🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <210@bu-cs.UUCP> bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes:

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

The problem people are forgetting here is numerical accuracy.  As Gene
Spafford pointed out a few months back, there are *no* current Unix
Fortrans that have numerically accurate libraries (I/O is, as usual,
especially weak).  Many people stick with their Cray, CDC, or DEC Fortran
because those companies have put many buckos into accuracy, unlike Bell
Labs who merely dabbled in it.  I have no doubt AT&T will eventually
correct this problem on the 3B line, but since it's highly machine-dependent
(is the 3B IEEE?) AT&T's good work will not automatically carry over to
all the private-hardware vendors.

What good is it to have a speedier machine if the answers are wrong?
-- 

	Geoff Kuenning
	{hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff

In article <161@desint.UUCP> geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) writes:
>The problem people are forgetting here is numerical accuracy.  As Gene
>Spafford pointed out a few months back, there are *no* current Unix
>Fortrans that have numerically accurate libraries (I/O is, as usual,
>especially weak).  Many people stick with their Cray, CDC, or DEC Fortran
>because those companies have put many buckos into accuracy, unlike Bell
>
>>	Geoff Kuenning

Interesting statement, especially considering that DEC is selling their VMS
FORTRAN compiler for Ultrix, and Cray provides CFT (the standard Cray
FORTRAN compiler) with Unicos. It appears that they have good libraries and
accuracy, except when they run under Unix :-).

	<mike

In article <404@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@ucbopal.UUCP (Mike Meyer)

catches me in a rather overblown and obviously unresearched statement:

>> As Gene
>> Spafford pointed out a few months back, there are *no* current Unix
>> Fortrans that have numerically accurate libraries...

I stand chastised;  in fact there *are* accurate Fortran compilers
available under Unix.  Mike mentions that

> DEC is selling their VMS
> FORTRAN compiler for Ultrix, and Cray provides CFT (the standard Cray
> FORTRAN compiler) with Unicos.

and he's right;  these are compilers that have been written carefully.
In DEC's case, this was done (at great expense;  VMS Fortran was
written in BLISS-32) because of f77's low quality.  The moral is that
you should be careful, but you *can* find a decent fortran under Unix.
(In the 68000 world I think fairly highly of Absoft's compiler, though
I'm not sure if they exist any more.)
-- 

	Geoff Kuenning
	{hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff

Geoff Kuenning writes:
> 
> ...The moral is that you should be careful, but you *can* find a decent fortran under Unix.
> 
> 	Geoff Kuenning
> 	{hplabs,ihnp4}!trwrb!desint!geoff
> 

The question is, where?  Myself and a number of others have posted requests 
for information on a GOOD fortran compiler for unix.  A definite, useful 
answer has yet to appear (at least, that I have not seen any).  I am checking 
out the availability of VMS Fortran for unix, but even it is available (at a 
reasonable cost) it is a *new* port, and considering the difficulty others 
have had porting to unix, I have to be slightly pessimistic.
-- 

Gary W. Kenward
Mobile Data International Inc.
Riverside Industrial Park
Richmond, B.C.
Canada  V7A 4Z3

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SNAP! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

In article <199@mdivax1.UUCP> kenward@mdivax1.UUCP (kenward) writes:
>Geoff Kuenning writes:
>> ...The moral is that you should be careful, but you *can* find a decent fortran under Unix.
>
>The question is, where?  Myself and a number of others have posted requests 
>for information on a GOOD fortran compiler for unix.  A definite, useful 
>answer has yet to appear (at least, that I have not seen any).  I am checking 
>out the availability of VMS Fortran for unix, but even it is available (at a 
>reasonable cost) it is a *new* port, and considering the difficulty others 
>have had porting to unix, I have to be slightly pessimistic.

Ah, it appears that you are asking a slightly different question than the
one Geoff is answering: he says that you can find a decent FORTRAN for Unix,
you are looking for one for Unix on a VAX. That severely limits your
choices.

Rumor (from "usually reliable sources") has it that part of the support for
the VMS/Ultrix FORTRAN is in Ultrix proper, so you won't be able to run it
on a non-Ultrix VAX. Solution: Buy Ultrix, of course. [Buying Ultrix may not
be as bad as you think. If you haven't looked at it seriously, don't laugh
about it.]

	<mike

I have held back on this discussion wanting to avoid being commercial,
but no one seems to be responding so:

My company builds a computer system using RISC architectures which is
designed to run large, ugly, interactive, number crunching,
Fortran programs such as mechanical CAE applications.

We started with the standard bsd F77 3 years ago
and have improved (fixed?) it to the point that its roots are 
difficult to trace.  

We frequently port programs is the hundreds
of thousands of lines with few if any problems.  For example,
Ansys, Nastran, Patran-2, and MARC have been ported and together totals
to over a million lines of code.

We have also fixed dbx to work with big programs and have added
many other "world class" development tools and features to
the compiler.  Our software releases usually ship with ZERO customer
reported compiler bugs!!!!

The good news is that I feel its got to be one of the
best fortran compilers on Unix, Even better news is that it comes
with our systems -  I don't know of a better Unix/Fortran system
anywhere else.  Our pricing starts at about what you would pay for 
a reasonably configured workstation, cost of ownership
is usually lower.

Oh, I work here so you might want to check what I say with some
of our customers.


-- 
Bob Ollerton; Celerity Computing; 
9692 Via Excelencia; San Diego, Ca 92126; (619) 271 9940
{decvax || ucbvax || ihnp4}!sdcsvax!celerity!bobbyo
                              akgua!celerity!bobbyo

In article <199@mdivax1.UUCP> kenward@mdivax1.UUCP writes:

> The question is, where?  Myself and a number of others have
> posted requests for information on a GOOD fortran compiler for
> unix.  A definite, useful answer has yet to appear (at least,
> that I have not seen any).

I am not particularly happy about commercial articles, but there have now
been so many articles and so many requests:

  We have a fortran 77 compiler for 68k systems that is validated to full
  level fortran, ANSI standard X3.9-1978, by the Federal Software Testing
  Centre (General Services Administration).  It also runs on Vaxen.

If you're interested, there is more info at the end of the article,
otherwise hit the 'n' key after the next paragraph (or maybe before:
it's my 2 cents contribution to the Unix fortran discussion :-).

There seem to be two main arguments used by fortran people against Unix
fortrans: accuracy and performance (especially Whetstones).  Most Unix
fortrans lose on floating point accuracy but it is a solvable problem.
Lack of performance is another kettle of pisces though.  For instance,
VMS fortran 77 on a VAX780 with FPA runs about 1M Whetstones, there is
little chance a Unix fortran will get close to this.  One reason is
that VMS fortran is written very close to the Vax architecture, another
is that DEC has spent a LOT of man-years on it, e.g. the optimiser will
do just about everything but sit up and beg.  Certainly there is *no
way* you'll get that kind of performance on your average 68k Unix box
(then again, when is DEC bringing out its fortran for 68k machines? :-)
On a 68000 with software floating point a full precision fortran will
probably only do about 25k Whetstones, there is an accuracy/performance
trade-off: using the Motorola Fast Floating Point format for instance
the same machine runs about 70k Whetstones.  BUT, when validating a
Pascal compiler using that format our ISO Pascal validation suite
reported 1 (one!) bit of precision left in the mantissa, not much use
for numerical applications.  Using the NS 16k floating point chip the
68000 can do about 80k Whetstones, but at a minimum you need a 68020
with the 68881 chip to catch up with a VAX.

--

Full-Name:    Henk Hesselink
UUCP-Path:    ..!seismo!mcvax!ace!henk
Organisation: ACE Associated Computer Experts bv.
              Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Phone:        +31 20 262400
Telex:        11702 ace nl

-- (WARNING: hype) --

Fortran 77 is one of a family of compilers.  Some others are C, Pascal,
modula-2, cobol.  It uses full precision IEEE floating point maths,
either in software or using a maths coprocessor.  The compiler
has been validated to full level fortran 77 by the FSTC for 68k type
machines.  It will also run on Unix Vaxen (System V and Berkeley), both
native and as cross-compiler to 68k type machines, and on VMS (4.2) as
cross-compiler to 68k type machines.  The standard has been extended
with the EIA bit manipulation features.  All compilers are supported by
a global tree optimiser as well as the standard Unix peephole optimiser.
They can be brought up on 68k and Vax systems in 2 to 4 days.

Two examples of where the fortran compiler is currently being used:
  - at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland,
    for data processing, controlling real-time applications, etc.
  - at the Technical Physics Research institute (TNO) in the Netherlands,
    for e.g. finite-element calculations.