Scientific computing under Unix (was Re: Help us defend ...)

[Stephen Hocking]

in article <10729 at cgl.ucsf.EDU>, seibel at cgl.ucsf.edu (George Seibel%Kollman) says:

	Lots of stuff here about fortrans etc etc

: .....................  If Unix *is* going to be the hot banana for cpu
: intensive simulation work, it's going to need good fortran support.  The
: BSD attitude way back when was apparently something like "lets give them
: a really lousy fortran compiler!  Then maybe fortran will just go away!"
: Well, now there are a whole lot of people who think that Unix is not the
: way to go for their work.  We have a Public Relations problem here, and
: better fortran support will help win over a lot of people who make the
: buy decisions.
: 
: George Seibel
: UCSF

	I'll agree with that. I'm running Microport Unix at home, and the f77
is mindboggling. Mind you, even the f77 on the Amdahl here (under UTS)
is not all that brilliant. When you're trying to port a small linear
programming package (~7000 lines), or CSMP II the fortran bugs really
start coming out of the woodwork. And when sdb (or the code generator) wont
cope with the -g option on large files, then the tears really start to flow.
I have gotten them running, and they run reasonably respectably, (it's
marvellous what a difference an 80287 makes!) about the speed of an
11/750 as far as I can see. Some of the bugs in the large model f77
library under Microport (AAAAAGGGH), but we coped.


	Stephen
 
-- 
	"I'll drink to that	-	Whatever it is.."

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