Why poeple use Fortran on PC?

[Attapon Boonyapiwat]

Hello;

I just curious about why people use Fortran on PC.
Is it just because you can bring home programs to continue working?
(I saw a mention that CPU on PC doesn't do well with double precision on
Fortran.)

I just want simple answer; No flame war amoung languages please.

Thank you
Att

[Kenneth Plotkin]

In article <356A7CB1...@grove.ufl.edu>,

For exactly the same reason we use Fortran on any computer. Why do you
use Fortran?

Bringing work home is a reason many people have PCs at home, so they can
continue at home what they were doing on their PCs at work. Has nothing
to do with the choice of language.

The CPU on a PC does quite well with double precision. In fact, Intel
kind of stirred up the numeric world when they developed the 8087 math
coprocessor by making its performance better than many existing
processors. That also goes beyond Fortran.

Ken Plotkin

[Rob Komar]

Attapon Boonyapiwat (att...@grove.ufl.edu) wrote:
: I just curious about why people use Fortran on PC.

: Is it just because you can bring home programs to continue working?

That was pretty much the case for me. Granting agencies are also
getting tighter and demanding more explanations for big spending,
and at least in Canada, they are asking why you need to buy some
expensive workstation when there are cheaper PC-based computers
around that appear to provide more bang for the buck. So, many
small scientific labs buy PCs to run their Fortran code on.
This isn't always the best solution, but is often good enough.

: (I saw a mention that CPU on PC doesn't do well with double precision on
: Fortran.)

I takes some work to make it do IEEE-754 compliant floating-point
operations, but it is possible. The default mode provides more
precision than double precision mode, and is better for a lot
of code. You only run into problems where you need exact IEEE
compliance.

Cheers,
Robert Komar Physics Dept., Univ. of British Columbia, Canada
(stationed at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory)
My mail address can be got from the following Unix command:
echo 'robkviaphysicsZubcZca' | tr 'Z' '.' | sed 's/via/@/'

[david]

Attapon Boonyapiwat wrote:
>
> Hello;

>
> I just curious about why people use Fortran on PC.
> Is it just because you can bring home programs to continue working?

> (I saw a mention that CPU on PC doesn't do well with double precision on
> Fortran.)
>

> I just want simple answer; No flame war amoung languages please.
>

> Thank you
> Att

I have found no problem with double precision. quad precision is not yet
available on pc's unless you use a free package like Alan Millers.

I use DVF with a 200MHZ pentium and am very satisfied with it. I have
also used Sun's, and prefer their development enviornment for "big"
projects.

But look at the price of a pc and associated tools like DVF,Visual
C++,etc. You can almost buy a PC with what a workstation license costs.

It is cheaper and easier to develop on a PC. Workstations are still best
for big programs, but considering the cost of the hardware, they should
be.

my 2 cents

[Jacek Pliszka]

On Tue, 26 May 1998, Attapon Boonyapiwat wrote:

> Hello;
>
> I just curious about why people use Fortran on PC.
> Is it just because you can bring home programs to continue working?

Exactly. I have Linux + fort77 at home on my notebook and I use
exactly the same at my department. Also I can compile
and test at home and then send binary version or sources
to the department to run at faster machines (Linux, Solaris)
through night.

Regards,

Jacek Pliszka

Tmp: pli...@bethe.ucdavis.edu Perm: pli...@fuw.edu.pl

[Kitti]

I think it depends on the convenience and application. Now I run DVF5 on
PC most of time. I 'd like to create the application on Window 95.

Kitti

[DaveGemini]

To get the correct answers,
see subject: " Intel FPU vs. workstaton FPUs "

Dave