Fortran vs. C for numerical work (SUMMARY)

Stanley Friesen sarima at tdatirv.UUCP
Thu Dec 6 05:11:32 AEST 1990


In article <2392:Nov2902:59:0590 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>In article <7200 at lanl.gov> ttw at lanl.gov (Tony Warnock) writes:
>> There is also no storage overhead
>>     associated with keeping arrays of pointers. For multi-dimensional
>>     problems, this overhead could be quite large.
 
>... That's true, but
>it's really not a problem. If you have a 5 by 5 by 2 by 3 by 15 array,
>can you begrudge space for thirty pointers so that you save 5% of your pointers

Except for one thing. In scientific computation typical dimensions would be
more like 1000 by 1000 by 1000 by 1000 by 50, which requires a great deal more
than a mere thirty pointers.  [In biological work it may be even larger, though
in that case there are usually fewer dimensions]

Really, I have done some *small* studies with hundreds of rows/columns.
[In fact my data set was so small that I failed to produce usable results,
I actually needed something like 5 times as many 'rows'].
-- 
---------------
uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



More information about the Comp.lang.c mailing list