[Simh] Crowther's Adventure game

[Dan Gahlinger]

yeah the linux version of trek7 is compiled with the Intel compiler



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com>
Date: 2/5/18 5:33 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: Kenneth Seefried <kjseefried at gmail.com>
Cc: SIMH <simh at trailing-edge.com>
Subject: Re: [Simh] Crowther's Adventure game

Again speaking for myself ... not Intel...

On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 4:27 PM, Kenneth Seefried <kjseefried at gmail.com<mailto:kjseefried at gmail.com>> wrote:

Have you looked at the Intel Fortran compiler (https://software.intel.com/en-us/fortran-compilers)?  Intel/AMD-only, of course.  Supports Fortran-IV/77 through at least FTN2003 with 2008 bits, plus a bunch of SIMD & multicore stuff (SEE, AVX, Phi esp).  Free-ish download for Linux (non-commercial use license, mostly).  No idea how good it would do on this particular application, but it did a pretty good job on some crufty old code when I tried it.


​Indeed and it has the added advantage of 'having the DEC compiler DNA ground up and injected back in' to quote a retired Intel Fellow (Rich Grove - who had lead the Gem compiler at DEC).  A number of the same people are still developing it (i.e. those that have not yet retired).

It is the most popular of the Fortran compilers for the HPC community and the commercial ISV's that still have code in Fortran.  There is great care to try to ensure old code from old systems 'just work' as well as bring in modern Fortran features.  i.e. FORTRAN IV (such as Adventure), FORTRAN77 and VAX Fortran code should pretty much just work (I can say the last time I tried to recompile adven.f with it - which was FORTRAN IV,  a few years ago it recompiled and worked with out any changes).  I have personally put VAX Fortran code through it with much success before I worked for Intel (when I was an independent consultant).  I have been told by people that I trust about a number of customers/ISVs that continue to do this regularly.

I do not know how much success FORTRAN-II code has had, but I did help an old friend from IBM (one of the ASC and 360/90 designers) a few years back, so at one point, something worked; although I have not idea how much he had to hack his code to make ti work.

It also is modern compiler conforming to Fortran 2003, 2008, and the initial draft Fortran 2015 standard - including features such a Cray's Co-Arrays, parallel code generation et al.  I have not looked at the 'SPD' nor personally tied it, but I believe it will also fully conform to the FORTRAN90 and FORTRAN95.   Modern Fortran BTW, is from a syntax stand point, nothing like what I was taught in the late 60s/early 70s.

Kenneth points out for noncommercial Linux use, it is available at no charge (and it is the same bits that people pay large sums).   That download is the same compiler as that for MacOS and Windows and uses a common back-end/optimizer as that if Intel C/C++ (i.e. nothing has been disabled).

I have personally brought up a plead for years  to make it available for non-commercial use on any platform (actually, I >>personally<< believe it should be free no matter what but that's a different story -- I understand the reasons why it is not, I personally do not agree with them, but I'm an OS guy not a compiler person - I used to kid Dr. Gove with the line:  "Rich are their more developers of your compiler or developers that use your compiler" - which was not fair, but a fun thing to do).

The point is that Intel takes Fortran seriously, since the codes that come out of the compiler sells real silicon,  which of course is what Intel fundamentally does - sell expensive, hot rocks to run real codes.

That all said, there is also gfortran (the GNU compiler) and translators such as NetLIB's f2c.   Although, I do not know of anyone that uses truly use  either for real work.  I know people that test with gfortran and check things out; but all the serious Fortran types in the HPC world that I am familar use either Intel, Cray or PGC compilers or some mix.   Many sites have more than one compiler.
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