Fortran support for NVIDIA CUDA GPUs to be incorporated into a new version of the PGI Fortran compiler

HAMBURG, Germany, June 23 -- The Portland Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of STMicroelectronics and a leading supplier of compilers for high-performance computing (HPC), today announced an agreement with NVIDIA under which the two companies plan to develop new Fortran language support for CUDA GPUs.

The NVIDIA CUDA architecture allows developers to offload computationally intensive kernels to the massively parallel GPU. Through function calls and language extensions, CUDA gives developers explicit control over the mapping of general-purpose computational kernels to GPUs as well as placement and movement of data between the x64 processor and the GPU. The NVIDIA CUDA C compiler already provides this capability to C programmers. The CUDA Fortran compiler will provide this same level of control and optimization in a native Fortran environment from PGI.

"Fortran support for CUDA GPUs is a perfect complement to our existing roadmap for the PGI Accelerator Fortran and C compilers," said Douglas Miles, director of The Portland Group. "It enables interoperability of PGI Fortran and CUDA C and gives PGI users a full range of options in porting and optimizing Fortran applications to leverage the power of CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs."

"The GPU computing developer community has made it clear there is a need and demand for a production-quality Fortran solution on the GPU," said Andy Keane, general manager of Tesla GPU Computing Solutions at NVIDIA. "With their large base of Fortran developers for x64 processor-based HPC systems, PGI provides a perfect bridge for migration of production science and engineering codes from existing platforms to NVIDIA Tesla GPUs."

The Portland Group and NVIDIA will release the Fortran language specification for CUDA GPUs at the International Conference on Supercomputing in Hamburg, Germany, this week. The CUDA Fortran compiler will be added to a production release of the PGI Fortran compilers scheduled for availability in November 2009. More detailed information about PGI compilers and tools is available online at http://www.pgroup.com/.

For more information on NVIDIA CUDA, visit www.nvidia.com/cuda.

About The Portland Group

The Portland Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of STMicroelectronics, is the premier supplier of high-performance Fortran, C, and C++ compilers and tools for high-end computing systems and x64 and x86 processor-based workstations, servers, and clusters. PGI products are used widely by engineers, researchers and scientists in high-performance computing (HPC), the field of technical computing engaged in the modeling and simulation of complex processes, such as ocean modeling, weather forecasting, seismic analysis, bioinformatics and other areas. PGI compilers, which convert software programs into the binary instructions that computers understand, are recognized in the HPC community for delivering world-class performance across a wide spectrum of applications and benchmarks, and they are referenced regularly as the industry standard for performance and reliability. Further information on The Portland Group products can be found at www.pgroup.com, by calling Sales at (503) 682-2806, or by email to sales@pgroup.com.

About STMicroelectronics

STMicroelectronics is a global leader in developing and delivering semiconductor solutions across the spectrum of microelectronics applications. An unrivalled combination of silicon and system expertise, manufacturing strength, Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio and strategic partners positions the company at the forefront of System-on-Chip (SoC) technology and its products play a key role in enabling today's convergence markets. The company's shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, on Euronext Paris and on the Milan Stock Exchange. In 2008, the company's net revenues were $9.84 billion. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com.

-----

Source: STMicroelectronics