Re: Numerical Computation and Ada95

[tmoran@acm.org]

>From what you said I undestand that nobody has ever compared Ada's timing
>performance with Fortran77/90/95, C and C++ in programs that require lots
>of arithmetic and logical operations (perhaps FFT).  I think I will try to
>do it when I learn Ada95 better
  There was a substantial comparison someplace (perhaps Ada Letters?)
some time ago, but I don't remember just when.  Try looking in
www.adapower.com, www.adahome.com, or www.adaic.org  A simple minded
transliteration from one language to another can have pitfalls,
accessing arrays in row-major vs column-major order being an example.
When I went to translate an algorithm from "Numerical Recipes in
Fortran" it became obvious during the translation to Ada that the
Fortran version was doing some extra, wasted, iterations.  Do you want
to compare the Fortran version against an exact translation that
includes those wasted cycles, or against an Ada version that preserves
the algorithm, but not the poor coding?  It's not always obvious
what's the appropriate comparison.