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The seismic kernel system — a large‐scale exercise in fortran 77 portability
Author(s) -
Hatton Les,
Wright Andy,
Smith Stuart,
Parkes Gregg,
Bennett Paddy,
Laws Robert
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380180403
Subject(s) - software portability , computer science , fortran , locality , software , operating system , kernel (algebra) , software engineering , programming language , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , combinatorics
The portability of software has become a major commercial issue in recent times. Such portability does not come easily, as few if any computer languages are really portable in practice. An additional complicating factor, especially in the commercial environment, is that the resulting software must be efficient. This paper describes the design and successful implementation of a 500,000+ line portable FORTRAN 77 package for the processing of seismic data. The package exhibits demonstrably high efficiency on a wide variety of machines from minicomputers to the largest supercomputers. Experiences gained during this exercise throw much light on the integration of the various thought processes which occur during the software engineering cycle, especially the notion of locality.