# Location of libopenblas

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [April 14, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148 "2019-04-14T22:31:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tim\_Kelley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tim_kelley/32/7399_2.png) [@Tim\_Kelley](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tim_Kelley)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148/1 "2019-04-14T22:31:12Z")

</div>

I’m trying to make a direct call to dgemm. Julia can’t seem to find the library, which on my mac is in .julia/conda/3/lib instead of /usr/local/lib. Did I make an error in the install?

When I look at the sourse for gemm for guidance, it seems the libarary should be called libopenblas64.

As you can see, I am very confused. If I have to reinstall from scratch, I will, but want to do it right.

Thanks,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Elrod](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/elrod/32/22461_2.png) [@Elrod](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Elrod)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 11:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148/2 "2019-04-14T23:31:40Z")

</div>

If you’re making the call from within Julia, I would just do it [the same way the standard library does](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/stdlib/LinearAlgebra/src/blas.jl#L1116):

Use:

```julia
julia> BLAS.@blasfunc :dgemm_
Symbol(":dgemm_64_")

julia> BLAS.libblas
"libopenblas64_"

```

EDIT: This has the benefit of also working for folks who build with MKL instead.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tim\_Kelley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tim_kelley/32/7399_2.png) [@Tim\_Kelley](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tim_Kelley)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2019, 2:04pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148/3 "2019-04-15T14:04:52Z")

</div>

Thanks, Should the call look like this for square matrices A, B, and C?

libblas=BLAS.libblas  
dgemm=BLAS.@blasfunc :dgemm\_  
ccall((dgemm, BLAS.libblas), Cvoid,  
(Ref{UInt8}, Ref{UInt8}, Ref{BlasInt}, Ref{BlasInt},  
Ref{BlasInt}, Ref{Float64}, Ptr{Float64}, Ref{BlasInt},  
Ptr{Float64}, Ref{BlasInt}, Ref{Float64}, Ptr{:Float64},  
Ref{BlasInt}),  
‘N’, ‘N’, rowsofA, colsofB,  
seconddimofA, alpha, A, leadingdimofA,  
B, leadingdimofB, beta, C, leadingdimofC )

When I run it from the REPL things seem to break with  
**ERROR: TypeError: in ccall: first argument not a pointer or valid constant expression, expected Ptr, got Tuple{Symbol,String}**

If I embed it in a function I get a segmentation fault. I know I’m missing something fundamental, but can’t figure out what it is.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tim\_Kelley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tim_kelley/32/7399_2.png) [@Tim\_Kelley](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tim_Kelley)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 7:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148/4 "2019-04-17T19:59:44Z")

</div>

I finally understood your advice and figure out how to do it. This works  
function klgemv!(trans, m, n, alpha, A, lda, X, incx, beta, Y, incy)

ccall(( (BLAS.@blasfunc dgemv\_ ), Base.libblas\_name), Cvoid,  
(Ref{UInt8}, Ref{Int64}, Ref{Int64}, Ref{Float64},  
Ptr{Float64}, Ref{Int64}, Ptr{Float64}, Ref{Int64},  
Ref{Float64}, Ptr{Float64}, Ref{Int64}),  
trans, m, n, alpha,  
A, lda, X, incx,  
beta, Y, incy)  
return Y  
end

I’m using this to implement the Arnoldi factorization using classical Gram-Schmidt twice, which is both stable and, if you have four or more cores, faster than modified GS. I’ve been testing it for correctness against the qr! function in Julia and qr in Matlab. This is not a good way to compute a QR factorization and one expects to be slower than the QR in lapack. For small problems the cgs way is very competitive with QR, but for large ones Lapack can use blas3 calls, and the speed gets a serious boost. You see this in both Matlab and Julia. What I did not expect was that the Julia versions were so much faster. For an 20000x800 matrix, qr! in Julia was over 20x faster that qr in Matlab. My cgs version was over 8x faster in Julia (once I figured out how to reduce the allocation burden with views).

I stand impressed.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tim\_Kelley](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tim_kelley/32/7399_2.png) [@Tim\_Kelley](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tim_Kelley)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2019, 8:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/location-of-libopenblas/23148/5 "2019-08-22T20:56:22Z")

</div>

Hi, I’m bring this thread back to live to get some advice.

I’m trying to avoid the ccall to blasfunc and am getting similar  
performance (but a higher allocation burden) using

So, here’s a QR code that does this in two ways, one with BLAS calls  
and one way without. When I use do not use BLAS calls I’m getting killed with  
allocations on the two lines that update the new column:

```julia
qk.-=Qkm*rk
qk.-=Qkm*pk

```

Is there something I’m doing wrong here? Is there an obvious way to  
reduce the allocation burden?

'preciate it,

– Tim

* * *

```julia
function classical2!(A)
(m,n)=size(A)
precision=typeof(A[1,1])
R=precision.(zeros(n,n))
R[1,1]=norm(A[:,1])
A[:,1]=A[:,1]/R[1,1]
#
# Turn on the BLAS calls
#
doblas=1
#
# Compute the factorization with CGS twice.
#
@views for k=2:n
    rk=R[1:k-1,k]
    qk=A[:,k]
    Qkm=A[:,1:k-1]
    pk=zeros(size(rk))
if doblas==0
#
# no BLAS
#
# Orthogonalize
    rk.+=Qkm'*qk
    qk.-=Qkm*rk
# Orthogonalize again
    pk.=Qkm'*qk
    qk.-=Qkm*pk
    rk.+=pk
else
#
# BLAS
#
# Orthogonalize
    BLAS.gemv!('T',1.0,Qkm,qk,1.0,rk)
    BLAS.gemv!('N',-1.0,Qkm,rk,1.0,qk)
# Orthogonalize again
    BLAS.gemv!('T',1.0,Qkm,qk,0.0,pk)
    BLAS.gemv!('N',-1.0,Qkm,pk,1.0,qk)
    rk.+=pk
#
end
    R[k,k]=norm(qk)
    qk./=R[k,k]
end
return QR = (Q=A, R=R)
end

```