[Beowulf] newbie

[Prentice Bisbal]

Tomislav Maric wrote:
> @Prentice Bisbal || Greg Lindahl || John Hearns || anyone
> 
> Why Intel compiler? OpenFOAM is compiled with gcc. My mentor instructed
> me to compile it with the same gcc - we communicate via e-mail because
> he's spread all over the world, so I'm keeping the differences in our
> builds as small as possible.
> 

Someone else recommended the Intel Compilers, I just mentioned that
there are restrictions on what Intel considers "academic use".

However, since you asked, commercial compilers generally optimize the
code better than GCC. The performance/cost trade-off needs be be
determined by you. If you do have a limited budget, GCC will probably be
adequate.

Regardless of your compiler, you should look at optimized libraries to
boost your performance. GotoBLAS, for example, is hand-optimized and is
very fast for linear algebra operations. Because it's hand optimized
with assembly code (or so I've been told) - never used it myself), it's
performance should be the same regardless of the compiler.


-- 
Prentice