Choosing Intel MKL BLAS when compiling R

| So if I'm following all this correctly, Intel MKL BLAS cannot be used
| as a "swap-in" for R like GotoBLAS or Atlas, but it CAN be used during
| the compilation phase as the hard-coded BLAS used?

Yes and no. :-)

My gcbd package/paper says (and even shows by implementation) that it can be
used for drop-in / swap-out replacements, but it relies upon R being built
with the --disable-openmp flag.  Which incidentally is no longer the default
for the Debian + Ubuntu builds.
 
So it depends.

| Incidentally, I switched over to OpenBLAS from GotoBLAS last year and
| have been happy with it -- it actually solved some compilation issues
| that GotoBLAS had (also, it appears the configuration phase is a lot
| faster).

That is on my TODO list of things to try. Preferably by re-using the
pre-built Debian packages that now exist.

Dirk

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read." -- Groucho Marx