SESAM is a large, commercial finite ele
ment package for structural analysis that
includes SESTRA, an analysis portion of
approximately 280,000 lines of FORTRAN 77
statements. We discuss the issues of por
tability and efficiency in implementing this
code on a wide range of computers, in
cluding the FPS-164, GRAY X-MP, CDC
Cyber 205, Amdahl VP1200, IBM 3090/VF,
and NEC SX-2. Performance data are re
lated to the different architectures and the
degree of code tuning. SESAM requires
large amounts of direct access secondary
storage. The use of FORTRAN I/O can sig
nificantly decrease performance, as mea
sured by both CPU time and elapsed time.
We discuss how different levels of I/O
support on scientific computers affect the
potentially large gap between CPU time
and elapsed time.
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