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

[Adve, Vikram Sadanand via llvm-dev]

This is a very important development for the use of LLVM in the HPC world.  I have heard from numerous people who say Fortran is alive and well for a wide range of libraries and applications, and they would love to see a modern LLVM-based Fortran implementation made available in open source form to the community.  I cannot think of a better group to build one than the people at PGI.  Fingers crossed that this comes to fruition and continues to be maintained over the years.

--Vikram

// Vikram S. Adve
// Professor, Department of Computer Science
// University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
// vadve at illinois.edu
// http://llvm.org <http://llvm.org/>
//
// "A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. 
// An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it."
// —Albert Einstein (remark to Hermann F. Mark)







On 11/13/15, 4:47 PM, "llvm-dev on behalf of via llvm-dev" <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org on behalf of llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

>Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:22:00 -0600
>From: Hal Finkel via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
>To: LLVM Dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "flang-dev "
>	<flang-dev at googlegroups.com>
>Cc: Rob Neely <neely4 at llnl.gov>, "douglas miles \(PGI\)"
>	<douglas.miles at pgroup.com>
>Subject: [llvm-dev] Adapting and open-sourcing PGI's Fortran frontend
>	for	LLVM
>Message-ID:
>	<28947050.754.1447453317969.JavaMail.javamailuser at localhost>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>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
>