From owner-sc22wg5+sc22wg5-dom8=www.open-std.org@open-std.org Mon Mar 24 22:14:51 2014 Return-Path: X-Original-To: sc22wg5-dom8 Delivered-To: sc22wg5-dom8@www.open-std.org Received: by www.open-std.org (Postfix, from userid 521) id A5A199DB119; Mon, 24 Mar 2014 22:14:51 +0100 (CET) Delivered-To: sc22wg5@open-std.org Received: from ppsw-42.csi.cam.ac.uk (ppsw-42.csi.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.142]) by www.open-std.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7AAB5357087 for ; Mon, 24 Mar 2014 22:14:50 +0100 (CET) X-Cam-AntiVirus: no malware found X-Cam-ScannerInfo: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/scanner/ Received: from hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.8.51]:34254) by ppsw-42.csi.cam.ac.uk (smtp.hermes.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.157]:25) with esmtpa (EXTERNAL:nmm1) id 1WSCCo-00041i-8Q (Exim 4.82_3-c0e5623) for sc22wg5@open-std.org (return-path ); Mon, 24 Mar 2014 21:14:50 +0000 Received: from prayer by hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk (hermes.cam.ac.uk) with local (PRAYER:nmm1) id 1WSCCo-0002AY-HB (Exim 4.72) for sc22wg5@open-std.org (return-path ); Mon, 24 Mar 2014 21:14:50 +0000 Received: from [87.113.109.128] by old-webmail.hermes.cam.ac.uk with HTTP (Prayer-1.3.5); 24 Mar 2014 21:14:50 +0000 Date: 24 Mar 2014 21:14:50 +0000 From: "N.M. Maclaren" To: "sc22wg5@open-std.org" Subject: Re: [ukfortran] (SC22WG5.5199) (j3.2006) Ballot on draft DTS Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20140324210108.4DBFB3586CD@www.open-std.org> References: <20140312154430.1B7899EB083@www.open-std.org> <20140324133031.CC99D35856F@www.open-std.org> <20140324160849.220FA356F90@www.open-std.org> <20140324204821.77D8535872E@www.open-std.org> <20140324210108.4DBFB3586CD@www.open-std.org> X-Mailer: Prayer v1.3.5 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: owner-sc22wg5@open-std.org Precedence: bulk On Mar 24 2014, Keith Bierman wrote: > >> (b) whether it is reasonably efficiently >> implementable without special hardware or operating system support. >> > >Why is it necessary that the feature be reasonably efficiently >implementable without OS and/or HW support? Floating point arithmetic isn't >usable without special hardware. Why should atomic memory operations be >"efficient" without adequate support Well, actually, it is - but let that pass. As I said in my comments "A specific issue here is that Fortran is maintaining its position largely because it can be used to write more efficient code than its competitors. If, in the eyes of the user community, it loses that edge, it will disappear." If we think that commodity hardware and operating system vendors and distributors are going to do anything special to help Fortran, we are living in cloud cuckoo land. And the vast majority of Fortran users use commodity hardware and operating system distributions. Regards, Nick Maclaren.