Performance Comparisons of Programs in Different Programming Languages Converted from Legacy Finite Element Codes
T. Arudchelvam, S. Ratnajeevan, H. Hoole · 2014
The FORTRAN programming language was used in early days of writing finite element field computation to write programs. Much of those codes were developed in an ad hoc way. Today, modern software developers face problems in understanding, modifying and utilizing those codes. As modern software engineers are very concerned with object oriented design, if those codes are converted into an object oriented language, they could be redesigned and deployed in an object oriented system. Those legacy codes often need to be converted not only into an object oriented programming language such as Java but also into functional oriented languages such as C. Conversion of those legacy codes into modern languages gives many advantages. The purpose of this paper is to compare the performances of such converted legacy finite element codes originally written in FORTRAN, the relevant converted C program and Java program. Sample finite element programs written in FORTRAN are converted for purposes of comparison into modern languages such as C and Java. Performances are compared based on the execution time. In addition to that, the memory sizes of the execution file of FORTRAN and C programs are also compared. Java being interpretive there is no execution file to compare.