XL Fortran Advanced Edition for Blue Gene

XL Fortran offers optimization and performance-tuning features to exploit all PowerPC systems. The -qarch and -qtune compiler options further tune generated application code to fully exploit the performance capabilities of the PowerPC 440d processor and its Double Hummer floating-point unit used in Blue Gene/L systems, and the PowerPC 450d processor and its Double Hummer floating-point unit used in Blue Gene/P systems. In addition, both compilers provide a versatile set of intrinsic functions capable of manipulating complex data types, and you can include calls to these intrinsic functions in your program code to further exploit the capabilities of the PowerPC 440, 440d, 450, and 450d processors.

XL Fortran implements a number of language features compliant to the Fortran 2003 Standard, including but not limited to:

• ENUM statement

• READ statement - new BLANK and PAD specifiers

• WRITE statement - new DELIM specifier

• Relaxed rules for specification expression

• Support for procedure pointers

XL Fortran provides additional scalar and vector functions as part of the Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem (MASS). MASS consists of libraries of tuned mathematical intrinsic functions that offer improved performance over the standard mathematical library routines.

XL Fortran also includes the Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) set of high-performance algebraic functions. You can use these functions to perform combined matrix multiplication and addition on general matrices or their transposes.