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A programming language developed in the 1950s and still in use today. The name is short for Formula Translation. It is a procedural language suited to scientific computation, so is commonly used by scientists. |
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A programming language originally developed in the 1950s and still in use today. The name is short for "Formula Translation". It is a procedural language suited to scientific computation, so is commonly used by scientists. |
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The first FORTRAN compiler was developed in 1954-57 by a team lead by [John W. Backus]? whilst he was at IBM. |
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The first FORTRAN compiler was developed in 1954-57 by a team lead by [John W. Backus]? whilst he was at IBM. This compiler was the first compiler for any [High level language]?, and was actually an optimizing compiler, because the authors were worried that no one would use the language if its performance was not comparable to assembly language. |
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Every version introduced 'modern' programming concepts, such as IF-THEN-ELSE and parallel constructs, while still maintaining its 'lean' profile and optimal performance. |
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Every version introduced 'modern' programming concepts, such as IF-THEN-ELSE and parallel constructs, while still attempting to maintain Fortran's 'lean' profile and high performance. |
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Vendors of high performance scientific computers (Burroughs, CDC, CRAY, IBM, Texas Instruments, ...) added extensions to FORTRAN to make use of special hardware features such as: instruction cache, CPU pipeline, vector arrays, etc. For example, one of IBM's FORTRAN compilers (H Extended IUP) had a level of optimization which reordered the machine code instructions to keep several internal arithmetic units busy at the same time. Another example is CFD, a special 'version' of FORTRAN designed specifically for the ILLIAC IV supercomputer, running at NASA's [Ames Research Center]?. |
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Vendors of high performance scientific computers (Burroughs, CDC, CRAY, IBM, Texas Instruments, ...) added extensions to FORTRAN to make use of special hardware features such as: instruction cache, CPU pipeline, vector arrays, etc. For example, one of IBM's FORTRAN compilers (H Extended IUP) had a level of optimization which reordered the machine code instructions to keep several internal arithmetic units busy at the same time. Another example is CFD, a special 'version' of FORTRAN designed specifically for the ILLIAC IV supercomputer, running at NASA's [Ames Research Center]?. These extensions have all disappeared over time; the major remaining extension is OpenMP?, which is a cross–platform extension for shared memory programming. One new extension, [CoArray Fortran]?, is intended to promote parallel programming. |
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