Re: Parallel programing in Linux Cluster using Ada95

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <780mng$mkj$1@news-2.news.gte.net>, "Joe L. Vojir" <jlvojir1@gte.net> writes:
> Hi,
>     I was wondering if I use the task routines in the Ada95 programming
> language will I be able to utlize power of our beowolf Linux cluster.  This
> question is just to decide if I should learn the message passing routines or
> if I can use Ada's built-in paralizing capability and both would work
> equally.

For Linux, you are probably talking about the GNAT compiler, and
someone else will talk about the specifics.  (If you don't like
what the compiler does, you can always rewrite it, a comment I
would only make to a Linux fan :-).

With that said, however, keep in mind that the Ada language facilities
are not "built-in parallelizing" in the sense of some Fortran compilers
which deconstitute inner loops without programmer involvement.  The Ada
programmer must make decisions about what happens in what task, etc.

I suppose it would be possible to write an Ada compiler that automated
parallelizing in the Fortran sense, but most programmers who have a
problem susceptible to that sort of approach are using Fortran.

Larry Kilgallen