🚀 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.
> 
> 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.

In article <cfa.181> wyatt@cfa.UUCP (Bill Wyatt) writes:
>> >> 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.
>
	(etc., etc.....)

My understanding -- which may be wrong -- is that VMS FORTRAN  (ie, DEC's
native FORTRAN compiler long available under VMS) has been ported to an
ULTRIX environment;  this is the FORTRAN that contains goodies such as
DO...ENDDO, in-line comments starting with "!" and terminating with a
newline, and so on.  Though ported, this has definitely *not* been bundled
with ULTRIX;  its costs about the same to license as the same compiler would
cost under VMS -- someplace in the $5-10K range for a VAX11-780 in a
multiuser environment.

In *addition*, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the f77 ordinarily 
bundled with ULTRIX has been improved.  The Berkeley 4.2 version which came
with the first release of ULTRIX had many bugs, especially in the code
optimiser, but not limited to it (for instance, it didn't properly pass a
literal string to a subroutine).  The Berkeley 4.3 f77 is said to be greatly
improved, and I think (though don't know) that there is a VAX-specific
(ie, non-ortable, ie, fast) version around.  I have heard very good things
about this compiler;  for instance, that it compares well in execution speed
with DEC's native (ie "VMS") FORTRAN.  This, of course, is just a cleaned
up version of the f77 that we know and love-hate, allowing strings to be
delineated with "...", lines to begin with a tab, a statement number followed
by a tab, an ampersand (indicating continuation) followed by a tab, and
explicit recursion.  If, in fact, the f77 that is bundled with ULTRIX has
been improved, it has probably been replaced by the Berkeley 4.3 version.
(Donn Seeley once told me that this version uses different intermediate
code conventions than its predecissor, and so the C-compiler has probably
been updated as well, if I am right.  Hope I haven't taken your name in vain,
Donn!)

Well, if anyone can *categorically* confirm or deny the above mixture of
revealed truth and speculation, the net would probably enjoy hearing about
it.... you out there, DEC?

Peter S. Shenkin    Columbia Univ. Biol. Sciences
{philabs,rna}!cubsvax!peters		cubsvax!peters@columbia.ARPA