Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!convex!psmith From: psmith@convex.com (Presley Smith) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Fortran 90 status Message-ID: <1991Apr27.013231.27187@convex.com> Date: 27 Apr 91 01:32:31 GMT References: <123207.25873@timbuk.cray.com> <1991Apr26.210247.17264@ariel.unm.edu> Sender: newsadm@convex.com (news access account) Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx. Lines: 29 Nntp-Posting-Host: mozart.convex.com In article <1991Apr26.210247.17264@ariel.unm.edu> prentice@triton.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes: >I read all these postings today with interest. Several things struck me. >First, the late 1990's is too long to have to wait for compilers to >finally implement features long available in other languages like C. >I have to question whether Fortran Extended is really worth waiting for >or if the time hasn't come to switch to something else. Second, the >discussion on efficiency continues to skirt what I would regard as the >major issue in scientific computing - parallelism. What about Fortran >Extended is going to improve performance on parallel systems, of whatever >type? I guess the real question is: is there any convincing argument >for staying with Fortran for new compute intensive parallel codes, much >less waiting 10 years for someone to finally write me a compiler for it? >That is not a rhetorical question, we are in the middle of an enormous >software project and this issue is getting serious for us. > Fortran 90 does not address the issue of parallelism. A separate group was formed called the Parallel Computing Forum to address a shared memory form of parallelism for Fortran and other langauges. PCF has since become the X3H5 committee and appears about ready to publish their first draft since it's been an ANSI Committee. That committee is defining parallel syntax and semantics for FORTRAN 77. To my knowledge, they have not addressed Fortran 90 yet. So, if you want parallelism in the near term, you'll have to look somewhere else... Fortran 90 does not solve that problem. FYI.