(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4023) Late in the day question

Bill Long longb
Thu Jun 25 10:03:26 EDT 2009



Andy Vaught wrote:
> yOn Wed, 24 Jun 2009, Robert Corbett wrote:
> 
>> Andy Vaught wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 dick.hendrickson at att.net wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> It's my belief that FORALL was a mistake. 


I think a lot of people share this belief. On the other hand, GPU chips 
are not conceptually that different from the CM-5. Maybe FORALL will be 
useful again.


>>
>> In my work at Sun, I have had to explain what FORALL does to many users.
>> A lot of them thought that FORALL was a parallel DO.
> 
>   I meant the requirement that it is a loop-like construct in which the
> body statements act as if all the iterations happen at the same time--
> each 'iteration' is independent of the others.  Simpler, in a sense, than
> a real loop.  The reality is that one set of dependencies was traded for
> another, with less than optimal results.
> 
>     Andy

I think this confusion is compounded by the fact that other languages 
use the "forall" keyword to mean loop iteration independence.

Cheers,
Bill



-- 
Bill Long                                   longb at cray.com
Fortran Technical Support    &              voice: 651-605-9024
Bioinformatics Software Development         fax:   651-605-9142
Cray Inc., 1340 Mendota Heights Rd., Mendota Heights, MN, 55120





More information about the J3 mailing list