Scripting in High-Performance Computing
Roger Hansen · NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives · 2001
This thesis describes how the use of more than one type of programming languages can be useful in high-performance computing. Scripting languages like Python and Perl are used for control and computational steering, while compiled languages as C and Fortran are used for the numerically intensive tasks. How to efficiently call compiled code from scripting languages is discussed in detail, and numerous examples show how this can be done. The examples show that a combination of e.g. Python and Fortran is an option very much worth considering for numerical applications. The combination can result in applications with both run-time efficiency and flexible computational steering options. There are even good chances that development time for such applications compare very favorably with more traditional numerical applications.