[Beowulf] Quad-Core Parallelism

[Mark Hahn]

> I am wondering if there is any work on software for true parallism at the
>software level on any of the new Quad-Core chips?  Unfortunately, during my

what would "false" parallelism mean?  it's pretty common to use thread-level
parallelism in linpack/blas type libraries, as well as openmp.

>systems so parallel ESSL does me little good and I would have to recode a
>lot of things to use the ESSL routines.  I am now retired but still using

I think you don't literally mean ESSL, but rather some parallel library
(such as threaded linpack/blas/etc.)  and I think the answer is that you
can pretty easily use OpenMP if you would like to parallelize your own code.

>The question is whether ESSL or Parallel-ESSL is needed to do true parallel
>computing on a Quad-core chip?

these parallel libraries have no parallel magic to them - 
nothing which is not accessible to you via OpenMP (or some other threading
mechanism) and the compiler's data-parallel (SIMD SSE, etc) code generation.

>working on making a Quad-core CPU parallel (preferably f77 or f99) under
>RedHat LINUX?

sure, it's already there.  commercial compilers led GCC for a long time,
but even GCC has OpenMP support now (gfortran/gomp).

> 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?

possibly just an upgrade to the compiler.

regards, mark hahn.