From owner-sc22wg5@open-std.org Fri Aug 11 11:36:31 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: sc22wg5-dmo5 Delivered-To: sc22wg5-dmo5@open-std.org Received: by open-std.org (Postfix, from userid 521) id 90B7025342; Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:36:31 +0200 (CET DST) X-Original-To: sc22wg5@open-std.org Delivered-To: sc22wg5@open-std.org Received: from ppsw-0.csi.cam.ac.uk (ppsw-0.csi.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.130]) by open-std.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B03232495A for ; Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:36:28 +0200 (CET DST) X-Cam-SpamDetails: Not scanned X-Cam-AntiVirus: No virus found X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ Received: from draco.cus.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.8.18]:43172) by ppsw-0.csi.cam.ac.uk (ppsw.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.130]:25) with esmtp id 1GBTRC-0003yr-0z (Exim 4.54) (return-path ); Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:36:18 +0100 Received: from nmm1 (helo=cus.cam.ac.uk) by draco.cus.cam.ac.uk with local-esmtp (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1GBTRC-0000sK-5p; Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:36:18 +0100 To: van.snyder@jpl.nasa.gov cc: sc22wg5 , szymansk@cs.rpi.edu Subject: Re: [ukfortran] (SC22WG5.3412) Invitation to write about Fortran in "Scientific Programming" In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:55:03 PDT." <20060810215537.452B7249DC@open-std.org> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:36:18 +0100 From: Nick Maclaren Message-Id: Sender: owner-sc22wg5@open-std.org Precedence: bulk I hesitate to say anything, still less make an offer, but there is one aspect that I think is worth a brief note that is dear to my heart. It is just how well the original Fortran computational/memory model has allowed procedural forms of parallelism. Some were doubtless thought of by Backus, but I'll bet not all. I am thinking of (a) distributed memory message passing (like MPI), (b) vector-like SIMD (numerous examples) and even (c) hierarchical threading (e.g. OpenMP). All have been addable with minimal changes to the language's basic model and modest extensions. The same is not true, of course, of the non-procedural parallelism models, but that is only to be expected. Is anyone picking this up? Because I think that someone should. Regards, Nick Maclaren, University of Cambridge Computing Service, New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England. Email: nmm1@cam.ac.uk Tel.: +44 1223 334761 Fax: +44 1223 334679