[HEADSUP] Atlas changed libraries

[Dan Horák]

On Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:19:13 +0200
Frantisek Kluknavsky <fkluknav at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 09/25/2013 09:47 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > Frantisek Kluknavsky wrote:
> >> People with interest in secondary architectures might oppose that.
> >
> > Which architectures are the problem? OpenBLAS currently supports:
> > | 2. Supported Architecture
> > |
> > |    X86  : Pentium3 Katmai
> > |                    Coppermine
> > |           Athlon  (not well optimized, though)
> > |           PentiumM Banias, Yonah
> > |           Pentium4 Northwood
> > |                    Nocona (Prescott)
> > |         Core 2   Woodcrest
> > |      Core 2   Penryn
> > |           Nehalem-EP  Corei{3,5,7}
> > |      Atom
> > |           AMD Opteron
> > |      AMD Barlcelona, Shanghai, Istanbul
> > |      VIA NANO
> > |
> > |   X86_64: Pentium4 Nocona
> > |         Core 2   Woodcrest
> > |      Core 2   Penryn
> > |           Nehalem
> > |       Atom
> > |           AMD Opteron
> > |      AMD Barlcelona, Shanghai, Istanbul
> > |      VIA NANO
> > |
> > |   IA64  : Itanium2
> > |
> > |   Alpha : EV4, EV5, EV6
> > |
> > |   POWER : POWER4
> > |           PPC970/PPC970FX
> > |           PPC970MP
> > |     CELL (PPU only)
> > |           POWER5
> > |           PPC440   (QCDOC)
> > |           PPC440FP2(BG/L)
> > |           POWERPC G4(PPC7450)
> > |           POWER6
> > |
> > |   SPARC : SPARC IV
> > |           SPARC VI, VII (Fujitsu chip)
> > |
> > |   MIPS64/32: Sicortex
> >
> > | Additional support CPU:
> > | x86/x86-64:
> > | * Intel Xeon 56xx (Westmere): Used GotoBLAS2 Nehalem codes.
> > | * Intel Sandy Bridge: Optimized Level-3 BLAS with AVX on x86-64.
> > | * Intel Haswell: Optimized Level-3 BLAS with AVX on x86-64
> > | (identical to Sandy Bridge).
> > | * AMD Bobcat: Used GotoBLAS2 Barcelona codes.
> > | * AMD Bulldozer: x86-64 S/DGEMM AVX kernels. (Thank Werner Saar)
> > | * AMD PILEDRIVER: Used Bulldozer codes.
> > | MIPS64:
> > | * ICT Loongson 3A: Optimized Level-3 BLAS and the part of
> > | Level-1,2.
> > | * ICT Loongson 3B: Experimental
> >
> > (and as I said, ARM is being worked on as we speak, so it's not
> > listed yet, but will be very soon).
> >
> >> Perhabs if we ensure binary compatibility then we can make them
> >> freely interchangeable.
> >
> > I also like the binary compatibility approach (used for ATLAS in
> > the past: you build against reference BLAS/LAPACK and then get
> > whatever one you want pulled in at runtime), but Susi Lehtola wrote
> > that it is not supported (or for ATLAS, not anymore) by upstream.
> >
> >          Kevin Kofler
> >
> 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures says PowerPC and s390x. 
> S390x is unsupported according to this list. Our PowerPCs are Power7
> if I remember correctly. Is that a problem? Does OpenBlas recognize
> Power7?

Missing support for s390/s390x is a problem for us (with my red hat
on). Is there no fallback implementation?

Does is OpenBLAS fail completely when CPU not listed above is found?
Because for Power7 and up anything written for Power < 7 will work.


		Dan