Optimize application performance on your IBM Power platforms

IBM Open XL Fortran for AIX® is the next-generation IBM Fortran compiler, facilitating the creation and maintenance of applications written in Fortran for use on IBM Power® platforms. It optimizes your infrastructure, supporting extensive numerical, scientific, and high-performance computing.

With full exploitation of the latest Power10 architecture, IBM Open XL Fortran for AIX can generate code that leverages the capabilities of Power10 to maximize your hardware utilization.

IBM Open XL Fortran for AIX combines IBM XL Fortran technology with LLVM compiler infrastructure. LLVM is an open-source compilation framework that is actively maintained by a large development community, supporting multiple architectures and programming languages.

Features

• **Adoption of the LLVM infrastructure: **Combines the IBM XL Fortran frontend with the LLVM infrastructure for Fortran. Enables you to enjoy the industry-leading Fortran implementation while gaining additional capabilities provided by the LLVM infrastructure. It opens the gate to using various LLVM-based utilities on Power.
• **Exploitation of the latest Power10 architecture: **Fully exploits Power10 architecture. Provides Power10 architecture options, built-in functions, and tuned library functions to maximize the hardware ROI.
• **Link Time Optimization (LTO): **Provides program optimization during linking. Enables you to take advantage of intermodular optimizations without making any significant changes to the makefiles or build system.
• Thin LTO is introduced, which delivers big improvements in both compile time and memory usage when utilizing LTO. Pay attention to the system requirement when using LTO.
• **Profile Guided Optimization (PGO): **Provides compiler optimization techniques in computer programming that uses profiling to improve program runtime performance. Pay attention to the system requirement when using PGO.
• **Language standard compliance: **Supports FORTRAN 77, Fortran 90, Fortran 95, Fortran 2003, and a subset of Fortran 2008; supports a subset of Technical Specification 29113 for further interoperability of Fortran with C; helps to protect investments in existing Fortran source and object code that is built with previous versions of the compilers; supports the compatibility of object code or libraries that are compiled with previous versions of IBM XL Fortran with the new IBM Open XL Fortran compiler and runtime environment.
• **High-performance libraries: **Provides a set of libraries for high-performance mathematical computing including the Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem (MASS) and Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) libraries.
• **Optimization reports: **Provides information to help you utilize compiler features to optimize your applications.
• **Vector intrinsic procedures: **Individual elements of vectors can be accessed by using storage association, the TRANSFER intrinsic, or the Vector Multimedia Extension (VMX) and the Vector Scalar Extension (VSX) intrinsic functions. These intrinsics allow you to manipulate vectors.

Benefits

• **Maximize your Power hardware ROI: **Capitalize on Power10 architecture, such as Matrix Multiply Accelerator (MMA), and maximize your return on investment with full hardware exploitation.
• **Optimize application performance: **Take advantage of both common LLVM optimizations and IBM’s industry-leading technologies to improve workload performance.
• **Improve developer productivity: **Provide LLVM diagnostic and reporting capabilities. Offer various LLVM-based utilities to make your development work more efficient.
• **Enable continuous delivery: **Faster build speed helps to shorten the development cycle, enable faster iterations, and provide continuous delivery for business-critical applications on AIX.
• **Accelerate the shift to the hybrid cloud model: **Enable licensing of IBM Open XL compilers on virtual servers for the required capacities when you transition to hybrid cloud. Monthly licensing per the virtual process core (VPC) charge unit is available.
• **Obtain world-class IBM support: **All license models include 24x7 support and access to new software features.