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Absoft Corporation today announced significant advancements for customers developing and maintaining Fortran programs on Mac OS/Intel systems. These improvements affect three areas of code development and are incorporated into Absoft's newly released Pro Fortran v10.2 for Mac OS/Intel: 1) increased application speed, 2) superior debugging and 3) new tools for Fortran developers on Mac OS/Intel. The primary increase in application speed is a result of Absoft's support for the Intel's new SSE4.1 vector instructions. And because not all Mac hardware systems support SSE4.1, Absoft Pro Fortran v10.2 automatically determines processor type and optimizes for SSE4.1 vector extensions when appropriate. Absoft states that internal tests have demonstrated SSE4.1 can increase speed up to 10% on several types of code - automatically, without code changes. Improved Fortran debugging with Pro Fortran v10.2 is provided using Absoft's latest Fx3 debugger with Apple's Xcode 3.1. Absoft customers can now display and modify the values of program variables located in COMMON blocks, allocated in static storage, or declared inside Fortran 90 modules. These capabilities are available when debugging either 32-bit or 64-bit executables on Mac OS/Intel based systems. The updated Pro Fortran v10.2 IDE simplifies code development and maintenance in several ways, one of the most interesting being, Absoft's proprietary Fortran module savvy parallel make facility. First, the new parallel make can substantially decrease build times for large projects by taking advantage of multi-core architectures and compiling two or more independent program units simultaneously. Second, Absoft's make facility automatically determines Fortran module dependencies. Thereby eliminating the need to continually track and order compilation sequences by hand, as is required when using alternative compilers. "The new Apple Intel machines are very fast and customers love them as development platforms," said Wood Lotz president of Absoft. "Absoft has worked with Apple for over 25 years, and our new Pro Fortran v10.2 compilers not only leverage the full performance capabilities of the latest multi-core machines, but Pro Fortran includes tools designed exclusively for Fortran developers on Mac. No other vendor matches this combination of performance and functionality for the Mac OS/Intel customer," continued Lotz. Absoft's new Pro Fortran v10.2 is available immediately. Prices start at $299. Complete product details are available at its Web site - Upgrade information at its Web site.