Intel MKL

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Authors/Maintainers

Math Kernel Library is a provided by Intel Software Network. Different ways of support are available at Intel MKL support page

Summary

Intel Math Kernel Library (Intel MKL) is a library of optimized, extensively threaded math routines for solving large science, engineering, and financial computational problems. The library supports C/C++ and Fortran language APIs. The most of Intel MKL is threaded which enables more efficient usage of today’s multi-core processors and easier parallelization of developers application or implementation of hybrid programming model. Threading is performed through OpenMP, and the following mathematical domains are supported:

  • Sparse Linear Algebra – Sparse BLAS, Sparse Format Converters, PARDISO Direct Sparse Solver, Iterative Sparse Solvers and Pre-conditioners
  • Fast Fourier Transforms
  • Optimized LINPACK benchmark
  • Vector Math Library
  • Statistics Functions – Vector Random Number Generators, Summary Statistics Library
  • Cluster Support – ScaLAPACK, Cluster FFT

Intel MKL supports Linux, Windows and Mac OS operating systems. Installation on Linux platform is done through simple install script, which deploys provided packages on target machine. As it is developed by Intel processor manufactures, this library is highly optimized for usage on Intel processors, including processors with multiple cores. In case of other processors types it is usually better to use libraries provided by their manufactures (AMD Core Math Library (ACML) for AMD processors or IBM's Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library (ESSL) for their line of CPUs).

In addition to commercial licensing model, Intel MKL is also available through the academic non-commercial license, which has the same features as the commercial product, but its use is limited to educational and academic purposes. Non-commercial license is an individual-use license, and each individual has to obtain it personally. Note, however, that this license cannot be used in the work for hire, i.e. university academic or research staff cannot use it for the research performed as a part of their regular activities for which they get salaries. Therefore, this license can be used to assess and evaluate the library itself, while the production use requires commercial license.

Features

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-mkl/#details

Architectural/Functional Overview

  • high level design info, how it works, performance - may be a link, or several links

Usage Overview

Intel® Math Kernel Library for Linux* OS User’s Guide

Using Code examples User's Guide page

Intel® MKL Link Line Advisor

Dependencies

n/a

HP-SEE Applications

  • NUQG Numerical study of ultra-cold quantum gases

Resource Centers

Usage by Other Projects and Communities

  • If any

Recommendations for Configuration and Usage

Please describe here any common settings, configurations or conventions that would make the usage of this resource (library or tool) more interoperable or scalable across the HP-SEE resources. These recommendations should include anything that is related to the resource and is agreed upon by administrators and users, or across sites and applications. These recommendations should emerge from questions or discussions opened by site administrators or application developers, at any stage, including installation, development, usage, or adaptation for another HPC centre.

Provided descriptions should describe general or site specific aspects of resource installation, configuration and usage, or describe the guidelines or convention for deploying or using the resource within the local (user/site) or temporary environment (job). Examples are:

  • Common configuration settings of execution environment
  • Filesystem path or local access string
  • Environment variables to be set or used by applications
  • Options (e.g. additional modules) that are needed or required by applications and should be present
  • Minimum quantitative values (e.g. quotas) offered by the site
  • Location and format of some configuration or usage hint instructing applications on proper use of the resource or site specific policy
  • Key installation or configuration settings that should be set to a common value, or locally tweaked by local site admins
  • Conventions for application or job bound installation and usage of the resource