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Derek Huang edited this page Aug 9, 2021 · 18 revisions
Table of Contents

Compile the library
Link the library
Code examples
Troubleshooting
BLAS reference manual

Compile the library

Normal compile

  • type make to detect the CPU automatically. or
  • type make TARGET=xxx to set target CPU, e.g. make TARGET=NEHALEM. The full target list is in file TargetList.txt.

Cross compile

Please set CC and FC with the cross toolchains. Then, set HOSTCC with your host C compiler. At last, set TARGET explicitly.

Examples:

  • On x86 box, compile the library for ARM Cortex-A9 linux.

Install only gnueabihf versions. Please check https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/issues/936#issuecomment-237596847

make CC=arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc FC=arm-linux-gnueabihf-gfortran HOSTCC=gcc TARGET=CORTEXA9
  • On X86 box, compile this library for loongson3a CPU.
make BINARY=64 CC=mips64el-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc FC=mips64el-unknown-linux-gnu-gfortran HOSTCC=gcc TARGET=LOONGSON3A
  • On X86 box, compile this library for loongson3a CPU with loongcc (based on Open64) compiler.
make CC=loongcc FC=loongf95 HOSTCC=gcc TARGET=LOONGSON3A CROSS=1 CROSS_SUFFIX=mips64el-st-linux-gnu-   NO_LAPACKE=1 NO_SHARED=1 BINARY=32

Debug version

make DEBUG=1

Install to the directory (optional)

Example:

make install PREFIX=your_installation_directory

The default directory is /opt/OpenBLAS. Note that any flags passed to make during build should also be passed to make install to circumvent any install errors, i.e. some headers not being copied over correctly.

For more information, please read Installation Guide.

Link the library

  • Link shared library
gcc -o test test.c -I/your_path/OpenBLAS/include/ -L/your_path/OpenBLAS/lib -Wl,-rpath,/your_path/OpenBLAS/lib -lopenblas

The -Wl,-rpath,/your_path/OpenBLAS/lib option to linker can be omitted if you ran ldconfig to update linker cache, put /your_path/OpenBLAS/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf or a file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d, or installed OpenBLAS in a location part of ld.so default search path. Otherwise, linking at runtime will fail.

If the library is multithreaded, please add -lpthread. If the library contains LAPACK functions, please add -lgfortran or other Fortran libs, although if you only make calls to LAPACKE routines, i.e. your code has #include "lapacke.h" and makes calls to methods like LAPACKE_dgeqrf, -lgfortran is not needed.

  • Link static library
gcc -o test test.c /your/path/libopenblas.a

You can download test.c from https://gist.github.com/xianyi/5780018

Code examples

Call CBLAS interface

This example shows calling cblas_dgemm in C. https://gist.github.com/xianyi/6930656

#include <cblas.h>
#include <stdio.h>

void main()
{
  int i=0;
  double A[6] = {1.0,2.0,1.0,-3.0,4.0,-1.0};         
  double B[6] = {1.0,2.0,1.0,-3.0,4.0,-1.0};  
  double C[9] = {.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5}; 
  cblas_dgemm(CblasColMajor, CblasNoTrans, CblasTrans,3,3,2,1,A, 3, B, 3,2,C,3);

  for(i=0; i<9; i++)
    printf("%lf ", C[i]);
  printf("\n");
}
gcc -o test_cblas_open test_cblas_dgemm.c -I /your_path/OpenBLAS/include/ -L/your_path/OpenBLAS/lib -lopenblas -lpthread -lgfortran

Call BLAS Fortran interface

This example shows calling dgemm Fortran interface in C. https://gist.github.com/xianyi/5780018

#include "stdio.h"
#include "stdlib.h"
#include "sys/time.h"
#include "time.h"

extern void dgemm_(char*, char*, int*, int*,int*, double*, double*, int*, double*, int*, double*, double*, int*);

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  int i;
  printf("test!\n");
  if(argc<4){
    printf("Input Error\n");
    return 1;
  }

  int m = atoi(argv[1]);
  int n = atoi(argv[2]);
  int k = atoi(argv[3]);
  int sizeofa = m * k;
  int sizeofb = k * n;
  int sizeofc = m * n;
  char ta = 'N';
  char tb = 'N';
  double alpha = 1.2;
  double beta = 0.001;

  struct timeval start,finish;
  double duration;

  double* A = (double*)malloc(sizeof(double) * sizeofa);
  double* B = (double*)malloc(sizeof(double) * sizeofb);
  double* C = (double*)malloc(sizeof(double) * sizeofc);

  srand((unsigned)time(NULL));

  for (i=0; i<sizeofa; i++)
    A[i] = i%3+1;//(rand()%100)/10.0;

  for (i=0; i<sizeofb; i++)
    B[i] = i%3+1;//(rand()%100)/10.0;

  for (i=0; i<sizeofc; i++)
    C[i] = i%3+1;//(rand()%100)/10.0;
  //#if 0
  printf("m=%d,n=%d,k=%d,alpha=%lf,beta=%lf,sizeofc=%d\n",m,n,k,alpha,beta,sizeofc);
  gettimeofday(&start, NULL);
  dgemm_(&ta, &tb, &m, &n, &k, &alpha, A, &m, B, &k, &beta, C, &m);
  gettimeofday(&finish, NULL);

  duration = ((double)(finish.tv_sec-start.tv_sec)*1000000 + (double)(finish.tv_usec-start.tv_usec)) / 1000000;
  double gflops = 2.0 * m *n*k;
  gflops = gflops/duration*1.0e-6;

  FILE *fp;
  fp = fopen("timeDGEMM.txt", "a");
  fprintf(fp, "%dx%dx%d\t%lf s\t%lf MFLOPS\n", m, n, k, duration, gflops);
  fclose(fp);

  free(A);
  free(B);
  free(C);
  return 0;
}
gcc -o time_dgemm time_dgemm.c /your/path/libopenblas.a
./time_dgemm <m> <n> <k>

Troubleshooting

  • Please read Faq at first.
  • Please use gcc version 4.6 and above to compile Sandy Bridge AVX kernels on Linux/MingW/BSD.
  • Please use Clang version 3.1 and above to compile the library on Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. The Clang 3.0 will generate the wrong AVX binary code.
  • The number of CPUs/Cores should less than or equal to 256. On Linux x86_64(amd64), there is experimental support for up to 1024 CPUs/Cores and 128 numa nodes if you build the library with BIGNUMA=1.
  • OpenBLAS does not set processor affinity by default. On Linux, you can enable processor affinity by commenting the line NO_AFFINITY=1 in Makefile.rule. But this may cause the conflict with R parallel.
  • On Loongson 3A. make test would be failed because of pthread_create error. The error code is EAGAIN. However, it will be OK when you run the same testcase on shell.

BLAS reference manual

If you want to understand every BLAS function and definition, please read Intel MKL reference manual or netlib.org

Here are OpenBLAS extension functions

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