Cedar Fortran and other vector and parallel Fortran dialects

The introduction of vector processors and multiprocessors has caused the most dramatic changes in Fortran and its dialects. The emerging generation of supercomputers utilizes both vector processing and multiprocessing. The challenge is to provide language constructs and software tools that will allow the programmer to easily exploit the capabilities of the machine. This paper outlines the development of vector and multiprocessor language constructs in Fortran. Significant architectures, their languages, and optimizers are described. The paper concludes with a description of Cedar Fortran, the language for the Cedar Multiprocessor under development at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Cedar is a hierarchical, shared-memory, vector multiprocessor. As such, its language, Cedar Fortran, contains many of the language features that are described for vector processors and multiprocessors.