Absoft Corporation today announced general availability of the new Absoft Pro Fortran v11.0 for Mac OS X. Release 11.0 is the first of Absoft’s high-performance, auto-parallelizing Fortran compilers to include support for OpenMP multi-core parallel programming standards for Mac OS X with Intel Xeon (Nehalem) processors. Absoft’s Fx3 debugger has added thread support and the Absoft multi-platform IDE included with Pro Fortran, now includes OpenMP and MPI features among other improvements. Supported environments include Leopard (version 10.5) and Snow Leopard (version 10.6). Absoft states Pro Fortran v11.0 is the most complete Fortran solution available for building parallel applications on Mac OS X. Pricing starts at $299.

 

Absoft Pro Fortran v11.0 includes both 32-bit and 64-bit compilers and incorporates a new scheduler that has demonstrated performance increases of up to 10%. Auto-parallelization, auto-vectorization and SSE4.1/4.2 instructions are also supported. Absoft states that third party benchmarks again confirmed that Absoft Pro Fortran produces faster code on x64 based systems than other compilers. Absoft’sFx3 debugger, the industry’s only commercial graphical Fortran debugger for Mac OS X has added multi-threading support for debugging OpenMP applications on Mac OS X / Intel.  The Pro Fortran graphical IDE included with v11.0 has added several new capabilities including: an OpenMP control feature, a customizable elements browser, improved cursor navigation, advanced syntax checking, automatic Fortran module dependency tracking, full TR15581 (ALLOCATABLE attributes) support, runtime environment variables, MPI application support and project-wide code completion. Also included is Absoft’s MRWE application framework, 2D/3D graphics and pre-built math libraries include reference LAPACK and BLAS, and pre-built ScaLAPACK and BLACS library for enhanced MPI performance. Pro Fortran is link and debug compatible with Apple’s C/C++ compiler which is supported as an IDE plug-in.

 

“Absoft Pro Fortran v11.0 is designed to work with Snow Leopard. The complete OpenMP implementation and automatic code parallelization/vectorization, effectively automate building and running portable parallel applications on Mac OS X,” said Wood Lotz, president of Absoft. “Pro Fortran v11.0 also advances the Fortran development environment - a response to the increasing number of customers, especially scientists and engineers, who tell us they prefer Absoft, because Absoft has the best Fortran development environment.  Pro Fortran v11.0 adds several new features, not available from other Fortran vendors,” continued Lotz.

 

Absoft’s high-performance Pro Fortran suites are available on Mac OS / Intel, Windows and Linux. All versions provide full support for the native system tools and APIs, and the same look, feel and functionality across all platforms. The Absoft IDE is the only commercially available, multi-platform, Fortran/C IDE designed by Fortran experts. Select third party compilers and libraries are supported as IDE plug-ins. Absoft’s MaxFlex license management system allows floating licenses to dynamically change between Linux, Windows and Mac OS as required by operators working in heterogeneous environments

 

Additional information on Absoft Pro Fortran v11.0 for Mac OS / Intel is available at: http://www.absoft.com/Absoft_MacIntel_Compiler.htm

 

Upgrades for existing Absoft Pro Fortran customers running Mac OS / Intel are available at:

http://www.absoft.com/Commercial_UpgradeOF2.htm

 

Free trial versions of Pro Fortran v11.0 for Mac OS X are available from Absoft’s site at: http://www.absoft.com/evalform.html