On Wednesday, IBM introduced two compilers that are new to Mac OS X: XL Fortran Advanced Edition V8.1 and XL C/C++ Advanced Edition V6.0. The company noted that they generate code much faster than G77/GCC, particularly on the Power Mac G5.
XL Fortran Advanced Edition V8.1 brings IBM’s Fortran family to Mac OS X for the first time. It’s based on the mature compiler technology of XL Fortran for AIX and Linux and it’s fully compliant with Fortran 77, Fortran 90, and Fortran 95 standards. It also partially supports draft Fortran 2000 standard features as well as IBM and industry extensions.
XL C/C++ Advanced Edition V6.0 features the ability to generate optimized code that exploits the G5’s power, C and C++ standards conformance, binary compatibility and coexistence with gcc V3.3, Velocity Engine support through the AltiVec programming interface, GCC command line compatibility, and more. IBM notes that this release brings the company’s C/C++ compilers to Mac OS X for the first time.
Both compilers will be available on January 16. XL Fortran Advanced Edition V8.1 requires Mac OS X v10.2 (Jaguar) or higher, a G4 or G5 processor, 80MB of disk space for the product package and 512MB for the paging and temporary files, 256MB of RAM. XL C/C++ Advanced Edition V6.0 requires Jaguar or higher, a G4 or G5 processor, and a gcc V3.3 compiler.