Fortran
Definition
Fortran (Formula Translation) is a general-purpose, compiled programming language designed for numerical and scientific computing. Created by Ibm, climate modeling, and computational physics.
Key Details
- Paradigm: Imperative, procedural, array-oriented
- Standardization: ISO/IEC 1539 (Fortran 2023 is the latest standard)
- Strengths: Array operations, numerical precision, performance, HPC ecosystem
- Compiler implementations: GCC (gfortran, GPLv3), Intel Fortran (ifx/ifort, commercial), NAG (commercial), IBM XL (commercial)
Historical Versions
| Version | Year | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Fortran 66 | 1966 | First standardized version |
| Fortran 77 | 1977 | DO loops, IF/ELSE, character types |
| Fortran 90 | 1991 | Arrays, modules, recursion, pointers |
| Fortran 95 | 1997 | Array operations, DO CONCURRENT |
| Fortran 2003 | 2004 | OOP, C interoperability, async I/O |
| Fortran 2008 | 2010 | Coarray parallelism, bit manipulation |
| Fortran 2018 | 2018 | Coarray enhancements, string functions |
| Fortran 2023 | 2023 | Fortran 2018 + C23 interoperability |
Use Cases
- Climate and weather modeling (ECMWF, NOAA)
- Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
- Quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics
- Structural engineering simulations
- Numerical weather prediction
Ecosystem
- BLAS/LAPACK: Standard linear algebra libraries, primarily Fortran
- MPI: Message Passing Interface, widely used in Fortran HPC
- See also: C with C/C++/Python (orchestration)