PLASMA-2.3.0-win64.exe download fails on trying to run

[Shaeffer]

Am trying to get started on a Windows XP64 (emt64) platform. Downloaded PLASMA-2.3.0-win64.exe and get the following message:

The image file c:\documents and settings\john\my documents\downloads\Plasma-2.3.0-win64.exe is valid, but is for a machine type other than the current machine.

Any ideas why?

Thanks.

John

[Shaeffer]

The 2.1.0 win 64 will download and install. My guess is that the 2.3.0 version was compiled for its host machine and not older CPU's. Can this be fixed?

[yarkhan]

Sorry about the problems you are having. I will post a new version of the PLASMA library for Windows as soon as possible and I will update this thread to let you know.
Asim

[yarkhan]

An updated binary for PLASMA on Windows 64 has been released, and it should eliminate the problems you were having. The binary installer for PLASMA-2.3.1-win64.exe can be obtained by following the Software link from the PLASMA website.
http://icl.cs.utk.edu/plasma/

After downloading and installing, you can run the test suite by switching to the testing subdirectory and using Python to run our test suite.
python plasma_testing.py
For LAPACK style testing, switch to the testing/lin subdirectory and use Python to run the test suite there.
python lapack_testing.py

See the top level file CMakeBuildNotes for more information about the Windows port.

[Shaeffer]

This new 2.3.0-win64 did install. Thank you. Now must master how to run.

[yarkhan]

Hi John,

The only configuration that is currently used to build the PLASMA libraries under Windows is using the Intel icl and ifort compilers. One reason for this is because PLASMA internally uses the C99 complex datatype, which is not available in the Microsoft C Visual Studio compiler. We also do most of our testing by linking with the Intel MKL BLAS libraries.

If you use the pre-built PLASMA binaries that are distributed on the ICL website, the header files have been adjusted so that you can use the Microsoft VS C compiler to compile your own files and link with the pre-built PLASMA libraries.

Almost all the performance will be achieved by linking PLASMA with a highly tuned BLAS library (e.g. Intel MKL) rather than the simple reference BLAS that is distributed with PLASMA (for testing purposes).

Unless you have a real need to rebuild the PLASMA library, I would suggest you use the static libraries as provided in the lib subdirectory (i.e. plasma.lib coreblas.lib quark.lib lapacke.lib {yourlapack.libs} blas_cwrapper.lib {yourblas.libs} {any_other_required_support_libs} ). Please see the file examples/Makefile.nmake for examples of settings that would be required for various compilers and BLAS libraries.

If you decide that you need to rebuild PLASMA at your site, I will try to help you as much as possible.

Regards,
Asim


On 01/10/2011 09:53 AM, John Shaeffer wrote:
> Asim,
>
> On the Windows re-compile errors: Forgot to mention that my C compiler is cl from Visual Studio 2005 and the Fortran compiler is ifort 11.1.65.
>
> My errors may be due to cl vs icl.
>
> John

[Shaeffer]

Am interested in Win 64 compiling so as to obtain the *.exe's in the timing and timing/lin (C and Fortran versions) directories to test out.

The pre-compiled Win-64 down load has neither of these. Any way to include this in the download?

Was able to build the C timing versions on my 64bit Linux box to do initial timing.

Thanks.

John

[yarkhan]

Hi John,

The standard CMake build process will generate the binaries in the testing subdirectory, they are simply not included in the distribution package because each of the tests produces a separate statically linked binary, making the size of the distribution very large.

However, since you have requested them, I will create a separate package for you that includes the binaries in timing, linked against static MKL BLAS libraries. I will send you information about where you can download it in a separate message. You can use these binaries to get an idea of the performance on your platform.

As an example, in subdirectory timing
time_cgesv --help
will give you details on how to setup the timing run. For example
time_cgesv --threads 4 --n_range=1000:5000:1000 --nb=200
The nb paramter refers to the tile size used by the computation. In future, this value will be auto-tuned for the hardware, but for the moment it is assigned to a default value of 128. This parameter can have a strong effect on the performance, so try nb=140, 180, 200, 220 to get a feel for the performance for your problem.

Asim