Introduction to Volume II

This is the second volume in a two-volume Intel® Fortran Compiler User's Guide. It explains how you can use the Intel Fortran Compiler to enhance your application.

The variety of optimizations used by the Intel Fortran Compiler enables you to enhance the performance of your application. Each optimization is performed by a set of options discussed in the sections of this volume.

In addition to optimizations invoked by the compiler command line options, the compiler includes features which enhance your application performance such as directives, intrinsics, run-time library routines and various utilities. These features are discussed in the Optimization Support Features section.

Note
This document explains how information and instructions apply differently to a targeted architecture, IA-32 or Itanium® architecture. If there is no specific reference to either architecture, the description applies to both architectures.

This documentation assumes that you are familiar with the Fortran Standard programming language and with the Intel® processor architecture. You should also be familiar with the host computer's operating system.

The Subjects Covered

Programming for high performance by using the specifics of Intel Fortran:

Setting Data Type and Alignment
Using Arrays Efficiently
Improving I/O Performance
Improving Run-time Efficiency
Coding for Intel Architectures

Implementing Intel Fortran Compiler optimizations

Optimizing Compilation Process
Options to Optimize Different Application Types
Floating Point Arithmetic Optimizations
Optimizing for Specific Processors
Interprocedural Optimizations
Profile-guided Optimizations
High-level Language Optimizations (HLO)

Parallel Programming with Intel Fortran

Auto-vectorization (IA-32 Only)
Auto-parallelization
Parallelization with OpenMP*

Optimization Support Features

Compiler Directives
Optimizations and Debugging

Notations and Conventions

This documentation uses the following conventions:

Intel® Fortran (later: Intel Fortran)	The name of the common compiler language supported by the Intel Fortran Compiler for Windows* and Intel Fortran Compiler for Linux* products.
Adobe Acrobat*	An asterisk at the end of a word or name indicates it is a third-party product trademark.
FORTRAN 77 and later versions of Fortran	The references to the versions of the Fortran language. After FORTRAN 77, the references are Fortran 90 or Fortran 95. The default is "Fortran," which corresponds to all versions.
THIS TYPE STYLE	Statements, keywords, and directives are shown in all uppercase, in a normal font. For example, “add the USE statement…”
This type style	Bold normal font shows menu names, menu items, button names, dialog window names, and other user-interface items.
File > Open	Menu names and menu items joined by a greater than (>) sign indicate a sequence of actions. For example, "Click File > Open" indicates that in the File menu, click Open to perform this action.
ifort	The use of the compiler command in the examples for both IA-32 and Itanium processors is as follows: when there is no usage difference between the two architectures, only one command is given. Whenever there is a difference in usage, the commands for each architecture are given.
This type style	An element of syntax, a reserved word, a keyword, a file name, a variable, or a code example. The text appears in lowercase unless uppercase is required.
THIS TYPE STYLE	Fortran source text or syntax element.
This type style	Indicates what you type as command or input.
This type style	Command line arguments and option arguments you enter.
This type style	Indicates an argument on a command line or an option's argument in the text.
[options]	Indicates that the items enclosed in brackets are optional.
{value \| value}	A value separated by a vertical bar (\|) indicates a version of an option.
...	Ellipses in the code examples indicate that part of the code is not shown.