Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2011

New Features

New features in Parallel Studio XE 2011 SP1

Improved performance

Memory, auto-parallelisation and vectorisation optimisations have resulted in enhanced performance. C/C++ Compiler v12.1 is now up to 11% faster than v12 and Fortran Compiler v12.1 is up to 22% faster than v12.

Enhanced standards and support

Intel C++ Compiler 12.1 features support for the IEEE 754-2008 standard for binary and decimal floating point arithmetic. Support for C++0x standards have been increased with support for Variadic templates that enable a variable number of arguments, plus there is support for OpenMP 3.1.

Threading Build Blocks 4.0 new features

• Flow graph - a flexible API for expressing static and dynamic dependencies between computations
• Concurrent unordered set - thread-safe container for storing and accessing user objects
• Memory pools - get enhanced flexibility and performance by getting thread-safe and scalable object allocation
• Generic GCC atomics support - library portability enables development of TBB-based solutions on more platforms
• Task and task group priorities - specify task execution order based on three different priority levels
• Concurrent Priority Queue - a new queue that allows pulling data out in a user-defined priority order.

Intel Cilk Plus new features

• Enhanced SIMD pragma support - improved scalability and performance with SIMD pragma loops, vector length, and elemental functions support
• SIMD pragma clause - 'vectorlengthfor' provides a more architectural and scalable way to define vector lengths of loops
• Holder hyperobjects - saves time and improves performance by enabling per-thread temporary storage
• New Mac OS X support.

Intel Inspector XE and Intel VTune Amplifier XE new features

New Project Explorer feature helps manage results in a standalone GUI and in VTune Amplifier XE you can now attach the analysis functionality to a running process in both Windows and Linux.

New features in Parallel Studio XE 2011

Intel C++ Compiler XE new features

New features within Intel C++ Compiler XE include:

• Optimisations for the latest Intel architectures - with Intel AVX support the C/C++ compiler optimises for the latest Intel architecture - codenamed Sandy Bridge
• Intel Parallel Building Blocks - the inclusion of the new Intel Parallel Building Blocks expands the types of problems that can be solved more easily in parallel by taking advantage of the multicore optimisation opportunities in Intel Clik Plus, Intel Threading Building Blocks and Intel Array Building Blocks
• Vector optimisations - support for vector optimisations with Intel AVX, with SIMD pragmas, and help in auto-parallelisation for the highest performance and parallelism on the latest IA multicore CPUs.

Intel Fortran Compiler XE new features

New features in Fortran Compiler XE include:

• Support for co-array Fortran in the Fortran 2008 standards which provides support for single multi-cpu shared memory nodes
• Support for other Fortran 2008 features including DO CONCURRENT, CONTIGUOUS, I/O enhancements, and new intrinsic functions, a set of which includes matrix multiply intrinsic functions that support calls into Intel MKL
• More complete support for the Fortran 2003 standard including complete type-bound procedures such as GENERIC and OPERATOR
• Interacts with the new C++ 0x and C99 features in the Intel C++ Compiler
• OpenMP 3.0 support for simplifying pragma-based development of parallelism
• Support for Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel AVX)

Intel Math Kernel Library new features

Intel Math Kernel Library - the latest version of the Intel Math Kernel Library features better Intel AVX support, a new summary statistics library, enhanced C support for LAPACK and much more.

Intel Integrated Performance Primitives new features

Intel Integrated Performance Primitives - the latest version of Intel Integrated Performance Primitives includes enhanced support for Intel AVX and AES instructions, improved data compression, improved codecs and more.

Features

Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011 comprises of:

Intel C++ Composer XE

Intel C++ Composer XE enables software engineers to develop high performance applications for the latest Intel IA-32 and Intel 64 architectures. The compiler supports OpenMP, advanced vectorisation, Intel Parallel Building Blocks and more.

Intel Fortran Composer XE

Intel Fortran Composer XE is a powerful Fortran compiler that compiles highly optimised Fortran code designed for maximum performance on Intel processor-based platforms. Amongst the compiler's advanced features are automatic vectorisation which can safely optimise loops to run in parallel, automatic processor dispatch, loop unrolling and more.

Intel Math Kernel Library

Intel Math Kernel Library (Intel MKL) is a library of highly optimised, extensively threaded math routines for science, engineering, and financial applications that require maximum performance. Core math functions include BLAS, LAPACK, ScaLAPACK, Sparse Solvers, Fast Fourier Transforms, Vector Math and much more.

Intel Integrated Performance Primitives

Intel Integrated Performance Primitives provide a library of ready-to-use, highly optimised functions in the areas of media and data processing. Intel Integrated Performance Primitives features functions in a range of categories including video and audio coding, image coding and processing, speech recognition, data compression, cryptography, vector and matrix mathematics, ray tracing/rendering and more.

Intel Threading Building Blocks

Intel Threading Building Blocks is a powerful C++ library that helps create parallel applications. Take advantage of task-based routines that scale to all available processor cores and work across multiple platforms but do not require low level threading programming. Intel Threading Building Blocks can future-proof your applications by taking advantage of additional processor cores as new processors are released, enhance the speed of your applications and reduce development time.

Intel Inspector XE 2011

Intel Inspector XE 2011 can analyse your C, C++, .NET and Fortran serial and parallel applications and help you identify threading and memory related errors. Available for both Windows and Linux, Inspector XE can detect potential errors and highlight them directly in your source code.

Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011

Intel VTune Amplifier XE 2011 builds on the successes of Intel VTune Performance Analyser and delivers a range of new capabilities for getting the best understanding of your application's performance. Intel VTune Amplifier XE works on both Windows and Linux operating systems and returns a range of useful performance related information including the most time-consuming functions, the longest executing lines of code and more.

Intel Parallel Advisor 2011

This threading assistant tool for C/C++ Microsoft Visual Studio developers provides a step-by-step proposal that simplifies transitioning serial applications to parallelism. Now available with the purchase of Windows versions of Intel Parallel Studio XE 2011 or Intel C++ Studio XE 2011.

Benefits

Target applications across operating systems

Use the same API's, libraries, programming models, techniques and tools across Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems.

Create reliable applications

The inclusion of Intel Inspector XE 2011 (formerly Intel Thread Checker) helps you to detect memory and threading related errors and highlights them within the source code.

Take advantage of advanced optimisations

Use the included Intel Parallel Building Blocks in the C/C++ compiler to solve more problems with increased scalability and reliability using parallel programming.

The Fortran Compiler offers Co-Array Fortran and additional support for the Fortran 2008 standard for adding additional optimisations to your code.

Improve application performance

Intel VTune Amplifier XE (formerly Intel VTune Performance Analyzer) helps you analyse the performance of your serial and parallel applications and find which functions and lines of code are causing performance bottlenecks.

Great compatibility and support

Intel Parallel Studio XE offers compatibility with a range of leading development environments and compilers, including Visual Studio and Eclipse and provides support through forums and Intel Premier Support.