[Beowulf] Quad-Core Parallelism

[Kozin, I (Igor)]

While it is true that MKL is threaded not all the BLAS subroutines are.
Unfortunately the manual does not explicitely explain the threadedness.
Furthermore, funny enough, at least some ACML subroutines are quicker than 
the MKL ones. Admitedly the difference became smaller with the release of
MKL 10.0 but it's still there even for Harpertown. Another worthy threaded 
lib to try is obviously Goto BLAS. As usual, YMMV.



-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org on behalf of James Cownie
Sent: Sun 18/11/2007 13:56
To: Donald Shillady
Cc: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Quad-Core Parallelism
 

On 16 Nov 2007, at 15:40, Donald Shillady wrote:

>  The question is whether ESSL or Parallel-ESSL is needed to do true  
> parallel computing on a Quad-core chip?  Basically I would like to  
> know if anyone is working on making a Quad-core CPU parallel  
> (preferably f77 or f99) under RedHat LINUX?  If I install RedHat  
> LINUX on a Quad-core CPU (thus avoiding a high speed switch) what  
> would be needed to run parallel f77, a new compiler?

The Intel "Math Kernel LIbrary" (which includes BLAS and a lot of  
other goodies) http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/ 
307757.htm
has many routines which are internally parallelized for multi-core  
machines.

So, if you're using BLAS you should be able just to link against  
these and get a benefit which depends on how much of your execution  
time was spent in the library routines.

The Intel compilers also include an auto-par switch, so there's some  
chance that recompiling with that might help too, and, of course also  
include OpenMP support.

(Disclaimer: I work for Intel, and haven't used MKL or auto-par  
myself, so as ever YMMV)

--
-- Jim
--
James Cownie <jcownie at cantab.net>



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