gfortran47, pgf90 work - ifort segfaults

[Tobias Burnus]

Hi,

On 02/10/2012 01:45 PM, Arjen Markus wrote:
> 2012/2/10 Anton Shterenlikht<mexas@bristol.ac.uk>:
>> What is "explicit allocation"?
> Sorry for the confusion, I simply meant: via the allocate statement.
> That is: use variables with the allocatable or pointer attribute and
> use the allocate statement to allocate the memory needed for these
> variables. (Automatic variables get their memory automatically - hence
> my use of "explicit")

It is actually not that easy to see where memory is taken from. For 
allocatables and pointers with anonymous targets it's simple: When one 
calls ALLOCATE they are allocated on the heap.
  Similarly for variables which have the SAVE attribute: They are always 
in the static memory.

For local nonautomatic variables in procedures: If they are scalars, 
they typically are on the stack. For arrays, gfortran places them - if 
they are larger - by default in static memory. One can tune when stack 
or static memory should be used, including always static 
(-fno-automatic) and always stack (RECURSIVE, -frecursive or -fopenmp). 
(In principle, it would be also possible for the compiler to use heap 
memory.)

For temporary variables, generated by the compiler, or for automatic 
variables: gfortran either places them on the heap or (with 
-fstack-arrays) on the stack.

Thus, it is not as obvious which memory gets used. Stack memory is best: 
It's very quickly allocated - but one has stack size issues (segfault if 
exceeded) and the memory expires automatically. Static memory is also 
good performance wise, but tracking the memory is more difficult for the 
compiler, leading to less optimized code. And heap memory is slowest, 
but most flexible. It also provides a nice error message when exceeded 
and doesn't have the optimization issue variables in static memory have.

Tobias