Absoft Corporation has announced immediate availability of its new high performance Pro Fortran tool kit version 9.0 for Macintosh OS X. Absoft’s Pro Fortran Compiler Suite is the most complete Macintosh Fortran tool kit available from any vendor and includes: Fortran 95 and C/C++ compilers, a powerful Integrated Development Environment, the market-leading Fx2™ Debugger, and free graphics libraries.
Absoft Announces Pro Fortran Compiler Suite 9.0 for Macintosh OS X
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Does anyone know how their C/C++ compilers perform relative to compilers like GCC and Intel C++?
Once for my research group we had some spare money and we bought version 7.5 of the product. We were acknowledged a special price for universities. We paid 1200$ (including IMSL)… what a special price!!!
Then shortly after version 8.0 came out and these guy were so kind to offer us a special upgrade price for universities… again 1200$!!!
I think that this product is extremely overpriced. Take in consideration than you can buy a cheapo white box, install linux and get the intel compiler for free. Which by the way is known to be one of the best performers around…
In response to PK: it _doesn’t_ compare to the Intel C Compiler, as last time I checked, ICC did not compile for PowerPC, nor did OS X run on intel. (Flame prevention: Darwin != OS X)
PRO Fortran $899 USD
XL Fortran $999 USD
XL C/C++ $499 USD
It’s funny but the XL products are IBM’s compilers. The PRO is ABSOFT’s own product. They sale both from their website.
I know that the XL C/C++ compiler does a much better job then GCC. I have no idea how Absoft’s Fortran compiler compares to IBM’s compiler; but for an extra $100 it might be safer to go with IBM’s. However, the PRO lists Fortran 2003 extentions and XL is only Fortran 95.
XL has some Fortran2000 features.
AFAIK, not all Fortran 2000 standards are finalized yet…
With the release of this compiler suite we see truly see the Lintel world beaten hands down. While Intel grasps at straws trying to add EM64T technology to their 32-bit compiler for their ugly heterosexual utilitarian processor, Absoft has released the decades mature 64-bit IBM XL Fortran compiler. On Opteron there are few good Fortran compiler to pick from, PathScale being the best but hindered by the Opteron’s lack of good vector units. Intel has finally caught up to AltiVec with Nocona, but unfortunately a lack of good compilers and 64-bit support will doom it to failure. We’ll soon see scientists around the world getting gay with Xserve cluster nodes, which can be purchased much more inexpensively than their Nocona counterparts from Dell, and instead embracing the style and groovyness of a brushed steel Xserve. The pathetic hetero Dell PowerEdge 1850 server is dogged by the pathetic Intel Tumwater chipset, while the Xserve flies in its HyperTransport glory. Hats off to Apple, they are truly
deserving of praise and worship.
I haven’t seen anything on the Apple website about whether they included the GNU Fortran compiler. When I was taking a survey of programming languages class last semester, it would have been nice to have at least the Ada compiler included on OSX.
Btw, I compiled a list of new features in Tiger (10.4) here: http://www.blindmindseye.com/archives/000427.php
It’s nothing you can’t find on the Apple site, but all in one convenient location for those who want just a quick list.
AFAIK it is not included, although adding it is trivial. The problem is that it is Fortran 77 :-(. Although gcc 3.5 is supposed to have Fortran 95, it will be in beta stage, so I would not run my codes with it. Also at the time of primetime for g95 the new standard will be out :-(, so again behind.
Regarding the comment “Absoft has released the decades mature 64-bit IBM XL Fortran compiler…” from the comment before, has somebody figured out if it is really 64 bits? Looking at the webpages of Absoft and IBM nothing is said, except that IBM says that on AIX and Linux (PowerPC) you have 64 bit address space, but no claim about Mac OS X. Are they doing that to avoid loose market for their Power4 platform?
So it looks like Absoft’s compiler is the only one delivering 64 bits on the G5.
You can always get the Fortran compiler from http://hpc.sourceforge.net/
I use Absoft Pro Fortran 8.0 for Windows at work every day (sadly). Our company switched us off
HP-UX to the PC for Fortran work. Previously on Windows I had used Compaq/DEC Visual Fortran,
which was a rock-solid compiler with a good IDE (Visual Studio). Absoft, on the other hand, is
perhaps one of the sloppiest IDEs on Windows, at least. Completely filled with bugs. The
debugger, which they apparently never used to debug their own compiler, works worse than their IDE.
I actually get compiler, (not IDE, compiler) crashes orccasionally from the Absoft compiler. The
C/C++ compilers they ship on the PC version of Absoft Pro Fortran come without an ounce of
documentation; they appear to be nothing more than an extra undocumented feature.
As for numerical accuracy, I’ve seen problems with Absoft before. I’ve seen the Mac version of
Absoft give different results by up to 25% than the old DEC compiler, which I tend to trust a hell
of a lot more.
I would never suggest an Absoft product to anyone. There are far better Fortran compilers out
there, even though they might cost a bit more.