Running MM5 with the Intel compiler

[Ole W. Saastad]

Some parallel application are limited to a small set of
compilers, due to their uses of special functionality.
One example is the MM5 meteo code, which require byteswap-IO
(for unformatted f77 files), and Cray style pointers. 
Up to present it has been recommended to use the Portland Group's
compiler suite to compile this code.

At Scali we have successfully compiled, linked and run MM5 MPP 
using ScaMPI and SCI using the Intel set of compilers.

We have now demonstrate that the Intel compiler suite can be used
to compile the MM5 code. Not only does this increase the number of
alternative compilers, but the resulting code also has good 
performance. 

Comparing the performance on an Athlon cluster and a P4 Xeon 
cluster we see that for P4 based clusters the Intel compiler
generates code that run 10-20% faster than the code generated 
by the Portland compiler.

In addition the Athlons runs the Intel compiler generated code 
equally fast as the code generated by the Portland compiler.

For more information about MM5 on Scali clusters: 
http://www.scali.com/support


Regards,

Ole W. Saastad




-- 
Ole W. Saastad, Dr.Scient.
Scali AS P.O.Box 150 Oppsal 0619 Oslo NORWAY 
Tel:+47 22 62 89 68(dir) mailto:ole at scali.no http://www.scali.com 
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