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<!DOCTYPE flagsdescription SYSTEM "http://www.spec.org/dtd/cpuflags2.dtd">
<flagsdescription>

  <filename>Dell-platform-Precision</filename>

  <title>Platform Setting for Dell Precision Workstations</title>

  <!-- 
  *********************************************************************************************************************
  Explanations of platform info, such as BIOS settings
  ********************************************************************************************************************* 
-->
  <os_tuning>
    <![CDATA[
    <p>
      <b>KMP_AFFINITY = granularity=fine,scatter</b>
    </p>
    <p>
      The value for the environment variable KMP_AFFIINTY affects how the threads from an auto-parallelized
      program are scheduled across processors. Specifying granularity=fine selects the finest granularity
      level, causes each OpenMP thread to be bound to a single thread context. This ensures that there is only
      one thread per core on cores supporting HyperThreading Technology. Specifying scatter distributes the
      threads as evenly as possible across the entire system. Hence a combination of these two options
      will spread the threads evenly across sockets, with one thread per physical core.
    </p>

    <p>
      <b>OMP_NUM_THREADS</b>
    </p>
    <p>
      Sets the maximum number of threads to use for OpenMP* parallel regions if no
      other value is specified in the application. This environment variable
      applies to both -openmp and -parallel (Linux and Mac OS X) or /Qopenmp and /Qparallel (Windows).
    </p>
    <p>
      Example syntax on a Windows system with 8 cores:
      <br/>
      set OMP_NUM_THREADS=8
    </p>
    ]]>
  </os_tuning>

  <firmware>
  <![CDATA[

  <p><b>Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch:</b></p> 
  <p>
        This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to                 
        fetch the adjacent cache line within an 128-byte sector that contains 
         the data needed due to a cache line miss. </p>
  <p>                
        In some limited cases, setting this option from the Default may improve
        performance. In the majority of cases, the default setting
        provides better performance.  Users should modify this option 
        after performing application benchmarking to verify improved
        performance in their environment.</p>

  <p><b>Hardware Prefetch:</b></p> 
  <p>
        This BIOS option allows allows the enabling/disabling of a processor 
        mechanism to prefetch data into the cache according to a pattern 
        recognition algorithm.</p>
  <p>                
        In some limited cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve
        performance. In the majority of cases, the option set to Enabled                        
        provides better performance.  Users should only disable this option 
         after performing application benchmarking to verify improved
         performance in their environment.</p>
       
  <p><b>Hyper-Threading Technology</b></p> 
  <p>
        This BIOS setting disables/enables Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology. HT enables the processor
        to allocate an additional thread to a core.</p>

  <p><b>Memory Node Interleaving</b></p> 
  <p>
        This BIOS setting when set to NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) configures the system memory into
        blocks local to each processor. A NUMA-aware operating system can use this configuration to
        intelligently allocate memory for optimal performance.</p>
]]>


</firmware>
</flagsdescription>