Subject: HPF Language Specification, version 1.0

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 22:41:22 -0600

It's available!  (For sure from titan.cs.rice.edu; availability from
other sites will depend on how fast e-mail travels and how dedicated
administrators at other sites are.)  Below are the "standard"
announcement and call for comments.

Many thanks to everyone involved in producing this document, including
(but not limited to!):
	The HPFF working group.
	People who commented on version 0.4 of the spec.
	People who attended (and asked questions at) many
		presentations, including the Supercomputing '92 workshop.
	Our friendly funding agencies: DARPA, NSF, ESPRIT, and the
		employers who bankrolled most of the HPFF committee
		members.
Special thanks to David Loveman, who edited the document.

						Chuck Koelbel
						Executive Director, NSF

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The most recent draft of the High Performance Fortran Language
Specification is version 1.0 Darft, dated January 25, 1993.  See
"Version History" below for a description of the changes.

How to Get the High Performance Fortran Language Specification
==============================================================

There are three ways to get a copy of the draft:

	1. Anonymous FTP: The most recent draft is available on 
	   titan.cs.rice.edu in the directory public/HPFF/draft.
	   Several files are kept there, including compressed
	   Postscript files of previous versions of the draft.  The
	   most current version of this draft is 0.4, which can be
	   retrieved as a tar file containing LaTeX source
	   (hpf-v10.tar) or in Postscript format (hpf-v10.ps);
	   both of these are also available as compressed files.
	   Several other sites also have the draft available in one or
           more formats, including think.com, ftp.gmd.de,
	   theory.tc.cornell.edu, and minerva.npac.syr.edu.

	2. Electronic mail: The most recent draft is available from
	   the Softlib server at Rice University.  This can be
	   accessed in two ways:
	     A. Send electronic mail to [email-masked] with "send 
		hpf-v10.ps" in the message body. The report is sent as a 
		Postscript file.
	     B. Send electronic mail to [email-masked] with "send 
		hpf-v10.tar.Z" in the message body. The report is
		sent as a uuencodeded compressed tar file containing
		LaTeX source.
             C. Send electronic mail to [email-masked] with "send
                hpf-v10.ps from hpf" in the message body.  The report
                is sent as a Postscript file.  This site also has the
                LaTeX source of the draft; use "send index from hpf"
                to see the file names.
             D. Send electronic mail to [email-masked] with
	        "send hpf-v10.ps from hpff" in the message body.  The
		report is sent as a Postscript file.
	   (In all cases, the reply is sent as several messages to
	   avoid mailer restrictions; edit the message bodies together
	   to obtain the whole file.)  The same files can be obtained
	   from David Loveman ([email-masked]) and Chuck
	   Koelbel ([email-masked]), but replies will take longer
	   because real people have to answer the mail.

	3. Hardcopy: The most recent draft is available as technical report 
	   CRPC-TR 92225 from the Center for Research on Parallel
	   Computation at Rice University.  Send requests to
		Theresa Chatman
		CITI/CRPC, Box 1892
		Rice University
		Houston, TX 77251
	   There is a charge of $50.00 for this report to cover copying and 
	   mailing costs.

Disclaimers
===========

A few caveats about the HPF draft:

	A. The current version contains some material that is still
	   under active discussion.  Changes will be fairly frequent
	   until at least December 1992.  New versions will be
           announced on the HPFF mailing list and in the newsgroups
	   comp.parallel, comp.lang.misc, and comp.lang.fortran.

	B. The HPF Language Specification does not necessarily
	   represent the official view of any individual, company,
	   university, government, or other agency.

	C. Please address any questions, comments, or possible
	   inconsistencies in the draft to [email-masked].
	   Include the chapter number you are commenting on in the
	   "Subject:" line of the message.

Version History
===============

Version 0.1:
August 14, 1992
EXTREMELY preliminary version.  

First collection of the proposals active in the High Performance Fortran 
Forum.  Established much of the outline for later documents, and 
represented most decisions made through the July HPFF meeting.

Version 0.2:
September 9, 1992
Version discussed at the September 10-11 HPFF meeting

Changes:
General cleaning up of version 0.1.
Inclusion of most new proposals at that time.

Version 0.3:
October 12, 1992
Version discussed at the October 22-23 HPFF meeting

Changes:
Numerous minor and major changes due to discussions at the September meeting.
Added a section on "Model of Computation".
Presented alternate chapters for data distribution with and without
templates.
Added two proposals for ON clauses specifying where computation is to
be executed.
Added distribution inquiry intrinsics.
Total rewrite of I/O material, sending most previous material to the
Journal of Development.

Version 0.4:
November 6, 1992
Version to be presented at Supercomputing '92

Changes:
Numerous minor and major changes due to discussions at the October
meeting.
"Acknowledgements" section now much more accurate.
"The HPF Model" (replacing "Model of Computation") substantially
simplified and improved.
"Distribution without Templates" chapter removed.
Many proposals not adopted moved to "Journal of Development".

Version 1.0:
January 25, 1993
Draft final version

Changes:
Many changes for clarity or pedagogical reasons.
The examples in several sections have been significantly enlarged.
INHERIT (for dummy arguments) added to distribution chapter.
Pure procedures may now have dummy arguments with explicit
distributions, if those distributions are inherited from the caller.
Changed the names of the new reductions AND, OR, and EOR to IALL,
IANY, and IPARITY.
Clarified the status of the character array language to be not in the
subset, and as a result, removed the character array intrinsics.
Only very restricted forms of alignment subscript expressions (of the
form \(m*i + n\) where \(m\) and \(n\) are integer expressions) are
part of the subset.
[Bibliography] Correctly spelled ``Mehrotra'' and ``Gerndt''.

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REQUEST FOR PUBLIC COMMENT ON HIGH PERFORMANCE FORTRAN

To: The High Performance Computing Community

Invitation:

The High Performance Fortran Forum (HPFF), with participation from over 40 
organizations, has been meeting since January 1992 to discuss and 
define a set of extensions to Fortran called High Performance Fortran 
(HPF). Our goal is to address the problems of writing data parallel 
programs for architectures where the distribution of data impacts 
performance. While we hope that the HPF extensions become widely available, 
HPFF is not sanctioned or supported by any official standards organization. 
At this time, HPFF invites general public review comments on the initial 
version of the language draft. 

The HPF language specification, version 1.0 draft, is now available. This 
document contains all the technical features proposed for the language. 
We plan to make minor revisions to correct errors or clarify
ambiguities in March 1993, at which time we will issue a final draft;
however, we expect that there will be few (if any) major technical
changes from this draft.

HPFF invites comments on the technical content of HPF, as well as on the 
editorial presentation in the document.  To facilitate incorporation
of comments into the final document, we ask that comments be sent
before March 1, 1993.

comments, we ask that 

How to Get the Documents:

Electronic copies of the HPF language specification are available from 
numerous sources. 

    Anonymous FTP sources:      Directory:
    titan.cs.rice.edu           public/HPFF/draft
    think.com                   public/HPFF
    ftp.gmd.de                  hpf-europe
    theory.tc.cornell.edu       pub
    minerva.npac.syr.edu        public

    Email sources:              First line of message:
    [email-masked]     send hpf-v10.ps from hpff
    [email-masked]             send hpf-v10.ps from hpf
    [email-masked]         send hpf-v10.ps    

The following formats are available (xx will be 04 or 10, depending on 
version). Note that not all formats are available from all sources. 
    hpf-v10.dvi                 DVI file
    hpf-v10.ps                  Postscript
    hpf-v10.ps.Z                Compressed Postscript
    hpf-v10.tar                 Tar file of LaTeX version
    hpf-v10.tar.Z               Compressed tar file

For more detailed instructions, send email to [email-masked]. This 
will return a message with expanded detail about accessing the above 
document sources, as well as other information about HPFF. 

We strongly encourage reviewers to obtain an electronic copy of the 
document. However, if electronic access is impossible the draft is also 
available in hard copy form as CRPC Technical Report #92225. This report is 
available for $50 (copying/handling fee) from: 

    Theresa Chatman
    CITI/CRPC, Box 1892
    Rice University
    Houston, TX 77251

Make checks payable to Rice University. This document will be sent surface 
mail unless additional airmail postage is included in the payment. 

How to Submit Comments:

HPFF encourages reviewers to submit comments as soon as possible, with a 
deadline of February 15 for consideration. Please do not submit comments 
for any version of the draft earlier than the 0.4 version. 

Please send comments by email to [email-masked]. To facilitate 
the processing of comments we request that separate comment messages be 
submitted for each chapter of the document and that the chapter be clearly 
identified in the "Subject:" line of the message. Comments about general 
overall impressions of the HPF document should be labeled as Chapter 1. All 
comments on the language specification become the property of Rice 
University. 

If email access is impossible for comment responses, hard copy may be sent 
to 

    HPF Comments
    c/o Theresa Chatman
    CITI/CRPC, Box 1892
    Rice University
    Houston, TX 77251

HPFF plans to process the feedback received at a meeting in March. Best 
efforts will be made to reply to comments submitted. 

Sincerely,

Charles Koelbel
Rice University
HPFF Executive Director