Basic HTML version of Foils prepared 17 Sept 1996

Foil 74 Extrinsics in HPF

From New CPS615HPF and Fortran90 Discussion Sept 17 96 Basic Simulation Track for Computational Science CPS615 -- Fall Semester 96. by Geoffrey C. Fox, Tom Haupt


An extrinsic function is a function written in a language other than HPF including most naturally any node programming language (e.g. Fortran77) targeted to a single processor SPMD) with message passing such as MPI
HPF defines (Fortran90) interface and invocation characteristics
  • This defines what is input and output via INTENT and these rules must be obeyed by callee (non HPF side)
  • If variables are implicitly replicated, the callee must make them consistent before reurn i.e. callee must respect HPF model of parallelism
  • HPF will execute any remapping commands and hands callee the "right" part of any distributed arrays
  • All processors are synchronized before call to EXTRINSIC function
Allows one to get efficient parallel code where HPF language or compiler inadequate
  • Analogous to calling assembly language from Fortran, Native classes from Java, C from PERL etc.



© on Tue Oct 7 1997