: 42 specific ways to improve your use of C++ 11 and C++ 14." O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2014.
- Goldberg, D. "What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic." ACM computing surveys (CSUR) 23.1 (1991): 5-48.
- Bryant, R.E., O’Hallaron, D.R. "Computer systems: a programmer’s perspective" (3rd ed). Pearson Education, 2016.

Lecture plan

Note! This lecture plan is tentative and there may be changes during the semester. The assigned reading is from Gottschling unless otherwise specified.

Room and time info is added for convenience. Please always double check with your official KTH schedule.

Tentative lecture plan
Week	Date	Topics	Reading
1	Mon, Aug 25 - Lecture 15-17 in room Q21 Slides	Intro to the course and C++ Basic syntax and control flow Compiling and running programs	1.1-1.5 1.9
	Wed, Aug 27 - Lecture 15-17 in room V3 Notes Slides	Structured grids Basic syntax and control flow	1.6-1.7
	Fri, Aug 29 - Computer Lab 10-12 in computer hall Röd	Environment setup Compiling and running programs Lab assignment Help queue
2	Mon, Sep 1 - Lecture 15-17 in room V3 Pointers Motivation Slides	Pointers and references Intro to classes I/O	1.7-1.8 (skip 1.8.3 Smart Pointers and 1.8.7.2 valarray) 2.1-2.3.1.1
	Wed, Sep 3 - Lecture 15-17 in room Q31 Slides Notes	I/O Error handling Operator overloading Virtual and physical memory	2.6-2.7 Matthews et al. 13.3 (stop after "Page Tables for Virtual-to-Physical Page Mapping")
	Fri, Sep 5 - Computer Lab 15-17 in computer hall Orange	Debugging Lab assignment Code Help queue
3	Mon, Sep 8 - Lecture 15-17 in room E2 Notes Slides	Stack and heap Ownership, resource management, RAII	Matthews et al. 2-2.5 2.3-2.5
	Wed, Sep 10 - Computer Lab 13-15 in computer halls Grå & Karmosin	Homework 1 help session Help queue
	Fri, Sep 12 - Lecture 15-17 in room E2 Notes	Copy/move Rule of zero/three/five Smart pointers Object-oriented programming (OOP)	Notes on resource management 6.1
	Homework 1 due Fri, Sep 12
4	Mon, Sep 15 - Lecture 15-17 in room U1	Polymorphism Class design Generic programming intro	6.2-6.4 Start reading Chapter 3
	Wed, Sep 24 - Lecture 15-17 in room W42
	Fri, Sep 26 - Computer Lab 10-12 in computer hall Spelhallen	Static and runtime analysis
5	Wed, Oct 1 - Lecture 15-17 in room V22
5	Fri, Oct 3 - Computer Lab 8-10 in computer hall Spelhallen	Homework 2 help session
6	Wed, Oct 8 - Lecture 15-17 in room V34
6	Homework 2 due Fri, Oct 10
	Exam period, no lecture
7	Mon, Oct 27 - Lecture 15-17 in room V32
7	Wed, Oct 29 - Computer Lab 8-10 in computer hall Spelhallen	Homework 3 help session
8	Homework 3 due Mon, Nov 3
	Mon, Nov 3 - Lecture 15-17 in room E2
	Wed, Nov 5 - Computer Lab 15-17 in Spelhallen	Performance profiling
9	Wed, Nov 12 - Lecture 15-17 in room E2
10	Wed, Nov 19 - Lecture 15-17 in room V3
11	Mon, Nov 24 - Computer Lab 15-17 in computer hall Spelhallen	Homework 4 help session
	Wed, Nov 26 - Lecture 15-17 in room E2
	Homework 4 due Thu, Nov 27
12	Wed, Dec 3 - Lecture 15-17 in room E2
	Thu, Dec 11 - Project Presentations 10-12 in room W38
	Fri, Dec 12 - Project Presentations 10-12 in room W25
	Fri, Dec 19 - Exam review 10-12 in room D34

Additional resources

IDEs/Editors

There are many IDEs and text editors with support for C++, both commercial and open source. Code::Blocks, for example, is an open source cross-platform IDE. A quickstart guide is available here.

Useful (external) websites

cppreference.com - C++ (and C) reference
Compiler Explorer by Matt Godbolt - shows assembly output from a wide variety of compilers
C++ Insights by Andreas Fertig - gives "behind-the-scenes" views of code
QuickBench by Fred Tingaud - microbenchmarking tool
IEEE754 Converter by H. Schmidt - float/IEEE 754 converter
C++ Core Guidelines edited by Bjarne Stroustrup and Herb Sutter - best practices guidelines for C++