Description
Fortran was one of the first languages used for research computing. It continues to be particularly useful for performing array-based calculations. The language specifications have been updated several times, from the original development in the 1950s to FORTRAN 77, Fortran 90, Fortran 95, Fortran 03 and beyond. Each update has added features which, in many cases, make it easier to use.
Fortran is used to extend many other languages with new functionality that is faster than natively written code (e.g. you can extend Python with code written in Fortran). Since it produces faster software for array manipulation, many numerical libraries are written in Fortran. You can also integrate GPU programming with your Fortran applications.
Availability and Setup on Our Systems
You can compile Fortran source code using several compilers installed on our system. Typically, you identify which language specification (e.g. FORTRAN 77, Fortran 90, etc.) you used for writing your source code by using a corresponding suffix. So for Fortran 95, you use a .f95, e.g. example.f95. If you are using the SCC cluster, we also have several libraries written in Fortran that are useful to scientific computing.
Additional Help/Documentation
Please contact us if you need help developing a new Fortran application or understanding a legacy code.
As part of our RCS Online Code Examples section, we also have quite a large number of Fortran code examples, both general including a “hello world” example and a set of examples from the tutorial we offered in the past.