Scientific Computing

Laurence Rozier lrozier at thepattern.com
Tue Sep 1 18:24:02 UTC 1998


A recent Techweb
story(http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980831S0001 - see excerpt
below) focuses on the shortcomings of Java in scientific computing. I'm
a systems engineer and not deeply familar with the effeciencies of
Squeak's floating point, array and complex number operations. There have
been some threads on floating point math here, but how does the Squeak
VM compare to Java in this regard?

Thanks,
Laurence

Excerpt from the article:
 Java isn't cutting it in scientific computing, a
              group of prominent engineers said.

              The engineers have banded together to form
              the Java Grande Forum in a bid to get Sun
              Microsystems to correct what they say are
              serious deficiencies in the programming
              language. Specifically, they said Java falls
              short in its handling of floating-point
              calculations, arrays, and complex numbers.
              Such lapses could affect engineering
              applications ranging from computer simulation
              to signal-processing.

              "From the standpoint of doing scientific
              computing in Java, these are big issues," said
              Jack Dongarra, a computer-science professor
              at the University of Tennessee. "They need to
              get resolved before things progress too far."

              "This is not just for supercomputing," said
              Geoffrey Fox, founder of the Java Grande
              Forum. "It's critical for the regular engineer. It
              affects Java in classic, sequential applications
              engineers do on the desktop."
advocating a study of the scaling
              of the Java virtual machine to large
              applications.





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