PClinux vs ubuntu

Hi,

nice to know that PCLinuxOs is faster..

First of all, you can have multiple CPU supports in CAELinux3B if you install the SMP kernel (only after installation to hard disk).

Concerning performance: one explanation can be that Code-Aster in CAELinux 3B as been compiled with optimized ATLAS library instead of the standard BLAS/LAPACK libraries for linear algebra functions. From what I read in Code-Aster forum, this can make a huge difference depending of the type of simulation that you run.

Moreover, the multi-cpu support in Code-Aster (multi-front solver) is not available if you use GCC/G77 compilers, you will need an OpenMP compatible compiler like Intel C/Fortran compilers to use these features. But some other solvers used in Aster (FETI if i remember well) use MPI instead of openMP so you could use these solvers with GCC/G77.

At the moment, the version of Aster provided in CAELinux does not use any parallelization.

Hello,

the only things I did for CAELinux 3B is :
1) create a complete set of BLAS + LAPACK libs by embedding ATLAS routines when available
2) compile Aster with G77-3.3.6 & GCC-3.3.6 with links to the the ATLAS libs created in 1)

But I heard taht if you use gfortran instead of g77, it may result in a huge performance drop...