The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Authors: Katherine Rasmussen (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)), Damian Rouson (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)), Brad Richardson (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL); Archaeologic, Inc.), Thomas Clune (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Jeff Larkin (NVIDIA Corporation), Ondřej Čertík (GSI Technology), Milan Curcic (University of Miami, Cloudrun Inc.), Ronald Caplan (Predictive Science Inc.)
Abstract: This BoF provides a forum for Fortran developers to engage with its modern programming features. Fortran continues to play a crucial role in numerous legacy applications, but with features introduced in recent standards, the language also supports modern programming practices and high-performance computing. As Fortran 2023 approaches, this BoF brings together developers from various domains to share experiences and explore the language's evolving capabilities. After some brief panelist presentations, the session will focus on an interactive discussion where audience members will be encouraged to share their own experiences and ask questions of our panelists.
Long Description: Through successive revisions, Fortran has evolved into a modern language supporting multiple programming paradigms, including parallel, array, and object-oriented programming, C-interoperability, and concurrent iterations suitable for automatic GPU-offloading by compilers. The Applications, Libraries, & Tools in Modern Fortran (alt.fortran) BoF aims to gather and build community around Modern Fortran software development. Alt.Fortran will do so by gathering a panel of experts who have extensive experience and deep understanding of Modern Fortran through various professional activities – ranging from service on the Fortran standard committee to supercomputer center user support and research software engineering – and who actively develop Modern Fortran software.
Fortran’s relevance to the intended HPC audience stems from its continued widespread use on HPC systems as exemplified, for example, in the “Compiled Languages used at NERSC” slide of the 2020 NERSC supercomputer center workload analysis (https://doi.org/10.25344/S4N30W) in the U.S. and contemporaneous data for the Archer supercomputer in the United Kingdom (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-021-03839-9). Additionally, a recent NERSC tutorial called "Modern Fortran" elicited more than 200 attendees, highlighting the continued interest of the HPC community in Fortran.
A previous presentation at SC14 focused on the Fortran programming language itself, including a preview of the Fortran 2018 standard presented by the standard committee convener. It was attended by about 70-80 people and the presentation also solicited audience feedback about desirable future language features. The currently proposed BoF differs in its focus on software development in Fortran rather than on the language itself.
By hosting panelists from a variety of domains – including oceanic and atmospheric sciences, software testing, development tools, and compilers – and fostering open discussion with the broader Fortran community, one expected outcome is to discover common experiences from one domain that might influence the state of the practice in another. For example, success stories with less-frequently used features in one domain might encourage other domains to evaluate and employ the same features. Alternatively, war stories from attempting to use a given feature set might either provide useful tips for workarounds or might encourage compiler developers to provide more robust support for the features.
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