我不时地读到Fortran在繁重的计算中比C更快。这是真的吗?我必须承认我几乎不懂Fortran,但是到目前为止我看到的Fortran代码并没有显示出该语言具有C语言所不具备的特性。

如果是真的,请告诉我原因。请不要告诉我什么语言或库适合处理数字,我不打算写一个应用程序或库来做这个,我只是好奇。


当前回答

Fortran traditionally doesn't set options such as -fp:strict (which ifort requires to enable some of the features in USE IEEE_arithmetic, a part of f2003 standard). Intel C++ also doesn't set -fp:strict as a default, but that is required for ERRNO handling, for example, and other C++ compilers don't make it convenient to turn off ERRNO or gain optimizations such as simd reduction. gcc and g++ have required me to set up Makefile to avoid using the dangerous combination -O3 -ffast-math -fopenmp -march=native. Other than these issues, this question about relative performance gets more nit-picky and dependent on local rules about choice of compilers and options.

其他回答

The faster code is not really up to the language, is the compiler so you can see the ms-vb "compiler" that generates bloated, slower and redundant object code that is tied together inside an ".exe", but powerBasic generates too way better code. Object code made by a C and C++ compilers is generated in some phases (at least 2) but by design most Fortran compilers have at least 5 phases including high-level optimizations so by design Fortran will always have the capability to generate highly optimized code. So at the end is the compiler not the language you should ask for, the best compiler i know is the Intel Fortran Compiler because you can get it on LINUX and Windows and you can use VS as the IDE, if you're looking for a cheap tigh compiler you can always relay on OpenWatcom.

更多信息: http://ed-thelen.org/1401Project/1401-IBM-Systems-Journal-FORTRAN.html

Fortran和C语言在特定目的上并没有哪一种语言比另一种更快。对于每种语言的特定编译器,有些编译器比其他编译器更适合某些任务。

多年来,Fortran编译器一直存在,它可以对你的数字例程施黑魔法,使许多重要的计算变得异常快速。当代的C编译器无法做到这一点。因此,在Fortran中出现了许多伟大的代码库。如果您想要使用这些经过良好测试的、成熟的、出色的库,就需要使用Fortran编译器。

我的非正式观察表明,如今人们用任何古老的语言来编码他们繁重的计算内容,如果这需要一段时间,他们就会在一些廉价的计算集群上找到时间。摩尔定律让我们所有人都成了傻瓜。

大多数帖子已经提出了令人信服的论点,所以我只是在另一个方面加上众所周知的2美分。

在处理能力方面,fortran更快或更慢是有其重要性的,但如果用fortran开发一些东西需要5倍多的时间,因为:

it lacks any good library for tasks different from pure number crunching it lack any decent tool for documentation and unit testing it's a language with very low expressivity, skyrocketing the number of lines of code. it has a very poor handling of strings it has an inane amount of issues among different compilers and architectures driving you crazy. it has a very poor IO strategy (READ/WRITE of sequential files. Yes, random access files exist but did you ever see them used?) it does not encourage good development practices, modularization. effective lack of a fully standard, fully compliant opensource compiler (both gfortran and g95 do not support everything) very poor interoperability with C (mangling: one underscore, two underscores, no underscore, in general one underscore but two if there's another underscore. and just let not delve into COMMON blocks...)

那么这个问题就无关紧要了。如果某样东西很慢,大多数时候你无法在给定的限制范围内改进它。如果你想要更快,改变算法。最后,使用电脑的时间很便宜。人类的时间不是。珍惜减少人类时间的选择。如果它增加了使用电脑的时间,无论如何它都是有成本效益的。

Fortran和C之间的速度差异更多的是编译器优化和特定编译器使用的底层数学库的函数。Fortran没有什么固有的特性可以使它比C更快。

不管怎样,一个优秀的程序员可以用任何语言编写Fortran。

在某种程度上,Fortran在设计时就考虑到了编译器优化。该语言支持整个数组操作,编译器可以利用并行性(特别是在多核处理器上)。例如,

密集矩阵乘法很简单:

matmul(a,b)

向量x的L2范数为:

sqrt(sum(x**2))

此外,FORALL、PURE和ELEMENTAL程序等语句进一步有助于优化代码。由于这个简单的原因,即使是Fortran中的指针也不如C语言灵活。

即将发布的Fortran标准(2008)具有协同数组,允许您轻松地编写并行代码。G95(开源)和来自CRAY的编译器已经支持它。

所以是的,Fortran可以很快,因为编译器可以比C/ c++更好地优化/并行化。但是就像生活中的其他事情一样,有好的编译器和坏的编译器。