Bob Numrich and I have now finalized our paper defining Co-Array
Fortran and it will be published in the next issue of Fortran Forum.
This is the abstract:
Co-Array Fortran, formerly known as F--, is a small extension of
Fortran 95 for parallel processing. A Co-Array Fortran program is
interpreted as if it were replicated a number of times and all copies
were executed asynchronously. Each copy has its own set of data objects
and is termed an image. The array syntax of Fortran 95 is extended
with additional trailing subscripts in square brackets to give a clear
and straightforward representation of any access to data that is spread
across images.
References without square brackets are to local data, so code that can
run independently is uncluttered. Only where there are square brackets,
or where there is a procedure call and the procedure contains square
brackets, is communication between images involved.
There are intrinsic procedures to synchronize images, return the number
of images, and return the index of the current image.
We introduce the extension; give examples to illustrate how clear,
powerful, and flexible it can be; and provide a technical definition.
Significal recent changes involve synchronization and I/O.
The paper is available as the report RAL-TR-1998-060,
by ftp from
matisa.cc.rl.ac.uk
in the file
pub/reports/nrRAL98060.ps.gz
Best wishes,
John Reid.
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