From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c4cb2c432feebd9d X-Google-Thread: 1094ba,c4cb2c432feebd9d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,gid1094ba,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!newsdst02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr13.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!2febb241!not-for-mail Reply-To: "Nasser Abbasi" From: "Nasser Abbasi" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.fortran References: Subject: Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2869 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2869 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Response Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 69.235.195.77 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr13.news.prodigy.com 1148706088 ST000 69.235.195.77 (Sat, 27 May 2006 01:01:28 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 01:01:28 EDT Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com X-UserInfo1: TSU[@I_AOPUQR_D[KROFOW\@TRXTPUDO@HTHOCULF@^PGDTFOG[]VCWZBL[\YUWHANGYZEFNHFZPNLOBUNSS^_LGEVWEY\PHO@YJSSWBBDT\PFD^ESBTXVCCMTD]JCJLE\_IJMFNRY]SWE[S[D_CNB__ZK^VGVCKHA[S@COB^[@ZQSDFQ\BPMS@DZVUKQTJL Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 05:01:28 GMT Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:4525 comp.lang.fortran:10339 Date: 2006-05-27T05:01:28+00:00 List-Id: googling around, I found a interesting thread on this very same subject. If you search (under the google groups, not google web), for the string "Computational scientists ignoring and ignored by Ada" It is funny that the thread was back in 1993. Here we are 13 years later. Has things improved for Ada in this specific field? One of those responding in the above thread complained about Ada (then) being 1.5-2 times slower than Fortran in heavy number crunching. I think this is no longer the case. Is it possible to do some standard tests to compare speed of Ada vs Fortran specifically for numerical work? >From what I have been reading, it seems that now Parallelizing Compilers are becoming more important. (may be because we will soon have as common the ability to buy 4,8 or even 16 quad CPU's for workstations and PC's). Is Fortran ahead of Ada in regards? clearly we are talking about the compiler being be able to do things like array subscripts dependency analysis and the ability of the compiler to decide when to parallelize loops (I think the technical term is loop transformation but not sure) We are not talking here about the user themselves doing this and using user level threads or Ada tasks which I think will too heavy weight for this sort of thing. A document I found for Fortran90 on 'decomposing loop for parallel processing' sheds light on this. http://www.helsinki.fi/atk/unix/dec_manuals/df90au52/dfum026.htm I also found this interesting note about some research done at IBM for paralalizing Ada for numerical work "Parallelism in scientific applications can most often be found at the loop level. Although Ada supports parallelism via the task construct, its coarseness renders it unsuitable for this light-weight parallelism." The rest is here: http://www.research.ibm.com/people/h/hind/tr585abs.html It seems from what I see is that Fortran is ahead when it comes to parallelizing compilers for scieintifc high performance work. Is it possible to have a parallelizing GNAT compiler for example, producing super fast parallal code, yet preserve all the Ada language semantics? I hope so. And how soon can we get one? :) Nasser