From khb@eng.sun.com Wed Dec 16 08:07:31 1992 Received: from Sun.COM by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA08184 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Thu, 17 Dec 1992 01:07:34 +0100 Received: from Eng.Sun.COM (zigzag-bb.Corp.Sun.COM) by Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA13524; Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:07:30 PST Received: from chiba.Eng.Sun.COM by Eng.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA01533; Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:07:36 PST Received: by chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA10236; Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:07:31 PST Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:07:31 PST From: khb@eng.sun.com (Keith Bierman fpgoup) Message-Id: <9212170007.AA10236@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM> To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: SunPro Press Release concerning Fortran ("90") Content-Length: 6607 X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 The following text was released by product marketing to the Press yesterday. Knowing the interest you all have with Fortran, I provide it for informational purposes only. As prices, dates and etc. are not involved, I do not believe this violates the non-commerical nature of this list. However, I apologize in advance to anyone who is offended by it. khb SUNPRO ANNOUNCES FORTRAN 90 TECHNOLOGY AGREEMENT WITH THE NUMERICAL ALGORITHMS GROUP, LTD. Next Generation Scientific Computing Tools to Offer Increased Power and Flexibility MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif - December 15, 1992 - SunPro(tm), the software development business of Sun Microsystems, Inc., today announced that it has entered into a technology development and licensing agreement with The Numerical Algorithms Group, Ltd (NAG(TM)). The agreement centers on NAG's Fortran 90 technology. Fortran 90 is the new international standard for the Fortran programming language that adds important numerical processing and software engineering capabilities to the existing Fortran 77 standard. Fortran is used extensively to develop scientific and engineering software, a market that SunPro currently dominates with its SPARCompiler(tm) Fortran 77 product. SunPro will use NAG'stechnology to develop and market a high performance Fortran 90 development system based on SunPro's proven SPARCompiler and SPARCworks(tm) development environment technologies. SunPro will enhance NAG's technology and combine it with their own high performace compiler technology to create an integrated Fortran 90 language system that produces the fast, tight code for which SunPro's compilers are universally recognized. "Integrating proven technologies from two industry leaders means that the first release of SunPro's Fortran 90 compiler will deliver the performance that customers need to make the move to Fortran 90," said Dr. Brian Ford, O.B.E., Director of NAG. SunPro will integrate the new Fortran 90 compiler with the SPARCworks development environment, which delivers a comprehensive set of tools focused on programmer productivity, including a debugger, static and dynamic code analyzers, and tools to help optimize application performance. Available for more than a year, NAGware(TM) f90 is the de facto standard language system used by scientists and engineers as they embrace Fortran 90. NAGware f90 was recently honored by the British Computer Society as a 1992 Award Medalist for technical excellence and innovation. This prestigious award underscores NAG's pioneering efforts in Fortran 90, and their productization of a high quality, full implementation of the Fortran 90 language. A forthcoming release of NAGWare f90, which includes many efficiency and operational improvements, is the basis for SunPro's Fortran 90 compiler. "With this announcement, SunPro is removing the uncertainty for users who are considering Fortran 90 as their development language. Early adopters can use NAGware f90 today with the confidence that the software they develop will easily migrate to SunPro's Fortran 90 compiler," said Paul Henderson, SunPro's Director of Marketing. "As a leading Fortran supplier, SunPro will of course be continually enhancing our Fortran 90 solution to enable applications to achieve maximum performance." About Fortran 90 Fortran was the first computer language with an international standard, and it remains one of today's most popular programming languages. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved international standard for more than a year, Fortran 90 was approved as a US standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in August, 1992. NAGware f90 and SunPro's Fortran 90 compiler are fully standard conforming. Fortran 90 adds new features that significantly improve Fortran's numerical computing capability and enhance the programmer's ability to produce easily maintained, reuseable software. Fortran 90 includes array operations that reduce the number of loops required for martix calculations, making code more efficient and easier to read. Fortran 90 also includes user defined data types, structures of basic types, and overloading to define operators that work on the user defined types. This capability allows programmers to extend the language as needed for different applications. Other new capabilities include dynamic allocation of variables and a new pointer data type. This frees Fortran 90 applications from the restrictions of statically defined storage. Finally, Fortran 90 includes software modules that provide a well defined, easy to maintain way of grouping types, global variables, and procedures into 'packages' of reuseable software. In addition to these new capabilities that are part of the current Fortran 90 standard, the High Performance Fortran (HPF) Forum is working to produce a proposed set of standard extensions to Fortran 90 designed for high performance, parallel computing environments. SunPro, an active participant in the High Performance Fortran Forum, plans to offer support for HPF in their Fortran 90 compiler. About SunPro SunPro, established in July 1991 as a business of Sun Microsystems, Inc., is dedicated to serving the needs of professional software developers. With headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., SunPro is the worldwide volume leader in professional software development products based on the SPARC(r) architecture and Solaris(r) distributed operating environment. SunPro products are available worldwide through a network of master distributors, resellers, and computer system manufacturers. About NAG The Numerical Algorithms Group, Ltd., produces and distributes numerical, symbolic, statistical and graphical software for the solution of problems in a wide range of applications in science, engineering, financial analysis and research. NAG is based in Oxford, England with offices in Chicago and Munich. # # # # Sun Microsystems, Sun, the Sun logo, SunPro, the SunPro logo, and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All SPARC trademarks, including the SCD Compliant Logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. SPARCworks and SPARCompiler are licensed exclusively to Sun Microsystems, Inc. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. NAG and NAGware are trademarks of The Numerical Algorithms Group, Ltd. All other products or services mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.