[R] Compiling R with Intel compilers - recommended options?

[Jin Shusong]

Dear Cutts and Prof. Ripley,
On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 09:11:42AM +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
Some benchmarks show icc is faster than gcc and pgcc.  Even
fortran compiler ifort is also faster than pgf77 (See the
result on www.polyhedron.com).  But I still recommend gcc
and g77 as c and fortran compilers if you are on X86 Linux
platforms.  I once compiled R 1.9.0 by icc and ifort.  It
failed some of the checks.  I also found that the difference
between the speed of gcc+g77 and icc+ifort was not
significant when I 'make test-Gct'.
My platform Gentoo Linux pentium4 1.5GHz, 256M RAM and kernel
2.4.26.
gcc version 3.3
icc and ifort version 8.0 non-commercial version.

BTW, can you tell me the flags you used to compile R by pgcc
and pgf77. Thank you.

   Jin
> What OS and hardware is this?  Eventually you mention `X86 Linux' but are
> you using x86 Linux and if so how fast processors?  On a 3GHz machine make
> check takes a couple of minutes using gcc (and in our experience Portland
> Group is faster than gcc -- we have not tried Intel as local advice
> suggests it is slower than PG).
> 
> Which version of R?  R 1.9.0 does this with gcc 3.4.0 on Linux ix86, at
> the first use of LAPACK.  So if you are not trying 1.9.1beta (to be
> released on Monday), please do so.  After that, make check does give
> output so where exactly does it hang, and if you interrupt that check, how
> far has it got in the output file?
> 
> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Tim Cutts wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm a sysadmin who's been tasked with installing R on our 1000-node 
> > compute cluster.
> > I have licences for the Intel C and FORTRAN compilers, so I'm using the 
> > following to compile:
> > 
> > CFLAGS="-O2 -axWK"
> > FFLAGS=$CFLAGS
> > CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
> > 
> > CC=icc
> > F77=ifort
> > CXX=icc
> > 
> > FPICFLAGS=-fpic
> > 
> > ./configure --without-x --without-tcltk
> > 
> > The compilation seems to go OK, with a few warnings.  What concerns me 
> > is when I run the make check - how long should this take?  I've had one 
> > running for over 12 hours now, and it's still on:
> > 
> > running code in 'base-Ex.R' ...
> > 
> > and hasn't produced any output since; it just sits there burning CPU.  
> > I guess my question is:  I'm sure someone has successfully compiled R 
> > on X86 Linux using the Intel compilers before - what options did you 
> > use to make it work?  
> 
> Did you search the archives?  I found a lot of hits, none recent for ix86 
> Linux.
> 
> > And how long should this check phase take?
> 
> -- 
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
> 
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