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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