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| Related articles |
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| sequential binary parallelization at run-time wangli.one@gmail.com (Lauren) (2007-10-25) |
| Re: sequential binary parallelization at run-time gneuner2@comcast.net (George Neuner) (2007-10-27) |
| Unpopular parameter passing mechanisms and parallelisation (was Re: se al407@cam.ac.uk (Anton Lokhmotov) (2007-10-28) |
| Re: Unpopular parameter passing mechanisms and parallelisation (was Re gneuner2@comcast.net (George Neuner) (2007-10-30) |
| Re: Unpopular parameter passing mechanisms and parallelisation (was Re gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2007-10-30) |
| From: | glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> |
| Newsgroups: | comp.compilers |
| Date: | Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:24:45 -0800 |
| Organization: | Compilers Central |
| References: | 07-10-082 07-10-089 07-10-091 07-10-098 |
| Keywords: | design, Fortran |
| Posted-Date: | 31 Oct 2007 09:56:20 EDT |
George Neuner wrote:
> 28 Oct 2007 19:06:41 +0000, Anton Lokhmotov <al407@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
(snip)
>>As for imperative programming, another undeservedly abandoned
>>parameter passing semantics is call-by-value-result (CBVR). In CBVR,
>>writes to the caller's memory by the callee do not happen until the
>>callee returns but the callee keeps track of them.
:
> <snip examples>
Fortran still allows call-by-value-result.
I first knew it used for scalar variables (only) on the
OS/360 Fortran G and H compilers. (Probably E also.)
For S/360 it is more efficient in time and space to copy a
scalar to local memory, addressed by the same base register
as the other data, and copy back later. In most cases it
takes two instructions to reference a variable through its
address. (One to load the address into a register, the
second to load or store as appropriate). For arrays,
OS/360 always does call by reference.
>>This semantics is similar to that of vector assignment statements in
>>Fortran 90 (which we discussed here around August) and allows the
>>callee's code to be automatically parallelised even if it contains
>>references or pointers that can potentially alias (which complicates
>>dependence analysis in mainstream programming languages).
The usual case in current compilers is that in some cases Fortran
allows non-contiguous arrays to be passed. In other cases, arrays
are assumed contiguous. That can require a copy to be made before
the call, and copy back after, usually done by the caller not the
callee but the effect is the same.
> Fortran's semantics were designed to correspond with the behavior of
> real hardware - serial pipelined vector processors.
(snip)
> As a parameter passing method, CBVR was deprecated because most
> programmers found it confusing.
They still do, but it is still allowed.
-- glen
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