A debate: Retire FORTRAN?: Yes

MAY 01, 1984

New applicative languages, based on mathematical functions rather than FORTRAN‐like statements, will enhance our ability to decompose problems for concurrent processing.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2916244

James R. McGraw

What role can programming languages play in our continuing efforts for high‐speed computation, and what role should they play? The overwhelming majority of high‐speed computing is now done in FORTRAN on large vector machines such as the Cray 1 and the CDC Cyber 205. While the exact nature of future supercomputers is unclear, by almost all indications they will be multiprocessors. Conservative plans would link on the order of 64 processors, while more aggressive approaches, such as the “data flow” strategy, would link several thousand processors. In either case, the goal is to arrange each program to use as many processors as needed to complete execution in the shortest amount of time. To what extent can languages and their associated compilers assist us in reaching this goal?

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More about the authors

James R. McGraw, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California.