Sun Microsystmes Releases Open Source Fortress
Link: Sun Microsystmes Releases Open Source Fortress
Sun Microsystems has released an open-source software prototype called Fortress “interpreter”.
The software is a programming tool to execute Fortress programs line by line.
Fortress is the planned replacement for Fortran, a programming language launched in the 1960s by IBM. Fortran is still used for high-performance computing tasks such as forecasting the weather.
Fortress was originally developed from a project funded by the US Defense Department, but it has mainstream computing applications such as extracting work from new processing engines appearing in multicore processors.
Multicore is expected to become more widely used in ordinary desktop systems meaning that programmers will have to use a language such as Fortress in order to gain most advantage from the hardware.
Mainstream x86 chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices currently have two or four processing cores, while Sun Niagara chips have eight cores and will move to sixteen soon. It is difficult to break down software into independent chunks that run in parallel across all the cores or across multiple processors.
Fortress is designed to allow programmers to write programs in a way that functions better on multicore.
Fortress also tries to store data intelligently, locating it near the processor that needs it. This is expected to help with large compute clusters that gang together independent servers on a high-speed network.
In addition to the interpreter, Sun hopes to develop a compiler, which translates the software in advance into a form a computer can understand from the code a person wrote. Compiled software is generally faster than interpreted software.
Sun is also planning to develop an optimizing compiler which will enhance performance by adjusting the compiled version of software as it runs.
