Forte[tm] Developer 6 Productivity

Integrated Development Environment
Build High-Performance Applications
Scale Applications with Multithreaded Development Tools
Support for Interval Arithmetic Extended to C++
Manage Source Code Efficiently
What It Means To You

Individual Products:

Forte C++

Forte Fortran/HPC

Forte C

Forte TeamWare

Key Productivity Features:

Integrated Development Environment
Choice of Five Integrated Editors
Visual GUI Builder and Debugger
Source Code Browser
Fix and Continue
Software Configuration Management Tools
Source Code Management
Key Performance Features:

Tuned Runtime Performance for the UltraSPARC[tm] III

Supports 32-bit and 64-bit Development
High-Powered Performance Analysis Tools
Multithreaded Development Support
Improved Compile Times for C++
New Performance Analysis Tools
Greater Language Interoperability Between C++ and Fortran
Interval Arithmetic Support for C++

Forte[tm] Developer Products (formerly named Sun WorkShop[tm] Products) deliver the same tightly integrated environment that is designed to speed software development for you and your team--now with more features and improved runtime performance that is tuned for the UltraSPARC[tm] III architecture!

This suite of power development tools supplies an integrated programming environment with a full set of graphical tools to create and maintain your C, C++, and Fortran 32-bit and 64-bit applications. This outstanding software greatly simplifies the tasks you perform most often in the Solaris[tm] 8 Operating Environment: compiling, building, browsing, editing, debugging, and performance tuning. In addition, you'll find new software features, such as improved compile times for C++, improved language interoperability between the C++ and Fortran languages, and C++ support for interval arithmetic.

Forte[tm] TeamWare software adds extra value to your development environment with source code version control, release integration, and release management to help your team work together efficiently.

Integrated Development Environment

The latest Forte Developer 6 software is much more than just a collection of compilers. Forte Developer 6 software offers a multi-window, integrated development environment (IDE) that boosts developer productivity and supports team efforts. The editor-centric, Motif-based interface integrates all the phases of your work cycle--from GUI design and code generation to the familiar edit-compile-debug-tune development cycle. Thus, you can rapidly build high performance 32-bit and 64-bit applications and get them to market sooner!

Productivity features include:

Choice of five integrated editors (NEdit, vi, XEmacs, GNUemacs, Gvim)
Data visualization to "see" program data and analyze it graphically
Fix and Continue to shorten the edit-compile-debug cycle
Incremental linker to shorten link times
GUI builder for C++, C, and Java[tm] language code to accelerate development
Remote monitoring that supports running and debugging remote applications on local machines
Forte TeamWare software for managing source code across a distributed software team

Read more technical information about productivity features in the Forte Developer 6 software.

The Project Manager

The Project Manager tracks the files, programs, and targets associated with your development projects and helps to build programs without your needing to write a makefile. Projects are lists of files, and compiler, debugger, and build-related options used to construct various types of binaries, such as an executable, a static library/archive, or a shared library. The Project Manager enables you to:

Create and edit projects
Specify the type of project to be built
Select text editors for projects
Access compilers, source code browsers, debuggers, and analyzers

Data Visualization

You can use data visualization during debugging to help you explore and comprehend large and complex data sets, simulate results, or interactively steer computations. The Data Graph window lets you "see" program data and analyze that data graphically, and the graphs can be printed to paper or to a file. Displaying your data graphically as you debug a program increases your productivity.

Fix and Continue

The Fix and Continue feature enables you to quickly correct errors without disrupting a debugging session. This feature automatically compiles source code changes and modifies the executing process to confirm the fix worked as desired. The rapid turn-around of this feature greatly increases your productivity because it eliminates the often lengthy link phase and the amount of time taken to restart the debugger and create the debugging session.

Build High-Performance Applications

Forte Developer 6 software enables tuned runtime performance on the UltraSPARC[tm] III architecture! In addition, it provides new programming techniques to improve the speed with which you can develop and run applications. By using the correct compiler options and optimizations, you can substantially improve your application's performance without compromising stability.

Forte Developer 6 compilers include a variety of tools to analyze source code, aid problem isolation, and provide you with the information to finely tune your applications for maximum performance. Two powerful tools that work together in locating issues that affect program performance are the Sampling Collector and the Graphical Analyzer. These new tools are an effective replacement for the "ThreadAnalyzer" (tha), prof, and gprof tools. Moreover, they provide state-of-the-art performance analysis capabilities. Programs to be analyzed may be compiled with any level of parallelization and optimization.

The Sampling Collector

The Sampling Collector gathers performance data during program execution, saving it to an "experiment file" that is used later by the Sampling Analyzer. The Sampling Collector gathers information on:

Clock-based profiles
Thread synchronization delay events and wait time
Operating system summary information
Hardware-counter overflow profiles (on systems where the hardware supports this)
Global information, including execution statistics and address space data

The benefit is that you can structure a wide range of events and data profiles under different conditions to gather optimization data on your applications.

The Graphical Analyzer

The Sampling Analyzer measures and graphically displays an application's performance profile, suggesting ways to improve performance. You can collect a variety of performance data types, and you can control the data collection process while an application is running. By focusing on the areas where performance problems occur, you can test hypotheses about a program's behavior.

Delivering Performance on Sun

The white paper (PDF), Delivering Performance on Sun: Optimizing Applications for Solaris, focuses on how to use the Forte Developer 6 tools and employ effective techniques for delivering high performance applications on Sun workstations and servers. This white paper also discusses specific techniques for optimizing applications using the Sampling Collector and Sampling Analyzer.

Scale Applications with Multithreaded Development Tools

The Forte Developer 6 software allows you to scale applications with multithreaded development tools on the SPARC[tm] platform. The C++ Standard Library (libCstd), which is multithread-safe, ensures that the internals of the library work properly in a multithreading environment. In addition, the Performance Analyzer provides in-depth analysis for single threaded and multi-threaded applications.

Support for Interval Arithmetic Extended to C++

Sun is the first computer company to offer support for Interval Arithmetic, which can produce results with guaranteed accuracy and numerical solutions to nonlinear problems. Now, support for interval arithmetic has been expanded to include the C++ compiler through the use of a C++ class library. Both Fortran 95 and C++ share the underlying interval arithmetic libraries. Interval arithmetic is a system for computing with intervals of numbers. Because interval arithmetic always produces intervals that contain the set of all possible result values, interval algorithms have been developed to perform surprisingly difficult computations. The parallel nature of interval algorithms can be exploited using the Sun HPC ClusterTools[tm] 3.1 Message Passing Interface (MPI) and OpenMP Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) technologies. OpenMP is supported by the Forte Developer 6 product suite, and MPI is supported by both Forte Fortran and Forte HPC product suites.

Manage Source Code Efficiently

Forte TeamWare software is a powerful software configuration management toolset for development teams. It enhances your development team's coordination and productivity with its outstanding management toolset for software configuration development, versioning control, file merging, and workspace integrity checking.

What It Means To You

Executives

Service Providers

Forte[tm] Developer Products deliver the same tightly integrated environment that is designed to speed software development--now with more features and improved runtime performance that is tuned for the UltraSPARC[tm] III architecture!

Through Sun's new suite of Forte Developer Products, individuals, small businesses, and large organizations can turn their dot-com visions into reality. Forte Developer software enables your team to develop scalable, enterprise-class, distributed services and solutions--fast. Product development cycles are accelerated; quality and productivity are improved; and complexity is reduced. Sun's dot-com solutions help you to compete better in the Net economy.

For challenging enterprise-wide development projects, Sun .Com Consulting offers real-world development strategies. Sun consultants will help you plan, design, and implement the right development projects to support a wide range of flexible, reliable, and secure dot-com solutions.

Forte Developer 6 software enables tuned runtime performance on the UltraSPARC[tm] III architecture! In addition, it provides new programming techniques to improve the speed with which you can develop and run services. By using the correct compiler options and optimizations, you can substantially improve the performance of services and solutions without compromising stability. It also includes a robust, integrated development environment (IDE) and business integration tools that support many languages. You'll be able to develop and deploy services that support high-quality, entry-level to enterprise-class solutions for the Solaris[tm] Operating Environment, Linux, UNIX, and Microsoft Windows environments.

Investors

System Administrators

Because the Sun platform and Forte Developer software are based on open standards, there's no more vendor lock-in or lock-out. With Forte Developer software, developers can easily incorporate code from other development environments, and vice versa, thereby leveraging the efforts of other people developing with different tools. Sun believes that a strategy of allowing developers freedom-of-choice and powerful, easy-to-use tools is the key to winning their hearts and minds and nurturing their preference for the Sun platform. It's a critical component of extending Sun's strong market performance well into the future.

You don't have to be an expert developer. Numerous tutorials and wizards help you get up to speed quickly. Proven frameworks and easy-to-use environments enable you to compile, build, browse, edit, debug, and performance tune your code right away. The wide variety of Sun resources allow you to get questions answered quickly.

Developers

This suite of power development tools supplies an integrated programming environment with a full set of graphical tools to create and maintain your C, C++, and Fortran/HPC 32-bit and 64-bit services and solutions. This outstanding software greatly simplifies the tasks you perform most often in the Solaris[tm] 8 Operating Environment: compiling, building, browsing, editing, debugging, and performance tuning. In addition, you'll find new software features, such as improved compile times for C++, improved language interoperability between the C++ and Fortran languages, and C++ support for interval arithmetic. Our TeamWare software allows you to share information, data, and responsibilities--without duplicating efforts, losing changes, and working at cross purposes.

Sun development solutions include all the support and education services you need to complete a quality dot-com development project on time. The cornerstone of Sun's developer support offerings is the Sun Developer Connection program, which provides you with free membership to a rich community offering personal access to technical information and resources. Various levels of membership provide even greater privileges, such as certification, co-marketing programs, hardware and software discounts, and special promotions.

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This page was last modified: 17.Oct.00