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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.lang.f77,net.unix,net.unix-wizards,net.lang
Subject: Re: Any decent Fortrans under Unix ? Which machine ?
Message-ID: <210@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 11:18:37 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.210
Posted: Mon Feb 24 11:18:37 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 20:22:26 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
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Guy Harris makes some very good points, I would like to add a few, I
have dealt with this issue and folklore here, my response has become
very simple:

Those here that went with a vendor's proprietary systems because they
believed the fortran to be better remain on those systems to this day.

Those that went with UNIX (and a few that were willing to change over
having realized their mistake) have doubled and trebled (and, in one
case 12x) their performance by replacing their hardware with newer
hardware that is coming out mostly running UNIX. Some of these purchases
were fully funded by sale of the used equipment, all cost 1/3 or less
price of the equipment they were replacing (typically, a $250,000 mini-computer
for a $65,000 super-micro which was much faster.)

Two groups have specifically said that they have not taken advantage of
this because their fortran code has become too heavily dependant on the
vendor's proprietary hardware/software environment and they do not have
the personnel resources to switch over.

Don't make the same mistake, project your upgrade options for both
cases in the current context (as if you made this decision two years
ago.) I think the facts speak for themselves.

What good is it to have a great optimizer on a slow machine?

	-Barry Shein, Boston University