Parallel Processing Calls for a Fortress Mentality
InfoWorld (05/15/08) McAllister, Neil
Sun Microsystems' new Fortress programming language is designed to tackle the problems of applications development for high-performance computing. The problem with most programming languages is that they were designed for an earlier generation of machines, when processing resources were limited and desktop computers generally had only a single CPU. The amount of available processing power continues to increase, but the popular programming languages used today were not designed for the parallel-processing model. Fortress allows for language constructs such as for-next loops to be parallelizable by default. Fortress supports the concept of parallel transactions within the language itself, meaning that complex calculations can be computed as atomic units, independent of any other program threads that might be running. Fortress' syntax is also based on mathematical notation to assist developers in conceptualizing complex parallel-processing applications. So far, Fortress exists mostly on paper, though a reference interpreter that implements most of the core language features is available on the Fortress project community site.
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