THE COMPUTER TRANSITION SYSTEMS
REPORT - JUNE 1999
CONTENTS
FORTRAN WORK
LF95 EXPRESS - the cost effective Fortran compiler
ABSOFT PRO FORTRAN FOR LINUX
WINTERACTER VERSION 2.10
LAHEY/FUJITSU LF95 VERSION 5.5
DISLIN GRAPHICS LIBRARY
f90SQL - FORTRAN MEETS DATABASES
VISUAL FORTRAN NEWS
TIMING ROUTINES IN LF95
OpenGL
CPU CHIP DEVELOPMENTS
IMSL FOR LF90 AND LF95
FORTRAN WORK
From time to time people who have Fortran programming needs contact Computer Transition Systems. If you
or your organization are interested in supplying Fortran programming services or need Fortran programming
done please let us know us via email at info@cts.com.au or fax us at (03) 9530 6644. Currently there is
a technical development company in Perth looking for someone to port Fortran code from UNIX to Windows.
If you are interested in this please contact Computer Transition Systems.
LF95 EXPRESS - the cost effective Fortran compiler
Lahey has now introduced LF95 Express, a no frills version of their LF95 compiler. This is the same compiler
which is in their other LF95 products. With LF95 Express only the compiler, a command line debugger, a
librarian and a linker are supplied. The compiler is command line driven. All documentation is on the CD.
Printed manuals are not provided. However they can be printed out easily since they are in Adobe Acrobat
format. LF95 Express should be ideal for those who have no need for the extra facilities (editor, profiler,
coverage analysis tool, make, user interface/graphics library, and windows debugger) contained in the
standard version of LF95. The price of LF95 Express is $311.
ABSOFT LINUX FORTRAN COMPILER
Absoft produces the most popular Fortran toolset for Linux. The new version 6 release includes
significant improvements to the Fortran 90 compiler especially with regard to execution speed and
support for popular workstation extensions. It is shipped in RPM and TAR formats. It is compatible
with all Linux implementations using kernel release 2.0 and later. Other features include:
o improved optimization which provides compiled code execution speed increases of up to 59%
o a new printed User Guide
o thread safe run time library
o Absoft/MPICH libraries are available from Argonne labs
o optional VAST-F/Parallel preprocessor which provides automatic parallelization and optimization
capabilities for single and dual cpu Linux computers. Includes support for OpenMP.
o IMSL F90MP Math and Stat libraries are available as an option.
Beginning with their release 6.0, Red Hat, the world's Leading supplier of Linux, will be including
demonstration copies of Absoft Pro Fortran on its distribution CDs. Australian users of Absoft's
Linux compiler have given us very positive reports on the compiler particularly the speed of the
executables it produces. By means of VAST-F/Parallel the new release of the Absoft compiler can
also take full advantage of the multiprocessing capabilities of Linux. In addition the use of VAST-F/Parallel can provide some execution improvement on single processor machines for programs
which spend large amounts of time in nested loops or operating on large arrays. Purchasers of
Absoft Pro Fortran for Linux can obtain VAST-F/Parallel for $475 (normally $780). Furthermore
until 31, August non academic users of Absoft Fortran for Macintosh or Windows can purchase the
Linux compiler for just $1025, a saving of $475. IMSL for Absoft Pro Fortran for Linux is $325 if
purchased with the compiler. This is a saving of $475 compared to the regular price.
Winteracter 2.10
Upgrade prices to the just released version 2.10 of Winteracter are $195 from version 2.0, $360
from version 1.15, and $499 from earlier versions. Facilities new to version 2.10 include
o Integrated OpenGL support.
o Bit image, window & dialog printing via Print Manager
o Managed bitmap viewer windows, with scrollbars
o Import/export menus/dialogs between resources
o New set of debugging facilities
o Improved error reporting with LF95 5.5
o Cut/paste in grids (e.g. copy to/from Excel)
o General purpose redistributable installer
o Upgraded development environment (WiDE)
o Essential LF90 4.0 support
o Save image data array as a BMP file
o Upgraded graphics file view/print/convert utility
In addition to the above, version 2.10 includes about 50 other general enhancements.
INTERACTER customers may obtain Winteracter for a reduced price ($999 commercial - $760
academic). The next 6 monthly release date for Winteracter is 28 November.
Lahey/Fujitsu LF95 Version 5.5
LF95 version 5.5 was released in late May and Corporate Express maintenance subscribers should
have it by now. New facilities in version 5.5 are inclusion of the Fujitsu Windows debugger, a
profiler (Sampler Tool), a Coverage Analysis Tool (to spell out parts of the code which can never
be executed), many enhancements to the WiSK user interface/graphics library, greater compilation
control via additional compiler switches, and various improvements in the compiler which will result
in significantly faster execution speed of compiled code. Our limited testing indicates the benefit
ranges up to 20% with 15% being fairly common. This was on our Pentium PC. The results
should be better on PII and PIII machines. The update to LF95 version 5.5 is $336 for version 5.0
users and the upgrade to LF95 Pro from any version of LF90 is $495.
DISLIN GRAPHICS LIBRARY
DISLIN, developed by Helmut Michaels at the Max Planck Institute, is a high-level and easy to use
plotting library for displaying data as curves, bar graphs, pie charts, 3D-colour plots, surfaces,
contours, and maps. The library contains about 400 routines. The approach used is to have only
a few graphics routines with short parameter lists. A large variety of parameter setting routines
can then be used to create customized graphics. Several output formats are supported such as
X11, VGA, PostScript, CGM, HPGL, TIFF, and Prescribe. DISLIN is available for Visual C++ and
most PC Fortran compilers including Lahey Essential LF90, LF90, LF95, Visual Fortran, and Absoft
Fortran. Prices are free for Linux, US$150 for the PC, and US$450 for UNIX. Versions for DEC,
RS-6000, HP, Silicon Graphics, and SUN are available. You can test DISLIN before purchase.
Software, manuals, and further information are available from the DISLIN home page
http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/dislin/.
f90SQL - FORTRAN MEETS DATABASES
f90SQL by Canaima Software (http://www.canaimasoft.com) is a database connectivity library for
Fortran. Until the advent of f90SQL the only way to access data from Fortran was to export it from
the database into an ascii file and have the Fortran program read in the ascii file. If the Fortran
program processed the data in some manner then the adjusted data had to be written to an ascii
file which in turn had to be imported into the data base. With f90SQL Fortran programs can read
or write directly to data files which have been generated by applications which have an ODBC
(Microsoft Windows Open Database Connectivity) interface. Batch queries, transactions etc. can
all be carried out seamlessly at run time from a Fortran program. Examples of applications which
use ODBC include Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Access, FoxPro, Paradox, Oracle, Ingress, Informix,
Microsoft SQL-server, and Sybase. The same routines are used to access the databases from any
vendor. You do need the ODBC driver for the proprietary format in which the data is stored. This
is normally provided as part of the database application. f90SQL is available for LF95, Digital Visual
Fortran, Absoft Pro Fortran and Salford FTN95. The price of $315 includes a comprehensive online
manual (the optional printed manual is more than 1000 pages) with a tutorial and numerous
examples. One year of free updates and six months of email support are also included.
VISUAL FORTRAN NEWS
Digital Visual Fortran will soon be rebadged Compaq Visual Fortran to reflect the new ownership
of Digital. The Visual Fortran News [VFN] is produced quarterly and is sent by email to registered
users of Visual Fortran. VFN usually has articles on various technical aspects of Fortran - not just
marketing information. The May 1999 issue, for instance, contains a discussion on the SAVE
statement, 6 tips for more reliable programming (use IMPLICIT NONE, use free format source files,
use a single source file for the final compilation of production code, use INTERFACE blocks, use
INTENT, and default to AUTOMATIC allocation), and a description of parallelizing code by means
of OpenMP (using the Kuck & Associates processor).
One of the drawbacks of Visual Fortran is a printed Programmer's Guide Book is not provided.
However it has now been published by Digital Press. The recommended U.S. retail price is $49.95.
The ISBN number is 1-55558-218-4. It can be obtained from www.fatbrain.com. It can also be
downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format from http://www.digital.com/fortran/docs .
TIMING ROUTINES IN LF95
If you wish to put elapsed time measurement in a program compiled with LF95 you can use
CPU_TIME, DATE_AND_TIME, TIMER, or SECNDS. However CPU_TIME is recommended because
it has superior resolution. In the Livermore Loops benchmark a test is made of the clock accuracy.
It gave 2ms for CPU_TIME and more than 50 ms for the others. Lahey says CPU_TIME resolution
should be accurate to 1us whereas the others have 20 ms accuracy. In Windows 95 and 98 there
is considerable housekeeping computer activity being carried out. It is therefor normal to have a
wide variation in the measured execution times for repeated runs of programs which take only a
couple of seconds to execute. Windows NT does not have this problem.
OpenGL
OpenGL is an application interface to generate 2D/3D graphics which are independent of hardware,
operating system, and windowing system used. Its main strength is the ability to generate
excellent images of 3D objects with light sources etc. GLUT, the OpenGL Utilities Toolkit, is
needed to carry out general user interface operations such as opening a window, managing the
mouse and displaying windows. The f90gl Fortran 90 OpenGL binding written by William Mitchell
has been ported to the Lahey compilers with the assistance of Lawson Wakefield of Interactive
Software Services (ISS). It is included on the Lahey distribution disk. f90gl allows Fortran users
to work with OpenGL in a very similar manner to C. The advantage is that nearly all OpenGL
training material - textbooks and tutorials - are in C. Comprehensive information on OpenGL with
links to other informative internet sites may be found at http://math.nist.gov/f90gl. One such site
is http:/reality.sgi.com/opengl/. It has links to a great variety of OpenGL topics including tutorials
and example images. f90gl bindings for Digital Visual Fortran and Absoft Pro Fortran are available
on the NISTsite. ISS have also produced a customized version of f90gl which is embedded in
Winteracter (and LF95 WiSK). This allows f90gl to be used without having to invoke GLUT.
Winteracter contains a much wider variety of functionality than GLUT. This customized f90gl has
the advantage of allowing Winteracter (or WiSK) routines to be used with OpenGL. There are a
number of graphics cards specifically designed to run OpenGL and those who make serious use of
OpenGL will find the graphics execution speed enhancement provided by these cards (with suitable
drivers) to be well worthwhile. An OpenGL demo using Winteracter can be found on the ISS web
site (http://www.demon.co.uk/issltd. It shows what is possible with OpenGL and gives some idea
of what typical source code looks like.
CPU CHIP DEVELOPMENTS
Six months from now always appears to be the best time to buy a new PC. That is certainly the
case today. Since our last newsletter Intel has released the Pentium III and PII Xeon cpu chips. Just
prior to this the Celeron cpus came out. The Celeron is identical to a PII except for the L2 cache.
The first Celerons had no L2 and this resulted in Celeron being equated with dismal performance.
The A chips and those running at 333 MHz or more have a 128K cache running at full clock speed.
While the PII (and PIII) have 512K of L2 this runs at half the cpu speed. The end result is PCs using
the newer Celerons have reasonable performance and are good value for many users. Soon we will
have very powerful PC portables based on the 'Dixon' cpu which has 256K of full speed L2 cache.
Performance should exceed that of the PII.
The PIII chip has little to recommend it compared to the PII. It has some instructions which
allow multimedia software to run faster but current Fortran compilers do not use these instructions.
The results on Intel's own website show that a 500 MHz PIII has only about a 7% edge over a 450
MHz PII for floating point intensive programs.
There are Xeon variations of both the PII and PIII. These have internal caches which operate
at the same speed as the cpu. In addition large cache options are also available - 1 MB and 2 MB.
PIIs and PIIIs have a .5 MB cache. Xeon with their large fast cache will be effective in multi-processor PCs. Even single CPU Xeon machines should execute large programs faster. Currently
Xeon cpus are about double the price of plain PIIs or PIIIs.
By the end of the year PCs with a 133 MHz memory bus (as opposed to the current 100 Mhz)
will be available. With 133 Mhz memory program execution speed should improve significantly.
Intel also plans to release its Camino (aka 440JX) chipset soon. It not only provides for 133 MHz
memory but also allows use of Direct Rambus Dynamic Memory which can have a peak bandwidth
of 1.6 GB per sec as opposed to the current 125 MBps available with SDRAMS. The first chip
which may challenge the high end Intel cpus is the soon to be released AMD K7. The K7 chip is
designed for multiprocessor configurations, is capable of executing three instructions per cycle, has
128K of L1 cache (but no internal L2 cache), and has 3 floating point pipelines.
IMSL for LF90 and LF95
IMSL for LF90 and LF95 is finally available. The LF90 version was fist supposed to ready in June
of last year! Versions for LF90 and LF95 are both on the CD. The price of IMSL is $475 if
purchased with a new compiler, a compiler update, or a compiler upgrade.
Return to Computer Transition System's home page.
Updated 15 June 1999