topic MKL PARDISO Manual Question in Intel® oneAPI Math Kernel Library

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

xian-zhong_guous_cd- — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:05:48 GMT

I am comfused by following instruction at MKL reference manual 630813-027US p2179:

"Note that if iparm(60) is equal to 1 or 2, and the total peak
memory needed for strong local arrays is less than
MKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE, the program stops
with error -9. In this case, increase of
MKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE is recommended."

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

Sergey_P_Intel2 — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:13:23 GMT

Hi,

Let me clarify this instruction: PARDISO has two modes of execution: In-Core, when all LU factor are fit in RAM, and Out-of-core (OOC) otherwise. In the last case most of LU factors are stored on hard disk. OOC mode (iparm(60) = 1 or 2) requires information about memory which PARDISO can utilize - it determines by MKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE parameter; and PARDISO stops with error= -9 in the case when the specified amount memory is not enough for solving the task. In this case the amount of memory should be increased to solve it.

Regards,

Sergey

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

xian-zhong_guous_cd- — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:35:34 GMT

You indicate if
total peak memory > MKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE, PARDISO stops with error=-9. That makes perfect sense.
However, the manual seems indicate
total peak memory < MKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE, PARDISO stops with error=-9.
That's where my confusion is.

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

xian-zhong_guous_cd- — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:34:40 GMT

Two more questions:
1. in-core vs OOC: it seems the most flexbile setting is iparm(60)=1 (letting PARDISO to decide). My question is: is iparm(60)=1 as efficient as explicit setting? For example, in article Tips using PARDISO(http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/pardiso-tips/) , I found following:
"Performance recommendations

To achieve the best performance, we do not recommend the use of the out-of-core (OOC) PARDISO for small matrices. We recommend using the in-core PARDISO for all cases where the memory required for storing PARDISO factors exceeds the RAM by less than 30%. The size of the factors in kbytes can be obtained with the help of iparm(17) after phase 11 (see Intel MKL reference manual)."
This seems indicate I should use the ohase 11 result to decide in-core or OOC and set iparm(60)=0 or iparm(60)=2 myself.

2. OOC not threading: I found following in article How to use OOC PARDISO (http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/how-to-use-ooc-pardiso)
"The current OOC version does not use threading, thus both the parameter iparm(3) and the variable MKL_NUM_THREADS must be set to 1 when iparm(60) is equal to 1 or 2."
Does this mean OOC is running in sequential mode (instead of parallel shared memory mode)?

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

Gennady_F_Intel — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 11:15:04 GMT

Thank you for pointing out the mistake. We will correct that in the future updates.

--Gennady

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

xian-zhong_guous_cd- — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:27:02 GMT

Can someone answer above two questions about OOC for me? Thanks.

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

Alexander_K_Intel2 — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:26:11 GMT

Hi,

Answer on first question: both variants are possible. The sentence from manual that you mention means that sometimes in-core version of PARDISO could use HDD in swop and provide better performance than OOC PARDISO. As about second question: it does depend from version of MKL you used. If you use 10.2 update 2 of latter version then OOC PARDISO version is parallelized

With best regards,

Alexander Kalinkin

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

Gennady_F_Intel — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:51:21 GMT

xian-zhong, see the documentation of the latest versions ( 10.2 update7 and 10.3.1). This problem has been fixed there. As an example see the snip from this doc ( 10.3. Update1 - bundled with Composer XE 2011):

Ifiparm(60)is equal to 1 or 2, and the total peak memory needed for strong local arrays is more thanMKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE, the program stops with error -9. In this case, increaseMKL_PARDISO_OOC_MAX_CORE_SIZE.

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

xian-zhong_guous_cd- — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:54:25 GMT

Typo: strong should be storing, I believe.

MKL PARDISO Manual Question

Gennady_F_Intel — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:07:14 GMT

I agree with this observation. Will be fixed into the next update.