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The FORALL Statement Up: High Performance Fortran Language Previous: AlignmentDistribution, and

Data Parallel Statements and Directives

The purpose of the FORALL statement and construct is to provide a convenient syntax for simultaneous assignments to large groups of array elements. Such assignments lie at the heart of the data parallel computations that HPF is designed to express. The multiple assignment functionality it provides is very similar to that provided by the array assignment statement and the WHERE construct in Fortran 90. FORALL differs from these constructs in its syntax, which is intended to be more suggestive of local operations on each element of an array, and in its generality, which allows a larger class of array sections to be specified. In addition, a FORALL may call user-defined functions on the elements of an array, simulating Fortran 90 elemental function invocation (albeit with a different syntax).

HPF defines a new procedure attribute, PURE, to declare the class of functions that may be invoked in this way. Both single-statement and block FORALL forms are defined in this Section, as well as the PURE attribute and constraints arising from the use of PURE.

HPF also defines a new directive, INDEPENDENT. The purpose of the INDEPENDENT directive is to allow the programmer to give additional information to the compiler. The user can assert that no data object is defined by one iteration of a DO loop and used (read or written) by another; similar information can be provided about the combinations of index values in a FORALL statement or construct. Such information is sometimes valuable to enable compiler optimizations, but may require knowledge of the application that is available only to the programmer. Therefore, HPF allows a user to specify these assertions, on which the compiler may in turn rely in its translation process. If the assertion is true, the semantics of the program are not changed; if it is false, the program is not HPF-conforming and has no defined meaning.




Next:
The FORALL Statement Up: High Performance Fortran Language Previous: AlignmentDistribution, and

paula@erc.msstate.edu
Thu Jul 21 17:05:43 CDT 1994