Development/General compiler usage

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Description Content
module load compiler/gnu|intel|llvm|pgi|...
License Intel: Commercial | GNU: GPL | LLVM: Apache 2 | PGI: Commercial


1 Description

The basic operations can be performed with the same commands for all available compilers. For advanced usage such as optimization and profiling you should consult the best practice guide of the compiler you intend to use (GCC, Intel Suite).

More information about the MPI versions of the GNU and Intel Compilers is available here:


2 Versions and availability

A list of versions currently available compilers on the bwHPC-C5-Clusters can be obtained from the CIS system. All the available versions are listed at the end of this page.

On the command line interface of any bwHPC cluster you'll get a list of available versions by using the command 'module avail compiler'.

$ : bwUniCluster 2.0
$ module avail compiler
---------------------- /opt/bwhpc/common/modulefiles/Core -----------------------
compiler/clang/9.0           compiler/gnu/8.3.1
compiler/gnu/9.3             compiler/gnu/10.2 (D)
compiler/intel/19.0          compiler/intel/19.1 (L,D)
compiler/llvm/10.0           compiler/pgi/2020

Please note, that further libraries, like MPI Libraries are dependent on the compiler and are only
visible, if a compiler has been loaded.
Due to this reason, the default system compiler (here '''compiler/gnu/8.3.1''')  has it's own module file.

$ : bwForCluster (Justus)
$ module avail compiler
---------------------- /opt/bwhpc/common/modulefiles -----------------------
compiler/gnu/4.5             compiler/intel/15.0(default)
compiler/gnu/4.7(default)    compiler/pgi/12.10(default)
compiler/gnu/4.8             compiler/pgi/12.10_static
compiler/gnu/4.9             compiler/pgi/13.7
compiler/gnu/5.2             compiler/pgi/13.7_static
compiler/intel/12.1          compiler/pgi/14.10
compiler/intel/13.1          compiler/pgi/14.10_static
compiler/intel/14.0


3 Loading the module

3.1 Default Version

You can load the default version of the a compiler with the command
module load compiler/name-of-the-compiler-suite.

Example with Intel on bwUniCluster

$ module avail compiler/intel
---------------------- /opt/bwhpc/common/modulefiles/Core -----------------------
compiler/intel/19.0    compiler/intel/19.1 (L,D)

$ module load compiler/intel
$ module list
Currently Loaded Modulefiles:
  1) compiler/intel/19.1(default)

Here, we got the "default" version 19.1 (example).

The module will try to load modules it needs to function. If loading the module fails, check if you have already loaded the module with 'module list'.


3.2 Specific (newer or older) Version

If you wish to load a specific compiler version and release (if available), you can do so using
module load compiler/name-of-the-compiler-suite/version-of-the-compiler-suite
to load the version you desires.

Example with Intel compiler, version 19.0 on bwUniCluster

$ module avail compiler/intel
---------------------- /opt/bwhpc/common/modulefiles -----------------------
compiler/intel/19.0    compiler/intel/19.1 (L,D)

$ module load compiler/intel/19.0
$ module list
Currently Loaded Modulefiles:
  1) compiler/intel/19.0

Intel C-Compiler "version 14.0" is loaded now (example).


All Intel, GCC and PGI have compilers for different languages which will be available after the module is loaded.


3.3 Linux Original Compiler

The original Compiler installed on all compute nodes is GNU.

  • Don't get distracted with the available compiler modules.
  • Only the modules are loading the complete environments needed.

Example

$ module purge                     # unload all modules
$ module list                      # control
No Modulefiles Currently Loaded.
$ gcc --version                    # see version of default Linux GNU compiler
gcc (GCC) 8.3.1 20191121 (Red Hat 8.3.1-5)
[...]
$ module load compiler/gnu         # load default GNU compiler module
$ module list                      # control
Currently Loaded Modulefiles:
  1) compiler/gnu/10.2(default)
$ gcc --version                    # now, check the current (loaded) module
gcc (GCC) 10.2.0
[...]


4 Synoptical Tables

4.1 Compilers (no MPI)

Compiler Suite Language Command
Intel Composer

• Best Practice Guides on Intel Compiler Software
C icc
C++ icpc
Fortran ifort
GCC

• Best Practice Guides on GNU Compiler Software
C gcc
C++ g++
Fortran gfortran
PGI C pgcc
C++ pgCC
Fortran 77/90 pgf77 or pgf90


4.2 MPI compiler and Underlying Compilers

The following table lists available MPI compiler commands and the underlying compilers, compiler families, languages, and application binary interfaces (ABIs) that they support.

MPI Compiler Command Default Compiler Supported Language(s) Supported ABI's
Generic Compilers
mpicc gcc, cc C 32/64 bit
mpicxx g++ C/C++ 32/64 bit
mpifc gfortran Fortran77/Fortran 95 32/64 bit
GNU Compiler Versions 3 and higher
mpigcc gcc C 32/64 bit
mpigxx g++ C/C++ 32/64 bit
mpif77 g77 Fortran 77 32/64 bit
mpif90 gfortran Fortran 95 32/64 bit
Intel Fortran, C++ Compilers Versions 13.1 through 14.0 and Higher
mpiicc icc C 32/64 bit
mpiicpc icpc C++ 32/64 bit
impiifort ifort Fortran77/Fortran 95 32/64 bit


5 How to use

The following compiler commands work for all the compilers in the list above even though the examples will be for icc only.

5.1 Commands

When hello.c is a C source code file such as

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    printf("Hello world\n");
    return 0;
}

it can be compiled and linked with the single command

$ icc hello.c -o hello

to produce an executable named hello.


This process can be divided into two steps:

$ icc -c hello.c
$ icc hello.o -o hello

When using libraries you must sometimes specify where the

  • include files are (option -I) and where the
  • library files are (option -L).

In addition you have to tell the compiler which

  • library you want to use (option -l).

For example after loading the module numlib/fftw you can compile code for fftw using

$ icc -c hello.c -I$FFTW_INC_DIR
$ icc hello.o -o hello -L$FFTW_LIB_DIR -lfftw3

When the program crashes or doesn't produce the expected output the compiler can help you by printing warning messages:

$ icc -Wall hello.c -o hello


5.2 Debugger

If the problem can't be solved this way you can inspect what exactly your program does using a debugger.

To use the debugger properly with your program you have to compile it with debug information (option -g):

Example

$ icc -g hello.c -o hello

Although -Wall should always be set, the -g option should only be stated when you want to find bugs, since it may slow down execution and enlarges the binary due to debugging symbols.


5.3 Optimization

The usual and common way to compile your source is to apply compiler optimization.

Since there are many optimization options, as a start for now the optimization level -O2 is recommended:

$ icc -O2 hello.c -o hello

Beware: The optimization-flag used is a capital-O (like Otto) and not a 0 (Zero)!


Both compilers offer a multitude of options (with regard to the above and others), one may check the complete list of options with short explanation on GCC and Intel Suite using option -v --help:

$ icc -v --help hello.c -o hello

Please note, that the optimization level -O2 produces code for a general instruction set. If You want to set the instruction set available, and take advantage of AVX2 or AVX512f, You have to either add the machine-dependent -mavx512f or set the specific architecture of your target processor. For BwUniCluster_2.0 this depends on whether You run your application on any node, then You would select the older Broadwell CPU, or whether You target the newer HPC nodes (which feature Xeon Gold 6230, aka "Cascade Lake" architecture.

$ gcc -O2 -o hello hello.c                        # General optimization for any architecture
$ gcc -O2 -march=broadwell -o hello hello.c       # Will work on any compute node on bwUniCluster 2.0
$ gcc -O2 -march=cascadelake -o hello hello.c     # This may not run on Broadwell nodes

While adding -march=broadwell adds the compiler options such as -mavx -mavx2 -msse3 -msse4 -msse4.1 -msse4.2 -mssse3, adding -march=cascadelake will further this by -mavx512bw -mavx512cd -mavx512dq -mavx512f -mavx512vl -mavx512vnni -mfma, where -mfma is the setting for allowing fused-multiply-add. These options may provide considerable speed-up to your code as is.

For GCC the options in use are best visible by calling gcc -O2 -fverbose-asm -S -o hello.S hello.c. The option -fverbose-asm stores all the options in the assembler file hello.S.

You should then pay attention to vectorization attained by the compiler -- and concentrate on the time-consuming loops, where the compiler was not able to vectorize. This information is available with the Intel compiler using -qopt-report=5 producing a lot of output in hello.optrpt, while GCC offers this information using -fopt-info-all