CPU fun

Random CPU related notes from a parallel runtime library writer.

Top posts of the year

And their main takeaways
121 implied HN points 22 Feb 24
  1. Floating point arithmetic can be more complex than expected, especially due to limited mantissa bits, affecting the accuracy of calculations.
  2. Complaining about OpenMP reductions giving 'the wrong answer' is misguided; the issue likely existed in the serial code and is now being exposed.
  3. Changing the type of the accumulator to 'double' can help resolve issues with floating point arithmetic and accuracy during sum reductions.
0 implied HN points 31 Oct 23
  1. Mixing OpenMP runtimes in the same program can cause fatal issues.
  2. For non-offload codes, the LLVM runtime can provide the interfaces needed by GCC compiled OpenMP code.
  3. It's safer to link with the LLVM runtime only when dealing with OpenMP.