MKL_DYNAMIC

The MKL_DYNAMIC environment variable enables Intel MKL to dynamically change the number of threads.

The default value of MKL_DYNAMIC is TRUE, regardless of OMP_DYNAMIC, whose default value may be FALSE.

When MKL_DYNAMIC is TRUE, Intel MKL may use fewer OpenMP threads than the maximum number you specify.

For example, MKL_DYNAMIC set to TRUE enables optimal choice of the number of threads in the following cases:

• If the requested number of threads exceeds the number of physical cores (perhaps because of using the Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology), Intel MKL scales down the number of OpenMP threads to the number of physical cores.

• If you are able to detect the presence of a message-passing interface (MPI), but cannot determine whether it has been called in a thread-safe mode, Intel MKL runs one OpenMP thread.

When MKL_DYNAMIC is FALSE, Intel MKL uses the suggested number of OpenMP threads whenever the underlying algorithms permit. For example, if you attempt to do a size one matrix-matrix multiply across eight threads, the library may instead choose to use only one thread because it is impractical to use eight threads in this event.

If Intel MKL is called from an OpenMP parallel region in your program, Intel MKL uses only one thread by default. If you want Intel MKL to go parallel in such a call, link your program against an OpenMP threading RTL supported by Intel MKL and set the environment variables:

• OMP_NESTED to TRUE
• OMP_DYNAMIC and MKL_DYNAMIC to FALSE
• MKL_NUM_THREADS to some reasonable value

With these settings, Intel MKL uses MKL_NUM_THREADS threads when it is called from the OpenMP parallel region in your program.

In general, set MKL_DYNAMIC to FALSE only under circumstances that Intel MKL is unable to detect, for example, to use nested parallelism where the library is already called from a parallel section.