Atlas-3.2.1
Greetings! As some of you may have noticed, atlas-3.2.1 is in
unstable. Please try it out and put it through a good testing. If
someone is writing something on the suitability of Debian for
beowulfery, it might also be good to check this package out. I think
it displays many architectural strengths of the Debian system. It
also will most likely represent a small scoop on several other
distros, at least in the short run, as your friendly Debian
maintainer, in the course of working on this package, has wound up
contributing several of the latest kernels for the upstream package
using SSE in assembly :-).
Some features of note:
1) Debian package completely reworks the standard build process,
enabling true cross-compilation for a limited but extensible and
common set of subarchitectures.
2) Several compatible binary packages, containing binary compatible
shared libraries, which can be simultaneously installed.
3) Automatic configuration to enable loading of best shared libs for the
running cpu. Configuration currently done at install time, though
would be good to have a boot time check for cpu/kernel upgrades.
4) Directory layout separating code containing cpu extension
instructions. Hopefully will be blessed by policy soon.
4) Binary compatible blas and lapack libs, accelerating many other
packages without recompilation.
5) Provides virtual packages blas2 and lapack2, so that other packages
can depend only on the more portable reference blas/lapack,
generate binaries for all Debian ports, and then enjoy speedup
where atlas is available without recompilation.
6) Supports exporting /usr across nfs to a mixed subarchitecture
cluster, with each client running its optimal library.
7) Support for SSE1, SSE2, and 3dnow extensions, with massive
performance increases where available.
8) Standard upstream custom install provided with 'debian/rules
custom'. Timing custom libraries with 'debian/rules
custom-test'. Still need to adequately workout package naming to
preserve subarch directory structure for custom builds.
9) Tester/timers packaged, which can link against any combination of
libs by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
10) Test/timing results of base build run at package build time, and
included in package.
11) Example of true open source collaboration with upstream author,
during which significant improvements were made not only to the
code, but also in the method of development and the number of
developers working on the package.
12) Haven't checked the latest figures, but my understanding is that
the open source atlas is currently one of the best, if not the best
blas available for many common platforms. No need to use closed
source ascii-red blas anymore, as far as I can see.
Anyway, its been truly rewarding to see the open source concept
perform so well here.
--
Camm Maguire camm@enhanced.com
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
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