4 ms·
As to the best of my understanding, Fortran still offers some "fringe", but very important low-level optimization potential, specifically in the areas of pointe
by endymi0n 3y ago
As to the best of my understanding, Fortran still offers some "fringe", but very important low-level optimization potential, specifically in the areas of pointers and aliases that are important to linear algorithm packages, which are apparently still hard to impossible to recreate in C.
Semi-informed, but serious question: Isn't there any other modern, high-level language that can offer these kinds of optimizations? Preferably in a safe kind of way?
I'm still struggling to understand how Fortran still stays relevant and what could possibly succeed it as a migration (or transpilation?) target with equivalent speed but superior maintainability and safety.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 3y agoIt’s true that Fortran played a fundamental role in the area of numerical linear algebra but most of the linear algebra packages you’re likely using today were written in C or C++. Why is Fortran relevant? Because of that aforementioned history. However, Fortran’s use in numerical software has steadily been declining (e.g., look at the past two decades of TOMS articles).
- owlbite 3y agoMost of the BLAS implementations are in C/C++/ASM, as they're the small performance critical part. The LAPACK layer above that which calls the BLAS to do the heavy lifting is a much much bigger target, and aside from the most commonly used routines (cholesky, svd) most vendors just ship the FORTRAN code (possibly in automatically converted to C form).