Subject: PowerMac as computational workstation

From: "John R. Nash" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 12:38:27 -0600

On the subject of FORTRAN on PCs for computational chemistry, [email-masked]
wrote:

>I've spent an inordinate amount of time over the past year and a half or so
>fiddling around with PC FORTRAN compilers, and the bottom line, IHMO, is
>that you'd better not count on them being like what you're accustomed to
>under UNIX.  In general, PCs seem like a false economy to me.

 ...and...

>You don't mention which OS you're using, but MS FPS only runs under NT or
>Win95.  If you're running Win95, or DOS/Win, that's the first thing to get
>rid of.  Windows NT is a reasonable OS; many say OS/2 is also.  There are
>also UNIXes available for Intel CPUs.  Just don't waste your time with a 16
>bit OS like DOS or a hybrid 16/32 system like 95.
>     Many 'big program' problems are related to trying to run in 16 bits or
>tricking a 16 bit OS into looking like a 32 bit one. 

It sounds like what is needed is a FORTRAN that runs on a personal computer
with a 32-bit OS and sufficient computational power to run serious
calculations.  It would be foolish, I think, to ignore the Power Macintosh
as such a system based on long-held OS biases as to what a "real PC" is.
Until recently, there was a need for a good FORTRAN compiler on this
platform; the arrival of Language Systems FORTRAN makes the PowerMac a quite
viable system for quant. mech. development.  GAMESS for PowerMac is a full
port of that computational package,
and it runs at about 1/3 the speed of an RS/6000 model 350 on a PM 7100/66.
See http://www.msg.ameslab.gov/GAMESS/dist.mac.html for details.  I hope
that developers will not ignore this platform with its obvious strengths and
cost-to-performance advantages.

I personally cannot comment on Language Systems FORTRAN for Power Mac -- I
am an end user, not a developer.  However, MacGAMESS seems to me a good
proof-of-concept that this kind of development is feasible.

-==-John R. Nash-==[email-masked]==-Dept of Chemistry, UW-Madison-==-

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From: [email-masked] (Toni Kazic)
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 16:03:18 -0600

Dear Netters,

Perhaps I missed this in the current thread, but do the Unix FORTRAN
compilers run on PCs running Linux, and does this combination provide the
performance expected from the raw numbers?

Toni Kazic
Institute for Biomedical Computing
Washington University