The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Authors: Katherine Rasmussen (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)), Chris Maynard (Met Office), Ilene Carpenter (Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)), Thomas Schwinge (BayLibre), Michael Klemm (Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) GmbH, OpenMP ARB), Damian Rouson (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL))
Abstract: Fortran plays a crucial role in numerous applications. This BoF provides a forum for Fortran developers to engage with the language's modern programming features. With features introduced in recent language revisions, Fortran 2023 supports modern programming practices and high performance computing (HPC). This BoF gathers developers from diverse domains to share experiences and explore Fortran's evolving capabilities. After some brief presentations, the session will focus on an interactive discussion where audience members will be encouraged to share their own experiences and ask questions of our experts.
Long Description: Fortran has evolved into a modern language supporting multiple programming paradigms, including array programming, object-oriented programming, and parallel programming, including GPU programming via explicitly concurrent loop iterations. Fortran also includes a large feature set supporting interoperability with the C programming language. The Applications, Libraries, & Tools in Modern Fortran (alt.fortran) BoF aims to gather and build community around modern Fortran software development. alt.fortran will do so by gathering a panel of experts who have extensive experience and deep understanding of modern Fortran through various professional activities – ranging from service on the Fortran standard committee to supercomputer center user support and research software engineering – and who actively develop modern Fortran software or provide tools that support modern Fortran.
Fortran’s relevance to the intended HPC audience stems from its continued widespread use on HPC systems as exemplified, for example, in the “Compiled Languages used at NERSC” slide of the 2020 NERSC supercomputer center workload analysis (https://doi.org/10.25344/S4N30W) in the U.S. and contemporaneous data for the Archer supercomputer in the United Kingdom (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-021-03839-9). Additionally, NERSC tutorials in 2023 and 2024 with topics related to modern Fortran have elicited hundreds of attendees, and an OLCF User Conference Call discussing the features of Fortran 2023 was attended by about 100 participants. These examples highlight the continued interest of the HPC community in Fortran.
This alt.fortran BoF was successfully held at SC23 and SC24 and each time it elicited approximately 50 attendees. There was a vibrant discussion involving audience members and we received positive feedback after its conclusion.
By hosting experts from a variety of domains – including deep learning, applied mathematics, atmospheric modeling, software testing, compilers, and programming environments and models – and fostering open discussion with the broader Fortran community, one expected outcome is to discover common experiences from one domain that might influence the state of the practice in another. For example, success stories with less-frequently used features in one domain might encourage other domains to evaluate and employ the same features. Alternatively, war stories from attempting to use a given feature set might either provide useful tips for workarounds or might encourage compiler developers to provide more robust support for the features. Additionally, taking the pulse of the Fortran and HPC ecosystem through discussions with the audience can lead to influencing which features are proposed during future meetings of the Fortran standard committee.