Basic info on MKL

[markww]

Hi all,

Just wanted to get some facts to see if mkl can help me. I have an application that has very large chunks of floating point calculations. I was searching around the web to find some optimization solutions and came here. Does MKL speed up floating point calculations for multiplication,division, as well as boosts over math.h's exp(), sqrt(), etc? Or is it really a set of specialized functions for select matrix functions?

Thanks for any and all info!

Mark

[TimP]

MKL does include the short vector math function libraries which are invoked automatically by Intel compilers. You will need the compiler if you want to use them directly in a convenient way. Intel IPP library also has such vector functions.

[markww]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the post. So if I use the intel compiler, it will automatically use these faster routines in MKL during compilation?

Thanks

[Todd_R_Intel]

Mark,

You mention *, /, sqrt and exp. MKL provides functions that will do these sorts ofoperations (/, sqrt, exp and others) component-wise on long vectors. The Intel compilers make use of some of the same sorts of optimizations automaticallyunrolling a loop will provide performance benefits. The Intel compiler does not however automatically call MKL.

Todd

[TimP]

When you call an MKL function, that function may make use of short vector library. As Todd says, presence of MKL installation doesn't automatically change anything in your compilation.