HPF is primarily designed to obtain high performance on massively
parallel computers. Such massively parallel machines also need
massively parallel input and output. Accordingly, there were three major proposals
to include explicitly parallel I/O features in HPF, as well as several
minor variations on the same theme. After much debate, HPFF voted not to include I/O extensions in the first version of HPF.
(NOTE, however, that HPF1.1 defines changes to
Fortran 90 data type of a few of the I/O keyword
inquiry specifiers to allow for the possibility of
very large files. See section
The arguments for not making further extensions or
changes for parallel I/O in HPF included:
Moreover the current lack of extensions does not limit features
that may be added by system vendors. In particular:
on
Fortran 90 Binding earlier in this chapter.)