[lug] Linux hardware

[D. Stimits]

Daniel Webb wrote:

> >Out of curiosity, Daniel, what compiler are you using for the Intel and
> >AMD processors?  I recall hearing that Intel's floating point operations
> >are not nearly as good as AMD's but that gcc doesn't take advantage of
> >some of the AMD's capabilities.  Does that seem reasonable based on your
> >experience?
>
>
>   We're just using gcc since it's what we know.  Someone in the other
> group may need to run some Fortran90 code, though, so GNU won't cut it for
> that.  Any recommendations out there for a free or low cost Fortran90
> compiler?
>
>   If what you say is true, then the AMD advantage for my problem
> (integration) will be even greater, and the comparison should be about
> the same for the other group's problem (collision search).
>
>   We haven't had time to look into any kind of parallelization approach,
> and I just got everything running right a few weeks ago, so I'm not sure
> how we're going to handle all this processing power.  Condor (a really
> powerful batch scheduler) just went free-software, by the way, so that's
> probably what we'll use eventually.
>
You might want to consider the Portland Group pgcc compiler, but it is 
not free. It is supposed to have very good performance in both the c/c++ 
and fortran world. If you make comparisons using programs compiled on 
that compiler, then it is probably a reasonable measure of how good an 
"optimized" app can run on the hardware. I have no personal experience 
with the compiler, but people who know what they are doing have 
commented on this many times.

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com