between the application and MPI.  that is, I would like to be able
to compile MPI (say, OpenMPI) with gcc, and expect it to work correctly with apps compiled with other compilers. I guess I'm reasoning by analogy to normal distro libs.


I haven't built OpenMPI this way,
but you may try to link statically with commercial compiler libraries
(say -static-intel, -Bstatic_pgi),

I'd rather build with gcc if possible. I guess I'd be surprised if there were compute-intensive-enough parts of MPI to justify using some other compiler. (please, if anyone has any quantitative observations on the quality of current compilers, let me/list know!)

Yes, they do recommend compiler homogeneity.
However, I have built hybrids gcc+ifort
and gcc+pgf90 and both work fine.
(I have the homogeneous versions also.)

oh.  so the idea here is that the C part of OpenMPI has an ABI
which is compatible with basically all the other C compilers,
such as would be used to compile app-side code. but that the fortran side has to be matched, library and app sides? if that's the case,
then would it make sense to factor out the fortran interface?

Fortran77 never had these features anyway, and I guess
mpif77 doesn't check if you are passing an integer
where it should be a real, or if your argument list is shorter
than the function requires.

so if I have f90 code that uses an mpi header (not .mod interface),
does that mean there's no function signature checking at all?
as far as I know, my organization has never done .mod-based MPI,
so maybe this is why we're facing the issue now, after 10 years and 4k users ;)

PS: we have a large and diverse user base, so tend to have to support gcc, intel, pathscale and pgi.

... and don't forget Open64!  :)

well, that's an interesting point.  I haven't quite figured out who is doing
the canonical release for Open64 nowadays (highest ver number seems to be from AMD). have you done any comparisons?

we even have people who want to use
intel's damned synthetic 128b FP over MPI :(

It's hard to keep the customer satisfied.
You give them the sky, they want the universe.

for me, the real problem is knowing whether the user understands that synthetic 128b FP is drastically slower than 64b hardware FP. has anyone
tried to do a comparison?

thanks, mark.
_______________________________________________
Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit 
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf

Reply via email to