Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: Israel Gale <gale@wind.hpc.pko.dec.com>
Subject: Re: Parallel Fortran
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: 03 Oct 1996 11:58:57 -0400
Message-ID: <w3lsp7w59a6.fsf@wind.hpc.pko.dec.com>

naren@mrc.uidaho.edu (Narendra Korlepara) writes:

> I am working on parallelizing a FORTRAN77 maxwell equations program. 
> What FORTRAN compilers do I need for this work? We do have a libfpvm3.a 
> (compiler?) file on our network. 

It is unclear from your posting whether you are interested in PVM or in
parallel Fortran.  

The industry standard parallel Fortran dialect is HPF (High Performance
Fortran).  HPF allows parallelism to be expressed at a high level in the
program.  The main advantage is the savings in development and maintanance
time--people who have used both report a 5x to 10x time savings by using
HPF.

HPF can also be mixed with message passing in the same program.  For
example, you could let HPF handle stuff like set-up and I/O, and use PVM
or MPI to do your computational kernel.

Another technique is to use an HPF compiler purely as a message-passing
tool, and continue to write your code in SPMD style.  This is easier than
using PVM or MPI, and produces more readable code.  For details, see:
http://www.digital.com/info/hpc/software/dll.html

HPF is now available for almost every platform.  Some vendors (such as
DEC) now incorporate HPF in their standard Fortran compilers.  Other HPF
compilers are pre-processors that work together with a separate Fortran
compiler.

The performance of code generated by HPF compilers varies widely from
vendor to vendor.  The best compilers generate code that performs roughly
as well as well-tuned PVM or MPI code (for details, send private e-mail:
gale@hpc.pko.dec.com).

For more information:

The HPF Language Specification:
-------------------------------
http://www.crpc.rice.edu/HPFF/home.html
Lists of HPF Compilers (both free and commercial):
--------------------------------------------------
http://www.ac.upc.es/~torres/HPFSurvey/Welcome.html
http://www.irisa.fr/pampa/HPF/survey.html

HPF Tutorials:
--------------
http://www.digital.com/info/hpc/fortran/users.html
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~chk/hpf-tutorial.html
http://www.tc.cornell.edu/~bergmark/HPFstuff/HPFstuff.html
http://www.npac.syr.edu/EDUCATION/PUB/hpfe/


-Israel Gale
 gale@hpc.pko.dec.com

