What's New in This Release

This volume focuses on the coding techniques and compiler optimizations that make your application more efficient.

Improvements and New Optimization in This Release

This document provides information about Intel® Fortran Compiler for IA-32-based applications and Itanium®-based applications. IA-32-based applications run on any processor of the Intel® Pentium® processor family generations, including the Intel® Xeon(TM) processor and Intel® Pentium® M processor. Itanium-based applications run on the Intel® Itanium® processor family.

The Intel Fortran Compiler has many options that provide high application performance. In this release, the Intel Fortran Compiler supports most Compaq* Visual Fortran (CVF) options. Some of the CVF options are supported as synonyms for the Intel Fortran Compiler back-end optimizations. For a complete list of new options in this release, see New Compiler Options in the Intel Fortran Compiler Options Quick Reference Guide.

Note
Please refer to the Release Notes for the most current information about features implemented in this release.

New Processors Support

The new options -xN, -xB, and -xP support Intel® Pentium® 4 processors, Intel Pentium M processors  Intel® Pentium® M processors and Intel processors code-named "Prescott," respectively. Correspondingly, the options -axN, -axB, and -axP optimize for Intel Pentium® 4 processors, Intel® Xeon™ processors, Intel® Pentium® M processors, and Intel processors code-named "Prescott" (new processor).

Optimizing for Specific Processors at Run-time, IA-32 Systems

This release enhances processor-specific optimizations for IA-32 systems by performing the following run-time checks to determine the processor on which the program is running and:

• verify whether that processor supports the features of the new options -xN, -xB, and -xP

• set the appropriate flush-to-zero (FTZ) and denormals-are-zero (DAZ) flags

See Processor-specific Run-time Checks, IA-32 Systems for more details.

Symbol Visibility Attribute Options

The Intel Fortran Compiler has the visibility attribute options that provide command-line control of the visibility attributes as well as a source syntax to set the complete range of these attributes. The options ensure immediate access to the feature without depending on header file modifications. The visibility options cause all global symbols to get the visibility specified by the option.

IPO Functionality

Automatic generation and update of the intermediate language (.il )  and compiler files is part of the compilation process. You can create a library that retain versioned .il files and use them in IPO compilations. The compiler can extract the .il files from the library and use them to optimize the program.

New Directive for Auto-vectorization

Added extended optimization directive !DEC$ VECTOR NONTEMPORAL.

Miscellaneous

IA-32 option -fpstkchk checks whether a program makes a correct call to a function that should return a floating-point value. Marks the incorrect call and makes it easy to find the error.

The -align keyword option provides more data alignment control with additional keywords.