Re:Show HN: A minimal Fortran TCP client and server
by shakna on Thursday October 31, 2019 @01:41AM
(#21406042)
Slightly-faster-in-Fortran. But it wasn't just a slight gain. The system I'm referring to is a multi-national system that processes somewhere in the order of 50-100 million transactions a second (depending on the time of day, and the day itself).
A slight performance gain of 1% by using Fortran has a noticeable effect on long-term economic gains. (It was usually in the range of 5-8% performance improvement, but at the worst was 1%).
Thankfully, the reason I can tell you this, is because they tested it in the real world, splitting all transaction across a large-scale A/B test.
The real-world economic gains from the faster performance more than paid for the occasional development costs of a Fortran-familiar developer, hence why those systems persist in Fortran. They also scheduled re-assessment of this once every five years, knowing it might change one day.
A slight performance gain of 1% by using Fortran has a noticeable effect on long-term economic gains. (It was usually in the range of 5-8% performance improvement, but at the worst was 1%).
Thankfully, the reason I can tell you this, is because they tested it in the real world, splitting all transaction across a large-scale A/B test.
The real-world economic gains from the faster performance more than paid for the occasional development costs of a Fortran-familiar developer, hence why those systems persist in Fortran. They also scheduled re-assessment of this once every five years, knowing it might change one day.