[Beowulf] A start in Parallel Programming?

[Greg Lindahl]

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 02:14:06PM -0500, Peter St. John wrote:

> I'd be optimistic for the process of translating F to C, followed by
> compiling the C, to be as effecient as the process of compiling C into
> assembler, followed by assmbling into executable.

I'm not optimistic. The process destroys info. It's not that Fortran
compilers are better at optimizing... most Fortran compilers are also
C compilers. It's that Fortran as a language is easier to optimize,
and Fortran programmers tend to write easier to optimize programs
(more arrays, less pointers.)

When you translate to C, automatic or not, you usually lose both
properties.

-- greg