🚀 go-pugleaf

> >> I saw a DEC press release that says that the f77 in the
> >> latest Ultrix release has been much improved, and is 3 times
> >> faster than the BSD version.

If it's a DEC press release, they are talking about their VAX FORTRAN for
Ultrix 1.2, not the f77 compiler.

> >> 
> >> Does anyone know what this means? Does the target code run
> >> 3 times faster, or the compiler itself? 
> >
> >Almost certainly, the generated code (under favorable circumstances).
> >The VMS Fortran compiler generates pretty decent VAX code, not
> >surprisingly.  It sounds very much like they ported that to Ultrix.
>  
> Having used both compilers, I cannot agree. The Ultrix f77 still appears
> to be the same fortran to intermediate C code generator that bsd4.2 f77
> is based upon.

Ditto. (see above comment). The VAX FORTRAN compiler *compiles* much
faster, and runs about 20% faster (well, confession... it should, but I
don't actually have it [yet]).  HOWEVER, f77 under bsd 4.3 (and Ultrix
1.2) is very much improved, especially in its I/O efficiency, so some
classes of programs might run 3x faster.

> I would believe that DEC has tuned the code generation to improve
> execution (as well as fix some bugs).  It would be nice if VMS Fortran
> were ported, it is much nicer to use (as in much more user friendly).  

I doubt DEC has tweaked anything in f77, but yes, they have ported the VMS
Fortran compiler (under Ulrix 1.2 et.seq.).
-- 

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Wyatt   ARPA:  wyatt%cfa.UUCP@harvard.HARVARD.EDU