The Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies is introducing two new elective units which will be available in semester 2 of 2008.

HIT4326 Data Visualisation

Computer graphics has well-known applications in gaming and entertainment, but its application to data visualisation in science, medicine and engineering is just as important, and frequently more challenging. In this subject, the broad motivation and principles of data visualisation will be introduced, followed by extensive coverage of practical approaches and techniques for effective visual knowledge discovery. Plots as simple as 1-d histograms, through to stereoscopic display of time-evolving volumetric data sets will be covered. Students completing this course will gain an understanding of the relationship between graphical data display and the scientific method, and should be well-placed to apply the techniques they have learnt to disciplines beyond science and engineering.

HIT4327 Introduction to Supercomputing

The Swinburne supercomputer is currently the largest in Australia, with a theoretical peak speed of well over 12 Teraflops. Students enrolled in this unit will gain access to this machine and take part in projects to write applications that exploit its power for use in large astronomical projects.
Students in this unit will learn about the motivations for building large supercomputers, their architectures, and will then be taught about the various libraries that facilitate their use, including OpenMP, MPI and MPI2.

These new units are available as electives to students who are currently in:
Bachelor of Computing
Bachelor of Science (Professional Software Development)
Bachelor of Computing (Network Design & Security)
Bachelor of Science (Computer Science & Software Engineering)
Bachelor of Science (Computer Science)(Honours)
Bachelor of Science (Information Technology)

The prerequisites for the units are: HIT3315 Languages in Software Development or 75% in HIT3172 Object-Oriented Programming in C++

Interested students, who meet the prerequisites, will be able to enrol in these unique leading-edge units in semester 2 of 2008.