Re: Fortran 2008 (was Re: Statement function host association)

In article <d6fbk9$ocq$02$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Michael Metcalf" <metcalfmetcalf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > I wonder who the "one particular individual"
> > is that Bierman mentions in the last paragraph.
>
> Presley Smith (Convex).

>From what I heard at the time, Convex thought it had a very good
optimizing compiler for f77 code for their hardware. They had
worked very hard to develop this new technology. If some of the new
features such as array syntax had been implemented (this is about
1985-1988 we're talking about), then that would have allowed their
competitors to catch up easily without the same effort or
investment. By stalling the standards process for the next
generation of fortran, they could maintain their perceived advantage
over their competitors.

Other vendors were involved in this process too. DEC and IBM
neither had vector hardware machines at that time (this was before
the ALPHA and RS6000 chips), so they considered the RISC and vector
machines their main competition. Stalling f8x meant keeping their
customers locked in a little longer before moving into the
RISC-based workstation market that was on its way.

Back then, for the most part, each hardware vendor developed its own
compiler. Cray developed its own software, with all kinds of
extensions designed to exploit its hardware. The same goes to CDC
and ETA, two other vendors with high-performance, but quirky
hardware. If you ever looked at CDC Cyber205 fortran code, you
might have a hard time recognizing it. The last thing these vendors
wanted was a way for their customers to write portable code that
performed well because that would put them at risk of losing
business to their competitors. The proposed f8x (in that 1985 to
1988 time period) was perceived to allow that kind of portable code
to be written. These days, not only are there hardware-vendor
compilers, but also there are numerous independent commercial
cross-platform compilers and g77/gfortran/f95 free-source
cross-platform compilers. In many ways, fortran seems to be
healthier and more robust now, when it is clearly a minority
language, than it was in the 80's when it ruled the day.

It is ironic, and perhaps a little puzzling, to me that even after
15 years or so of the new language features, array syntax still has
not shown its potential. Even now, if you really want good array
performance, you should use BLAS routines, or in some cases, write
f77-style loops instead. Of course, array syntax has other
advantages, such as clarity and simplicity. Some vendors (e.g Intel
and ABSOFT) distribute tuned BLAS libraries with their compilers,
and those libraries perform better than their intrinsic array
operations (such as matmul()). Even in cases where a source-code
level substitution could be made from matmul() to dgemm(), the
vendors have not bothered to make even these simple kinds of
optimizations.

$.02 -Ron Shepard
.

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