Peter Pacheco

Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Mathematics




Email: domain: usfca.edu, user: peter
Mail: Department of Computer Science
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94117


Previous Classes

Spring 2019 Classes: Differential Equations
Computer Architecture
Fall 2018 Classes: Discrete Mathematics
Computer Architecture
Spring 2018 Classes: Modern Parallel Programming
Automata Theory
Fall 2017 Classes: Introduction to Parallel Computing
Discrete Mathematics



Research Interests

My main research interest is in parallel computing. I've been involved in the development of the MPI Standard for message-passing, and I've written a short User's Guide to MPI. My book Parallel Programming with MPI is an elementary introduction to programming parallel systems that use the MPI-1 library of extensions to C and Fortran. It is intended for use by students and professionals with some knowledge of programming conventional, single-processor systems, but who have little or no experience programming multiprocessor systems.

I've also worked in computational neuroscience, and my students and I have developed a collection of programs, Parallel Neurosys, for the simulation of large networks of biologically accurate neurons on parallel computers.

I also wrote a more general introduction to parallel programming, An Introduction to Parallel Programming. This is also an elementary introduction to parallel programming, but in addition to MPI, it introduces parallel programming in Pthreads and OpenMP.

In the fall of 2021, my colleague, Matthew Malensek, and I completed a second edition of An Introduction to Parallel Programming. In addition to MPI, Pthreads, and OpenMP, this edition introduces programming in CUDA. We're still working on the supplementary materials, but we'll be posting them as soon as they're available.

Here's a short introductory talk on CUDA programming that I gave in the Computer Science Colloquium at Sonoma State. Here are the slides and the source code for the talk.

Software License
Unless otherwise indicated all of the software on this site (www.cs.usfca.edu/~peter) is released under the BSD 2-Clause License.


USF Links

USF Computer Science Department Home Page
USF Mathematics Department Home Page
USF Home Page


Last updated March 26, 2022