[llvm-dev] Adapting and open-sourcing PGI's Fortran frontend for LLVM

[Hal Finkel via llvm-dev]

Hi everyone,

I have some very good news for everyone interested a production-quality Fortran frontend for LLVM:

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and its three national labs have reached an agreement with NVIDIA's PGI division to adapt and open-source PGI's Fortran frontend, and associated Fortran runtime library, for contribution to the LLVM project. PGI is now working on isolating the necessary frontend components from their existing compiler code base and adapting those components to produce LLVM IR for consumption by our existing infrastructure.

We're expecting an initial source-code release from PGI by late 2016, and while that's still far away, PGI's developers will be working closely with the community to coordinate development efforts by others interested in Fortran support (e.g. on ABI support code for other platforms). Even before source code is available, PGI is going to keep the community updated on their progress. After source code is released, PGI will continue development work in coordination with the community to implement additional Fortran and OpenMP features not currently supported by PGI Fortran. The frontend will use LLVM's infrastructure for regression testing, and PGI will be developing regression tests for these new features in accordance with our existing practice.

I realize this is somewhat unconventional, but I'm confident that this approach will allow the LLVM community to capture the considerable Fortran expertise of PGI's team and provide our project with a production-quality LLVM frontend in a relatively short amount of time.

For the official announcement, please see:

https://www.llnl.gov/news/nnsa-national-labs-team-nvidia-develop-open-source-fortran-compiler-technology

 -Hal

-- 
Hal Finkel
Assistant Computational Scientist
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory