HPF 2.0

Tutors

John Merlin, Barbara Chapman (VCPC) Cecile Germain (Paris-Sud)

Summary

High Performance Fortran (HPF) is an informal standard for extensions to Fortran to assist its implementation on parallel architectures, particularly for data-parallel computation. Among other things, it includes directives for expressing data distribution across multiple memories, extra facilities for expressing data parallel and concurrent execution, and a mechanism for interfacing HPF to other languages and programming models.

This tutorial will provide a comprehensive introduction to HPF 2.0, the latest version of the HPF standard which was published in early 1997. It will also cover some Fortran 90 and Fortran 95 features that are important for HPF, such as array syntax, explicit interfaces, FORALL and pure procedures. It will also outline the history of the HPF language development and give pointers to information on HPF compilers, tools and projects.

Tutor information

Barbara Chapman is Director of the Vienna Centre for Parallel Computation (VCPC), a centre for technology transfer in parallel and distributed computing. She joined the staff of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bonn, Germany in 1985, teaching courses in compiler construction, parallel systems and programming parallel computers. In 1991 she moved to the Computer Science Department of the University of Vienna , continuing her research into Fortran language extensions for distributed-memory multiprocessing systems and restructuring of Fortran programs. She was one of the main architects of Vienna Fortran, a Fortran language extension for parallel systems, and a predecessor of HPF. In 1995, she became responsible for the creation of the VCPC, which she has directed ever since. The VCPC was involved in several HPF-related projects, including PHAROS, in which several industrial codes were ported to HPF. Ms. Chapman is currently reponsible for the international HPF Users Group organisation HUG, which was created by the HPF Forum to encourage take-up of this technology.

Dr John Merlin is a research fellow at the VCPC. He obtained his D.Phil in Theoretical physics from Oxford University in 1986, and was a research fellow and senior research fellow in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University from 1986 - 1996. He was active in the development of the High Performance Fortran (HPF) language as a member of the HPF Forum, and was co-developer of a public domain HPF compilation system, SHPF. His current research interests are in integrating HPF with other programming models, HPF compilation, and developing tools for high perfomance computing.

Dr Cecile Germain is an assistant professor at Paris-Sud University and a member of Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique (LRI). She obtained a PhD in Computer Science in 1989. Her work in HPF compilers focused on code generation for regular and irregular applications. She has contributed to the Adaptor compilation system from GMD. Her current research interests are HPF compilation, experiments on large irregular numerical applications and interfacing HPF and Java.