Perfomance of new Intel Fortran Composer with VS 2010

[fohfab]

This may not be a Fortran issue, but since transfering my C and Fortran projects over to Visual Studio 2010, I have found the the compilation/composing perfomance of the Intel Composer XE 2011 is very slow. The compilation of C code is fine.

Looking at the Windows Task Manager, I can see the the two cores are inactive for about 28 seconds out of 30!

The memory usage is constant, but the CPU remians at 0% for 90% of the time.

Could this be a licensing issue?

[Wendy_Doerner__Intel]

The compiler does check the licensse before each compilation, but that check should be the same for Intel C and Fortran Compiler. Are your licenses across a server? You can try copying the license to the same directory as the compiler and see if that speeds things up.

I should note though that our Fortran compiler will only use one core. It is not a parallel application, while you can specify parallle builds with the C compiler.

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Wendy

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[fohfab]

I am running on a Windows Server 2008 but my license file is on the same machine. INTEL_LICENSE_FILE is poiting to c:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Licenses.

The C projects are using Microsoft C, so they are not using the same licening mechanism.

I tried copying the .lic files to the compiler bin\ia32 directory, but this made no difference.

Have you any other suggestions?

[TimP]

The location you quote from INTEL_LICENSE_FILE is the normal one. If your license file isn't already present in that folder, you should be able to copy it there (likely requiring Administrator privilege).

[fohfab]

My license file is in the location pointed to by INTEL_LICENSE_FILE. It is a single user, uncounted license. Using the chklic utility responds correctly, but it too has a 10sec delay before each response. Is this expected?

I also have a setting for LM_LICENSE_FILE, which chklic is checking. Is this likely to slow down the response?

[TimP · Accepted solution]

I suppose you would have to remove LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable for testing purposes; it looks like it may be ignoring the local license.

[fohfab]

Yes, that did the trick. Does LM_LICENSE_FILE now take precidence over INTEL_LICENSE_FILE with Intel Composer XE 2011.

When I run chklic, the LM_LICENSE_FILE network locations were certainly at the bottom of the list. The local INTEL_LICENSE_FILE license file was checked first.

[Wendy_Doerner__Intel]

I am checking with our licensing team to see if this is on purpose or a bug (to check the local location last with the 2011 XE release). Will report back.

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Wendy

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[fohfab]

Have you managed to determin whether it is the intended policy of Fortran Composer XE to search LM_LICENSE_FILE BEFORE INTEL_LICENSE_FILE to search for valid network or license files?

[Wendy_Doerner__Intel]

Heard back from our licensing expert which I included below. It sounds like you should reduce the number of locations in these environment variables since all are checked even when a license is found.

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Wendy

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"There has been no change in the licensing mechanism to check LM_LICENSE_FILE before or after INTEL_LICENSE_FILE locations. I believe that it is inherent in FlexNet Licensing to check ALL locations before returning (even if a valid license is found in the first location), so the mere fact of specifying many locations or keeping a large number of license files will slow down license checkouts. As far as I know, the only difference between chklic checkouts and Composer checkouts is that Composer has a few hard-coded locations.

If you want to see where Composer is looking for licenses, you can set the environment variable INTEL_LMD_DEBUG to 1 for console output or a log file name to capture extra information. Additional information is also available by setting FLEXLM_DIAGNOSTICS=3 for more verbose console output."