The VS/Fortran (compiler and library) is indeed stuck in Fortran 77 and there seems to be no XL/Fortran for z/OS or even z/Linux. It might be a quasi-interesting excercise compiling all the Fortran modules in the R source code in VS/Fortran (I suspect that most if not all will compile alright) but it probably won't be as efficient as it could be. One of the main selling points of R is the fact that it is a 'functional' language with provisions for parallel processing (i.e. utilizing multi-core CPU - se http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/HighPerformanceComputing.html). Again, it could be interesting to see how that is working in the context of z/OS. But I am not sure it is interesting enough.
Ze'ev Atlas ________________________________ From: David Crayford <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 6:43 AM Subject: Re: R statistical language. On 22/01/2013 11:36 AM, Ze'ev Atlas wrote: > Well > I was not aware about that fact, so I downloaded the source code and indeed > it uses Fortran - interesting, I may spend some time with that stuff. > However, both IBM and GNU provide pretty advanced Fortran compilers, but it > becomes more and more hairy to deal with it. Yet, if there is a demand, > somebody would probably do that. And interfacing native z/OS files and SMF > in particular should not be that hard. > >Last time I heard Fortran was gathering dust in the IBM Perth lab. It's >probably been functionally stabalized and is >withering on the vine being >supported for the handful of customers that actually use it. >GNU compilers are a different story. They are cheap (free), high quality and >have be ported to most platforms. Don't hold >your breath for a full function >GCC port to z/OS anytime soon. Porting glibc would take a herculean effort. >It's >been tried before by very capable people, most of them bailed. I like Kirks solution of piping the data onto cheaper, better suited platforms for CPU intensive numerical workloads. Even the low-end x86 servers have SIMD vector execution units making them perfectly suited to crunching stats. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
