Support Functions

The Intel® MKL support functions (see Support Functions) are used to support the operation of the Intel MKL software and provide basic information on the library and library operation, such as the current library version, timing, setting and measuring of CPU frequency, error handling, and memory allocation.

Starting from release 10.0, the Intel MKL support functions provide additional threading control.

Starting from release 10.1, Intel MKL selectively supports a Progress Routine feature to track progress of a lengthy computation and/or interrupt the computation using a callback function mechanism. The user application can define a function called mkl_progress that is regularly called from the Intel MKL routine supporting the progress routine feature. See Progress Routine in Support Functions for reference. Refer to a specific LAPACK or DSS/PARDISO function description to see whether the function supports this feature or not.

Optimization Notice

The Intel® Math Kernel Library (Intel® MKL) contains functions that are more highly optimized for Intel microprocessors than for other microprocessors. While the functions in Intel® MKL offer optimizations for both Intel and Intel-compatible microprocessors, depending on your code and other factors, you will likely get extra performance on Intel microprocessors.

While the paragraph above describes the basic optimization approach for Intel® MKL as a whole, the library may or may not be optimized to the same degree for non-Intel microprocessors for optimizations that are not unique to Intel microprocessors. These optimizations include Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 (Intel® SSE2), Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (Intel® SSE3), and Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (Intel® SSSE3) instruction sets and other optimizations. Intel does not guarantee the availability, functionality, or effectiveness of any optimization on microprocessors not manufactured by Intel. Microprocessor-dependent optimizations in this product are intended for use with Intel microprocessors.

Intel recommends that you evaluate other library products to determine which best meets your requirements.


Submit feedback on this help topic

Copyright © 1994 - 2010, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.