Fortran Specialist Group AGM 2008 Agenda

Peter will speak about multi-core processors, looking at the broader, and perhaps longer-term, issues in relation to programming them in any language, not just Fortran.
He is a Partner at Concertant LLP, who are a specialist consultancy in multi-core processing, and is also a member of the BCS Parallel Processing SG.
He was Chief Executive of OneEighty Software, Visiting Professor of Computer Science at KCL, Honorary Senior Fellow in Dept of Computer Science at QMW, Director of the London Parallel Applications Centre (LPAC) and a founder of Parallel Computing hardware manufacturer Parsys.
He started in scientific computing in the mid-70s having built his first hardware in 1970. He has worked in areas from Solid State Physics to Markets Analysis, via oceanography and geophysical data analysis. He has been involved in parallel systems since the mid-80s. His principal interests lie in all applications of parallel computing on multi-cores, particularly the solution of physical problems.

John will summarize the new features of the draft Fortran 2008 standard (ISO/IEC 2008). He will take as his starting point Fortran 2003 (ISO/IEC 2003).
An official extension for enhanced module facilities has been published as a Type 2 Technical Report (ISO/IEC 2005) and WG5 is committed to include this in Fortran 2008.
The major proposed extension consists of coarrays for parallel computing.

Here is David's summary of the afternoon's discussions

The Committee Draft of the proposed revised Fortran standard (Fortran 2008) has been available for public comment since late March. The document is available as a 7.8Mb PDF file and is also available from the J3 website.

Formal balloting is via the member bodies of ISO. FSG members in the UK have already been invited to contribute to the BSI vote by sending comments to the BSI Fortran convenor and this is an opportunity for comments to be made in person.

If you are unable to attend this meeting material for the UK ballot should be sent as soon as possible and should arrive no later than Sunday 13 July 2008. Contributors are welcome to comment more than once; it is preferable for the BSI Fortran panel to receive a number of small messages throughout the comment period than to receive a few large messages at the end of it. Please use plain ascii rather than formatted text. Suggestions for changes must include proposed replacement text.

Members outside the UK should submit comments through their own standards body. A full list of JTC1/SC22 members is available on the ISO website.