Nist Effort Aims To Make Java More Useful For Scientists, Engineers

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, August 9, 1999

Mathematicians at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are aiding the scientific computing community by spearheading an effort to make the popular Java programming language more useful for and engineers and scientists. Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java language is widely used on the World Wide Web and in embedded systems.

A change in Java proposed by a NIST-led working group eliminated a bottleneck that prevented scientists who used popular microprocessors such as the Intel Pentium from running calculations at full speed.

The affected calculations involve floating point arithmetic -- the kind of arithmetic favored by scientists and engineers who do massive number crunching to get good results.In floating point arithmetic, numbers are stored using scientific notation, which allows people to use a tremendous range of values in their calculations.The storage method involved is different from that used in integer arithmetic, which involves storing all the digits in a number.

The changes in the latest version of Java allow floating point arithmetic calculations to run as much as 10 times faster on certain microprocessors.

The changes to the Java floating point specifications are a result of recommendations made to Sun by the java Grande Forum, a consortium of business, academic and government participants interested in using Java for high-performance computing.

Two NIST mathematicians are co-chairs of the Forum's Numerics Working Group, which proposed the changes.Other working group members include representatives from the University of California at Berkeley, Syracuse University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and business participants ranging from England's Numerical Algorithms Group to IBM Corp.