[This article originally appeared in The Proceedings of APL90, the ACM SIGAPL International Conference on APL.]
A prototype APL to C compiler (ACORN: APL to C On Real Numbers) was produced while investigating improved tools for solving numerically intensive problems on supercomputers. ACORN currently produces code which runs slower than hand-coded Cray FORTRAN, but we have identified the major performance bottlenecks, and believe we know how to remove them.
Although created in a short time on a limited budget, and intended only as a proof of the feasibility of compiling APL for numerically intensive environments, ACORN has shown that straightforward compiled APL will be able to compete with hand-optimized FORTRAN in many common supercomputer applications.
The ACORN article is available for download in PDF (78k) format and in PostScript (140k) format.
A related article is available for download in PDF (???k) format and in PostScript (205k) format.