Modern Fortran is no longer the FORTRAN from punch cards, having this compiler push maybe will help folks to write directly blazing performance Fortran code, instead of numerical code in Python.
I am fully aware of it, however most recent revisions tend not to be adopted by all compilers, and honestly the large majority only cares about keeping existing code running.
A bit like C23 and C++23 are here, and the large majority is a mix of C89, C99, C++11, and C++17, as what folks in the trenches care about.
Or Java 8 versus Java 24, and so on.
Fortran is in a similar position.
rbanffy 8 days ago [-]
How many different platforms out there run Fortran code these days? I’m aware of it being very important in scientific computing (and compiling existing code is critical) but I don’t know many other use cases and different platforms requiring different compilers.
pjmlp 8 days ago [-]
In many HPC cases you are using the platform tools, not gfortran.
Also we have one use case that is responsible for OpenCL losing mindshare for scientific community, running Fortran on GPU.
Thus I bet at least Intel, NVidia, AMD, Cray, IBM, being relevant ones.
Yes, some of them are planning to eventually adopt LFortran to replace their own, like they did with clang, or at least are using LLVM nowadays.
pklausler 7 days ago [-]
I think that you're conflating LFortran with LLVM Flang.
jamesfinlayson 7 days ago [-]
At a previous job there were two fairly old Fortran code bases running on emulated hardware. I think one was using an old proprietary compiler (I want to say from IBM) while the other was almost certainly using some ancient compiler given the emulated hardware that it was running on.
ok123456 8 days ago [-]
Everyone using numpy.
rbanffy 8 days ago [-]
What compilers are used to build it might be relevant.
LFortran is an alpha-stage modern, interactive LLVM-based Fortran compiler.
froh 7 days ago [-]
thanks you've saved me looking it up myself
quanto 7 days ago [-]
> It utilizes a range of Modern Fortran features, including extensive use of optional variables, function pointer passing, and a randomized test driver, among others. Successfully compiling PRIMA requires a compiler with a robust and mature backend, as well as well-developed intermediate passes and a capable parser.
I am not getting a full picture here. What's challenging about PRIMA code base? Does it use some advanced features that are difficult for a compiler to support? Are the mentioned features in the 2008 standard?
What's actually impressive is that LFortran in alpha stage is only 2x slower than GFortran, which goes back decades.
certik 7 days ago [-]
It was a lot of corner cases that we had to get right, it's the most advanced code that LFortran can compile. I think none of the features individually is difficult to support, but there were a lot of them.
actinium226 8 days ago [-]
Congrats to Ondřej Čertík and the team working on LFortran, this is a big milestone!
I'll have to benchmark a library-less Matmul with LFortran, to compare against flang, C, and python versions.
Roughly: 8, 12, 18 units of time, respectively. Python only being twice as slow for the simplest matmul - how much of that is merely the interpreter startup time?
fadreqrew 8 days ago [-]
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Modern Fortran is no longer the FORTRAN from punch cards, having this compiler push maybe will help folks to write directly blazing performance Fortran code, instead of numerical code in Python.
A bit like C23 and C++23 are here, and the large majority is a mix of C89, C99, C++11, and C++17, as what folks in the trenches care about.
Or Java 8 versus Java 24, and so on.
Fortran is in a similar position.
Also we have one use case that is responsible for OpenCL losing mindshare for scientific community, running Fortran on GPU.
Thus I bet at least Intel, NVidia, AMD, Cray, IBM, being relevant ones.
Yes, some of them are planning to eventually adopt LFortran to replace their own, like they did with clang, or at least are using LLVM nowadays.
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LFortran
- Homepage: https://lfortran.org
- GitHub: https://github.com/lfortran/lfortran
If you like to play with it, see
- LFortran in web browsers using WebAssembly: https://dev.lfortran.org
- LFortran in Compiler Explorer: https://godbolt.org/z/EfWvsY6Kh
I am not getting a full picture here. What's challenging about PRIMA code base? Does it use some advanced features that are difficult for a compiler to support? Are the mentioned features in the 2008 standard?
What's actually impressive is that LFortran in alpha stage is only 2x slower than GFortran, which goes back decades.
https://labs.quansight.org/blog/building-scipy-with-flang
which was once discussed on HN at
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38196412
https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/lfortran-compiles-pri...
- Become a sponsor to LFortran: https://github.com/sponsors/lfortran
- Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/lfortran
- NumFOCUS: https://numfocus.org/donate-to-lfortran
https://github.com/libprima/prima
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Roughly: 8, 12, 18 units of time, respectively. Python only being twice as slow for the simplest matmul - how much of that is merely the interpreter startup time?