Performance Issues

In contrast to Fortran 77 compilers, current Fortran 95 compilers do not assume that array storage is contiguous. When a Fortran 77 routine is called from a Fortran 95 routine, a contiguous copy of arrays is made in temporary storage, an operation that degrades performance. This problem could be alleviated by alternative interfaces to the Fortran 77 routines involving Fortran 77 constructs, but this would violate the goal of having a true Fortran 95 interface to LAPACK. Hence the user should be aware that in some cases LAPACK95 may perform less efficiently than when LAPACK is called directly from a Fortran 77 or Fortran 95 program.