The Fortran-P Translator: Towards Automatic Translation of Fortran 77 Programs for Massively Parallel Processors

Massively parallel processors (MPPs) hold the promise of extremely high performance that, if realized, could be used to study problems of unprecedented size and complexity. One of the primary stumbling blocks to this promise has been the lack of tools to translate application codes to MPP form. In this paper we show how applications codes written in a subset of Fortran 77 called Fortran-P can be translated to achieve good performance on several massively parallel machines. This subset can express codes that are self-similar, where the algorithm applied to the global data domain is also applied to each subdomain. We have found many codes that match the Fortran-P programming style and have converted them using our tools. We believe a selfsimilar coding style will accomplish what a vectorizable style has accomplished for vector machines by allowing the construction of robust, user-friendly, automatic translation systems that increase programmer productivity and generate fast, efficient code for MPPs. _ _____________ This work was supported in part by: Department of Energy Grant DOE DE-FG02-87ER25035, National Science Foundation Grants NSF CCR-9110261 and 9015696-CDA, Office of Naval Research Grant No. N00014-91-J-4013, U.S. Army Ballistics Research Lab contract no. DAAD05-92-P-4231, by contract no. DAAL02-89-C-0038 between the Army Research Office and the University of Minnesota for the Army High Performance Computing Research Center, and by support from the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS).