On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 7:05 AM, Andrew Lowe <a...@wht.com.au> wrote: > On 03/19/12 20:34, Mark Knecht wrote: >> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 5:32 AM, Mark Knecht <markkne...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 10:26 PM, Andrew Lowe <a...@wht.com.au> wrote: >>>> Hi all, >>>> Has anyone played around with the various "better known" compilers on >>>> Gentoo? By "better known", I'm referring to gcc, Intel, llvm, pathscale. My >>>> situation is that I've just started my PhD which requires me to do Finite >>>> Element Analysis, FEA, and Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, and I want to >>>> find the "best" compiler for the job. Before anyone says "Why bother, XXX >>>> compiler is only 1 - 2% faster than gcc", in the context of the work I'm >>>> doing this 1 - 2% IS important. >>>> >>>> What I'm looking for is any feedback people may have on ability to compile >>>> the Gentoo environment, the ability to change compilers easily, gcc-config >>>> or flags in make.conf, as to whether the compiler/linker can use the >>>> libraries as compiled by gcc on a "standard" gentoo install and so on. >>>> Obviously there is much web trawling to be done to find what other people >>>> are saying as well. >>>> >>>> Any thoughts, greatly appreciated, >>>> Andrew Lowe >>>> >>>> >>> >>> Think CUDA >>> >>> Mark >> >> Sorry. Meant to include this reference: <$15 on Kindle. Reads great on >> Kindle for PC. >> >> http://www.amazon.com/CUDA-Example-Introduction-General-Purpose-ebook/dp/B003VYBOSE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1332160431&sr=8-4 >> >> > > I'm sorry but I'm doing a PhD, not creating a career in Academia. The > concept of writing an FEA or CFD from scratch, with CUDA is laughable, I > just don't have the time to learn CUDA, research the field, small > displacement, large displacement, dynamics, material nonlinearities, > write the code, and then most importantly benchmark it to make sure it's > actually correct. This is all bearing in mind that I have 20+ years > experience as a C/C++ technical software developer, including FEA and > CFD. I'll actually be using Code Aster, an open source FEA code that > runs under Linux. > > Sorry if I sound narky, but compilers is the subject at hand, not how > to write FEA code. > > Anyway, thanks for answering, > > Andrew >
Nahh, be as snarky as you like as long as you don't really mean it personally. My experience with CUDA, and I'm not a programmer, is that there is a fairly steep learning curve. However changing C compilers will get you maybe 5%. Changing to CUDA will get you 30,000%, assuming a mid-high range CUDA card and that you can parallel-ize FEA. I did a little Googling and it seems that FEA is a pretty common CUDA topic so I don't think at the outset that you'd find yourself all alone. Good luck whatever you do and know that I didn't mind the response at all! :-) Cheers, Mark
