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Well, it's just a programming language, and not a particularly complicated one. It's closer to current languages than e.g. COBOL. People can easily learn it (if

by Rochus 4y ago

Well, it's just a programming language, and not a particularly complicated one. It's closer to current languages than e.g. COBOL. People can easily learn it (if they are willing). And it can easily be transpiled to a GPU supported language, so the argument that there are no GPU compatible Fortran compilers is weak.

jleyank 4y ago
SIMD Fortran was a thing with DEC in 1992, so it can be recapitulated if lost. It comes down, as the above says, to the compiler and it’s output.
- Rochus 4y ago
  The vast majority of implementations I saw and still see in the scientific community are plain Fortran 77. In the nineties and early 2000 most of it run on Irix, some on Solaris; today most is on Linux.
  - jleyank 4y ago
    There was the Kuck(?) preprocessor for fortran and a whole lot of smart compiler work done for the mini-super market (Convex et al). How to get vector/parallel performance without rewriting dusty-deck codes. Algebra tuned quite well and easily. I think Rice was the school producing compiler experts going into these companies.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  I had hit some 1970s-era DEC FORTRAN some years ago, whose use of a 'struct' keyword made it proprietary. DEC was bought by Intel which meant that license fees were required to keep the tool alive. However, some intrepid nerds contributed a patch to GCC and, suddenly, life went on without Intel. I want to say that this was around GCC 6.x or so. Which is how to cut at least that portion of the costs for the balance of these classic tools.
  - dagw 4y ago
    DEC was bought by Intel Their compiler business was bought by Intel, DEC itself was bought by Compaq.
    - smitty1e 4y ago
      I had missed that nuance.
  - lproven 4y ago
    > DEC was bought by Intel No, it wasn't. Compaq (an x86 shop which did little in the OS space) bought DEC. It kept making the non-x86 DEC hardware and software. Then HP bought Compaq. HP had its own processor & OS families, and had persuaded Intel to work with it on the successor to HP's PA-RISC architecture: Itanium. Part of that deal is that HP passed over some DEC IP it had acquired to Intel. Effectively this killed off a significant rival to Intel, and in theory, opened a path to market for Itanium. So Intel got DEC's Alpha, the first 64-bit RISC and the fastest RISC on the market. It killed it. It also sold off its Arm division to Marvell. The other big thing HP got was DEC's minicomputer OS, VMS. It killed it, as I wrote at the time: https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/ But it changed its mind and spun it off instead. https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/31/openvms_spared/ https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/31/openvms_spared/
kergonath 4y ago
> the argument that there are no GPU compatible Fortran compilers is weak Between Cuda Fortran, OpenAcc, and OpenMP, this argument is more than weak.
- Rochus 4y ago
  In that light the following statement of the article is really strange: "While Fortran will probably run acceptably on future CPU technologies, it will likely perform poorly with GPUs because of the lack of robust Fortran compilers, the report said, noting that the ecosystem of tools is “significantly lacking in Fortran." Or is NVIDIA's Fortran version not robust?
  - angry_octet 4y ago
    Intel and Portland compilers are excellent, nVidia having some home ground advantage in optimising. If I needed to run CUDA from Fortran it would be very straightforward. Fortran is better at arrays than C++ and most other languages, which makes it better on GPUs too.

by Rochus 4y ago

jleyank 4y ago

SIMD Fortran was a thing with DEC in 1992, so it can be recapitulated if lost. It comes down, as the above says, to the compiler and it’s output.

Rochus 4y ago
The vast majority of implementations I saw and still see in the scientific community are plain Fortran 77. In the nineties and early 2000 most of it run on Irix, some on Solaris; today most is on Linux.
- jleyank 4y ago
  There was the Kuck(?) preprocessor for fortran and a whole lot of smart compiler work done for the mini-super market (Convex et al). How to get vector/parallel performance without rewriting dusty-deck codes. Algebra tuned quite well and easily. I think Rice was the school producing compiler experts going into these companies.
smitty1e 4y ago
I had hit some 1970s-era DEC FORTRAN some years ago, whose use of a 'struct' keyword made it proprietary. DEC was bought by Intel which meant that license fees were required to keep the tool alive. However, some intrepid nerds contributed a patch to GCC and, suddenly, life went on without Intel. I want to say that this was around GCC 6.x or so. Which is how to cut at least that portion of the costs for the balance of these classic tools.
- dagw 4y ago
  DEC was bought by Intel Their compiler business was bought by Intel, DEC itself was bought by Compaq.
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    I had missed that nuance.
- lproven 4y ago
  > DEC was bought by Intel No, it wasn't. Compaq (an x86 shop which did little in the OS space) bought DEC. It kept making the non-x86 DEC hardware and software. Then HP bought Compaq. HP had its own processor & OS families, and had persuaded Intel to work with it on the successor to HP's PA-RISC architecture: Itanium. Part of that deal is that HP passed over some DEC IP it had acquired to Intel. Effectively this killed off a significant rival to Intel, and in theory, opened a path to market for Itanium. So Intel got DEC's Alpha, the first 64-bit RISC and the fastest RISC on the market. It killed it. It also sold off its Arm division to Marvell. The other big thing HP got was DEC's minicomputer OS, VMS. It killed it, as I wrote at the time: https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/10/openvms_death_notice/ But it changed its mind and spun it off instead. https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/31/openvms_spared/ https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/31/openvms_spared/

kergonath 4y ago

> the argument that there are no GPU compatible Fortran compilers is weak Between Cuda Fortran, OpenAcc, and OpenMP, this argument is more than weak.

Rochus 4y ago
In that light the following statement of the article is really strange: "While Fortran will probably run acceptably on future CPU technologies, it will likely perform poorly with GPUs because of the lack of robust Fortran compilers, the report said, noting that the ecosystem of tools is “significantly lacking in Fortran." Or is NVIDIA's Fortran version not robust?
- angry_octet 4y ago
  Intel and Portland compilers are excellent, nVidia having some home ground advantage in optimising. If I needed to run CUDA from Fortran it would be very straightforward. Fortran is better at arrays than C++ and most other languages, which makes it better on GPUs too.