High-Performance Object-Oriented Scientific Programming in Fortran 90

We illustrate how Fortran 90 supports object-oriented concepts by example of plasma particle computations on the IBM SP. Our experience shows that Fortran 90 and object-oriented methodology give high performance while providing a bridge from Fortran 77 legacy codes to modern programming principles. All of our objectoriented Fortran 90 codes execute more quickly than the equivalent C++ versions, yet raction modeling capabilities used for scientific programming are comparably powerful, 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n Computer simulations are very useful for understanding and predicting the transport of particles and energy in fusion energy devices called tokamaks [1]. Tokamaks, which are toroidal in shape, confine the plasma with a combination of an external toroidal magnetic field and a self-generated poloidal magnetic field. The plasma confinement in these devices is not well understood and is worse than desired. One of the two computer models used in the Numerical Turbulent ‘11-ansport P...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: PPSC
• Authors: Charles D. Norton, Viktor K. Decyk, Boleslaw K. Szymanski
• Keywords: Fortran 77, Fortran 90, Magnetic Field, PPSC 1997, PPSC 2001