ATLAS (Automatically
Tuned Linear Algebra Software) is a high performance implementation
of the complete BLAS library
plus a few selected LAPACK
routines, with interfaces for both C and Fortran. On SciClone, we have
installed multiple copies of the ATLAS libraries, individually tuned
for each type
of node in the system, in both 32-bit (v8) and 64-bit (v9) versions.
Threaded versions of the libraries are also available for multiprocessor
node types (everything except c1 and c3 nodes).
/usr/local/ATLAS/include
/usr/local/[v8plusa,v9a]/c3/lib
/usr/local/[v8plusb,v9b]/[c5,db1,n2,s3]/lib
Use of an ATLAS library
on a node type other than the one for which it was built may result
in poor performance (if it even runs at all). For example, a program
linked to the c5 version of the library most likely will fail if it
is executed on a c3 node. Similarly, a 32-bit (v8) library cannot be
linked against a 64-bit (v9) application, and vice versa.
Sun's Performance
Library contains an alternative BLAS implementation which has also
been tuned for UltraSPARC architectures.
SciClone's ATLAS libraries
were built using Sun's Forte Developer 7
compilers rather than the recommended GCC 3.0.4 compilers. Based on
the results reported by the ATLAS installation procedure, the Sun compilers
provided better performance overall.
