Instruction Set Specific Dispatching on Intel® Architectures

Intel MKL automatically queries and then dispatches the code path supported on your Intel® processor to the optimal instruction set architecture (ISA) by default. The MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS environment variable or the mkl_enable_instructions support function enables you to dispatch to an ISA-specific code path of your choice. For example, you can run the Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) code path on an Intel processor based on Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel® AVX2), or you can run the Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4-2 (Intel® SSE4-2) code path on an Intel AVX-enabled Intel processor. This feature is not available on non-Intel processors.

In some cases Intel MKL also provides support for upcoming architectures ahead of hardware availability, but the library does not automatically dispatch the code path specific to an upcoming ISA by default. If for your exploratory work you need to enable an ISA for an Intel processor that is not yet released or if you are working in a simulated environment, you can use the MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS environment variable or mkl_enable_instructions support function.

The following table lists possible values of MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS alongside the corresponding ISA supported by a given processor. MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS dispatches to the default ISA if the ISA requested is not supported on the particular Intel processor. For example, if you request to run the Intel AVX512 code path on a processor based on Intel AVX2, Intel MKL runs the Intel AVX2 code path. The table also explains whether the ISA is dispatched by default on the processor that supports this ISA.

For more details about the mkl_enable_instructions function, including the argument values, see the Intel MKL Developer Reference.

For example:

• To turn on automatic CPU-based dispatching of Intel AVX-512 on systems based on Intel Xeon processors, do one of the following:

  • Call

    mkl_enable_instructions(MKL_ENABLE_AVX512)

  • Set the environment variable:

    • For the bash shell:

      export MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS=AVX512

    • For a C shell (csh or tcsh):

      setenv MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS AVX512

• To configure the library not to dispatch more recent architectures than Intel AVX2, do one of the following:

  • Call

    mkl_enable_instructions(MKL_ENABLE_AVX2)

  • Set the environment variable:

    • For the bash shell:

      export MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS=AVX2

    • For a C shell (csh or tcsh):

      setenv MKL_ENABLE_INSTRUCTIONS AVX2