HPCBIOS_06-01: Common Set of Open Source Math Libraries

Note

This policy defines a set of open source math libraries and their consistent maintenance (compatible version and configuration) across resources of HPCBIOS compatible sites. Having same configuration is dependent on system compatibility, and also, some libraries may have slightly different configurations due to architectural differences. These differences, however, SHOULD NOT affect the use of the libraries.

A user moving from one resource to another is not expected to notice significant difference between the installations and it is expected to find an optimized version of that library.

  • BC Project: HPCBIOS_06-01
  • Date of Policy: 2012-12-15

The suite of maintained packages consists of:

Library API Purpose Compliance level References
FFTW Library for computing Discrete Fourier Transforms Both MPI and non-MPI versions should be provided. MUST http://www.fftw.org/
PETSc Suite of scientific computing routines MUST http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/
LAPACK Software library of numerical linear algebra routines MUST http://www.netlib.org/lapack/
ScaLAPACK Subset of parallelized LAPACK routines MUST http://www.netlib.org/scalapack/
BLAS optimized stack
Basic linear algebra routines; this could be any of:
  • ATLAS
  • MKL
  • OpenBLAS or GotoBLAS
MUST http://www.netlib.org/blas/ http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-mkl http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/tacc-projects/#blas https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS
GSL C/C+ library with a wide variety of mathematical routines MUST http://www.gnu.org/s/gsl/
SPRNG Pseudo-Random Number Generators for Stochastic computation via Monte Carlo methods et al MUST http://sprng.cs.fsu.edu/
ARPACK Solution of Eigenvalues/Eigenvectors MAY http://www.caam.rice.edu/software/ARPACK/
SuperLU Direct solution of sparse linear systems of equations MAY http://crd.lbl.gov/~xiaoye/SuperLU

Change notification

Guidelines:

  • This policy MUST provide for the default/prefered implementation for LINPACK/BLAS functions
  • Notification MUST be sent via the system’s helpdesk, announcing the new version and describing how to access it and use it
  • The helpdesk MUST be given a minimum of 2 weeks notice when the new version becomes the default version
  • It is the responsibility of the individual sites to notify their users of any changes

See also

Native Libraries

As regards packages ScaLAPACK, LAPACK and/or ATLAS, they MAY not be installed whenever a system includes native libraries such as PESSL (Parallel ESSL) ACML or, MKL (Math kernel Libraries) that fully provide the same functionality and interface. However, if an explicit request is made to have open source ScaLAPACK, LAPACK and/or ATLAS available on a system, then these packages MUST also be installed.

Support

A helpdesk team (User Support) maintains the suite of software listed in this policy, and it also provides the needed support channels.