[Beowulf] A start in Parallel Programming?

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Leif Nixon wrote:

> "Peter St. John" <peter.st.john at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I had thought that after some point (say, f77) the practical thing was to
>> translate fortran to C and use the C compiler, just because compiler writers
>> love C, adopted it hugely, and write great compilers. Apparently I was
>> mistaken.
>
> Compilers are designed to compile code written by humans.
> Autogenerated code typically does not optimize well.

Or be human-readable.  f2c code was just about as evil as any zomby
woof or eskimo boy could be.  I used to try to use it to START porting
fortran sources to C, but rapidly concluded that it was actually easier
and saner to just rewrite the algorithms in native C by hand.  It was a
really educational experience for those that would assert that fortran
is "just like" C on the back end, though -- "just like" is well defined
by the required compatibility libraries and stuff that has to be done to
convert data structures.  They were not, not, not pretty...

    rgb

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu