OpenMP and P4 Optimizations

[michael-a-carr]

I was wondering when Compaq Visual Fortran will support Pentium 4 or Itanium optimizations as described in this document: http://developer.intel.com/software/products/compilers/linux/opt_convert_linux.pdf

There are a few Pentium 4 optimizations in particular that I could take advantage of: vectorization, hardware prefetch, and the longer command pipeline. As far as Itanium, will Compaq Fortran support it soon? We are expecting to get a new Itanium server in house and I'd like to stick with Compaq Fortran if possible.

Secondly, now that Intel's Fortran compiler supports OpenMP multiprocessing out of the box, is Compaq going to follow suit and incorporate OpenMP into its compiler as well? Again, I'd rather stick with Compaq but built-in OpenMP support is a capability I really need. I've tried the OpenMP preprocessors out there, but they just don't cut it, especially in terms of integration into the IDE.

Thanks!

[Steven_L_Intel1]

P4 hardware prefetch and the longer pipeline you have today - those are CPU features not affected by the compiler. With CVF 6.5 and the P4, we recommend the Pentium II/Pro settings for best performance - an update coming in August will add a specific mode for the best P4 performance. We believe that CVF stacks up very well against the Intel compiler on P4.

Regarding Itanium - we are in beta test with a compiler now and will make it a public beta later this year. We expect to continue in beta through the end of the year. Given that MS has not committed to delivering Visual Studio on Itanium, it is unclear at this time how we'll proceed from there.

As for OpenMP in the compiler - not anytime soon. There are a variety of parallelization options, including Dan Nagle's free Fthreads package as described in our newsletter 7.

Steve