John, On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 6:33 AM, John Rose via AGI <[email protected]> wrote:
> Here's an idea - let's re-spec Fortran to do better 3D graphics rendering > and real-time physics simulation so people can use it to write video games. > The question is why? Perhaps to migrate existing developers? Better to > create a whole new language IMO. > OK, on the way to answering this question, I'll ask and answer the following question: Q: Why do most supercomputers STILL program in FORTRAN?!!! A1: Because it has carefully conceived language impediments that make it much easier (than C, Java, etc.) to write code in ways that are automatically vectorizeable. This started for different reasons, e.g. the motivation to use the TIX (conditional Transfer and Increment an indeX register) instructions on the early IBM 70X computers, later to become 70XX computers. However, the requirements to write code as efficient loops are nearly the same in vector machines. A2: The complexity of an optimizing and vectorizing compiler tends to grow as the square of the number of elements in the language, so compilers for "modern" languages tend to do a bad job of optimization, and a horrible job of vectorization, unless you write in a minimal subset of the languages that strongly resembles FORTRAN. Of course if your problem is SO simple it can be run on an Intel processor, which clearly does NOT include AGI, then there is no need for executional efficiency. You mentioned rendering. Have you looked at the execution times for rendering programs? These days, they must schedule planned movie releases around the expected rendering times. Is it REALLY worth such costs to implement more convenient language constructs? Language impediments were carefully studied when FORTRAN was created, but this art has been lost to time. Perhaps you remember the early restriction that subscripts had to be of the form aX+b? This restriction was soon removed, but expert programmers learned to abide by the removed restrictions, because doing so made their code run faster. In implementing something like COBOL, the issue of language restrictions should be carefully revisited. Steve > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
