Chapter 7 introduces images and coarrays for parallel programming. This is the parallel programming model that’s built into Fortran. In this chapter, you’ll write your first program to analyze weather buoy data in parallel. Here, we’ll also implement the parallel version of the tsunami simulator.
Chapter 8 covers derived types, which is the Fortran concept of classes in object-oriented programming. Derived types will allow you to create your own custom data types that can have other data as components and procedures as bound methods. In this chapter, we’ll transition the tsunami simulator from a one-dimensional to a two-dimensional solver.
In chapter 9, you’ll learn how to write generic procedures that can work on arguments with any data type. This will be important in any scenario where input data can come in more than one data type. You’ll also have your first encounter with custom operators, beyond the built-in ones that we’ve been working with so far.