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

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

其他回答

一般来说,FORTRAN比C慢。C可以使用硬件级指针,允许程序员手动优化。FORTRAN(在大多数情况下)不能访问硬件内存寻址黑客。(VAX FORTRAN是另一回事。)我从70年代开始断断续续地使用FORTRAN。(真的)。

然而,从90年代开始,FORTRAN已经发展到包括特定的语言结构,可以优化成内在的并行算法,真正可以在多核处理器上运行。例如,自动矢量化允许多个处理器同时处理数据向量中的每个元素。16个处理器——16个元素向量——处理需要1/16的时间。

在C语言中,您必须管理自己的线程并为多处理仔细设计算法,然后使用一堆API调用来确保并行性正确发生。

在FORTRAN中,您只需要为多处理仔细设计算法。编译器和运行时可以为您处理其余的工作。

您可以阅读一些关于高性能Fortran的内容,但是您会发现许多死链接。你最好阅读并行编程(比如OpenMP.org)以及FORTRAN如何支持并行编程。

有趣的是,这里的很多答案都来自于不懂语言。这对于那些打开过旧的FORTRAN 77代码并讨论过其弱点的C/ c++程序员来说尤其如此。

我认为速度问题主要是C/ c++和Fortran之间的问题。在大型代码中,它总是取决于程序员。有一些语言特性是Fortran优于的,而一些特性是C优于的。所以,在2011年,没有人能真正说出哪一个更快。

About the language itself, Fortran nowadays supports Full OOP features and it is fully backward compatible. I have used the Fortran 2003 thoroughly and I would say it was just delightful to use it. In some aspects, Fortran 2003 is still behind C++ but let's look at the usage. Fortran is mostly used for Numerical Computation, and nobody uses fancy C++ OOP features because of speed reasons. In high performance computing, C++ has almost no place to go(have a look at the MPI standard and you'll see that C++ has been deprecated!).

现在,您可以简单地使用Fortran和C/ c++进行混合语言编程。Fortran中甚至有GTK+的接口。有免费的编译器(gfortran, g95)和许多优秀的商业编译器。

我是一个业余程序员,在这两种语言上我都是“平均”。 我发现编写快速Fortran代码比编写C(或c++)代码更容易。Fortran和C都是“历史悠久”的语言(按照今天的标准),被大量使用,并且很好地支持免费和商业编译器。

我不知道这是否是一个历史事实,但Fortran感觉它是为并行/分布式/向量化/多核化而构建的。今天,当我们谈论速度时,它几乎是“标准度量”:“它能缩放吗?”

对于纯粹的cpu计算,我喜欢Fortran。对于任何与IO相关的东西,我发现使用c更容易(无论如何这两种情况都很困难)。

当然,对于并行计算密集型代码,你可能需要使用GPU。C和Fortran都有很多或多或少很好地集成了CUDA/OpenCL接口(现在还有OpenACC)。

我比较客观的回答是:如果你对这两种语言都同样了解或不了解,那么我认为Fortran更快,因为我发现用Fortran写并行/分布式代码比用c更容易(一旦你明白你可以写“自由形式”Fortran,而不仅仅是严格的F77代码)

Here is a 2nd answer for those willing to downvote me because they don't like the 1st answer : Both language have the features required to write high-performance code. So it's dependent of the algorithm you're implementing (cpu intensive ? io intensive ? memory intensive?), the hardware (single cpu ? multi-core ? distribute supercomputer ? GPGPU ? FPGA ?), your skill and ultimately the compiler itself. Both C and Fortran have awesome compiler. (i'm seriously amazed by how advanced Fortran compilers are but so are C compilers).

PS:我很高兴你特别排除了库,因为我有很多关于Fortran GUI库的不好的东西要说。:)

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。

是的,在1980年;在2008年?取决于

当我开始专业编程时,Fortran的速度优势正受到挑战。我记得我在Dr. Dobbs上读到过这篇文章,并把这篇文章告诉了年长的程序员——他们都笑了。

所以我对此有两种观点,理论上的和实际的。从理论上讲,今天的Fortran与C/ c++甚至任何允许汇编代码的语言相比,并没有内在的优势。在实践中,今天的Fortran仍然享有围绕优化数值代码而建立的历史和文化遗产的好处。

Up until and including Fortran 77, language design considerations had optimization as a main focus. Due to the state of compiler theory and technology, this often meant restricting features and capability in order to give the compiler the best shot at optimizing the code. A good analogy is to think of Fortran 77 as a professional race car that sacrifices features for speed. These days compilers have gotten better across all languages and features for programmer productivity are more valued. However, there are still places where the people are mainly concerned with speed in scientific computing; these people most likely have inherited code, training and culture from people who themselves were Fortran programmers.

当人们开始谈论代码优化时,会有很多问题,了解这一点的最好方法是潜伏在那些工作是快速编写数字代码的人身上。但是请记住,这种高度敏感的代码通常只占整个代码行的一小部分,而且非常专门:许多Fortran代码就像其他语言中的许多其他代码一样“低效”,优化甚至不应该是此类代码的主要关注点。

要开始了解Fortran的历史和文化,维基百科是一个很好的地方。Fortran维基百科的条目是一流的,我非常感谢那些花时间和精力使它对Fortran社区有价值的人。

(这个答案的缩短版本本可以在Nils开始的优秀帖子中发表评论,但我没有这样做的业力。实际上,如果不是因为这个帖子有实际的信息内容和分享,而不是激烈的争吵和语言偏见,我可能根本不会写任何东西,这是我对这个主题的主要经验。我不知所措,不得不分享这份爱。)