[mvapich-discuss] Question on building MVAPICH2 on IBM iDataPlex

[Sayantan Sur]

Hi Michael,

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Michael E. Thomadakis
<michael-t at neo.tamu.edu> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we are planning to deploy MVAPICH2 along other popular MPI stacks on an
> iDataPlex cluster (8 core 2.8GHz Nehalems, 324 nodes, 4x QDR IB and
> DDNS2A9900 storage)
>
> I was wondering if compiling MVAPICH2 with the latest Intel compiler set has
> any real advantages as opposed to using GNU. Are there any things to watch
> for when we build suing GNU or Intel compilers?
>
> Thank you much ...
>

Thanks for your question. We did some experiments on our Nehalem QDR
systems by running NAS benchmarks while compiling both MPI library and
NAS benchmarks with Intel vs GNU. The mpi wrapper compiler "mpicc"
uses the compiler MPI was compiled with for compiling MPI
applications. Our numbers are as below:

NAS Class C tests with 32 processes

        GNU          Intel
FT       21.95      17.97
CG      12.21      11.22
MG      8.08        4.75
EP       23.36      13.78
LU      87.16        46.27
IS       3.18          3.10

Based on our results, we see that for some applications, such as LU,
the benefit can be around 50%. Thus, we would recommend that if you
have access to the Intel compiler on Nehalem systems, you should use
it.

> Michael
>
> --
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> % Michael E. Thomadakis, Ph.D.  Senior Lead Supercomputer Engineer/Res \
> % E-mail: miket AT tamu DOT edu                   Texas A&M University \
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>



-- 
Sayantan Sur

Research Scientist
Department of Computer Science
The Ohio State University.