Fortran
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| Fortran | |
|---|---|
| Name | Fortran |
| Designer | John Backus |
| Developer | IBM |
| First appeared | 1957 |
| Paradigm | Procedural, imperative, array |
| Typing | Static, strong |
| Influences | ALGOL, FLOW-MATIC, Lisp, Assembly language |
| Influenced | C, C++, MATLAB, R, Julia, Python |
Fortran Fortran is a high-level, compiled programming language created for numeric computation and scientific computing. It was developed to improve productivity for researchers at IBM and to replace assembly language in projects at institutions such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Fortran has shaped supercomputing work at centers like Cray Research, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and National Center for Atmospheric Research and influenced languages such as C, C++, MATLAB, R, and Julia.
History
The language originated with a team led by John Backus at IBM in the 1950s, targeting scientific projects like those at Los Alamos National Laboratory and industrial clients including General Electric. Early adopters included researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and engineers at Bell Labs. Successive milestones involved implementations and extensions by organizations such as Honeywell, CDC (Control Data Corporation), and Cray Research. Major events in its evolution intersect with computing advances at UNIVAC, IBM 704, and the rise of supercomputing centers like National Center for Atmospheric Research and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Standards work involved international bodies such as International Organization for Standardization and national committees linked to American National Standards Institute.
Design and Features
Language design choices reflect goals prioritized by Backus and IBM, balancing performance on architectures like IBM 704 and CDC 6600 with readable source for scientists at Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Key features include array arithmetic used by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and intrinsic procedures inspired by mathematical libraries from National Bureau of Standards collaborators. The type system and control constructs were designed to map efficiently to hardware used by companies such as Cray Research and IBM while supporting numeric libraries developed at National Center for Atmospheric Research and NASA Ames Research Center. Support for parallelism, vectorization, and optimization dovetails with runtime systems produced by vendors like Intel and NVIDIA.
Standardization and Versions
Standardization efforts were coordinated through committees and organizations including American National Standards Institute, International Organization for Standardization, and national delegations involving firms such as IBM, Intel, Cray Research, and research labs like Los Alamos National Laboratory. Significant versions emerged in concert with academic work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and industrial contributions from Honeywell and Burroughs Corporation. Standards influenced numerical libraries produced by institutions such as National Institute of Standards and Technology and Argonne National Laboratory. Evolving standards addressed needs from climate modeling at National Center for Atmospheric Research to computational fluid dynamics used by NASA and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
Compiler Implementations and Tools
Compiler development came from corporate and academic groups at IBM, Intel, GNU Project, Cray Research, and Microsoft Research collaborations. Open-source implementations were advanced by projects associated with organizations such as the Free Software Foundation and universities like University of California, Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vendor toolchains integrated performance features tuned for processors by Intel, AMD, and accelerator vendors like NVIDIA and ARM Holdings. Debuggers, profilers, and IDE integrations were built by teams at Eclipse Foundation, JetBrains, and research groups at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Numerical libraries and runtime systems from Netlib, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory support optimized math kernels and interoperability with ecosystems from Python Software Foundation and R Consortium.
Usage and Applications
The language remains prevalent in domains maintained at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory such as weather forecasting for agencies like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and climate simulation at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. It underpins legacy and modern applications in computational chemistry at IBM Research, finite element analysis by companies such as ANSYS, and computational fluid dynamics used by NASA and aerospace firms like Boeing. Scientific software suites developed at National Center for Atmospheric Research, Netlib, and research groups at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University often provide key algorithms implemented in the language. High-performance computing centers at National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory run large codebases written in the language for simulations in physics, engineering, and Earth sciences.
Example Code and Language Syntax
A minimal illustrative program demonstrates numeric arrays and intrinsic procedures found in libraries from Netlib and algorithms popularized at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University: program example implicit none integer :: i, n real(kind=8), allocatable :: a(:) n = 10 allocate(a(n)) do i = 1, n a(i) = i**2 end do print *, "Sum:", sum(a) deallocate(a) end program example
This snippet reflects array handling used in computational projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory, memory management concerns addressed by compilers from Intel and IBM, and numerical idioms taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.