3.9 GOMP_CPU_AFFINITY – Bind threads to specific CPUs

Description:

Binds threads to specific CPUs. The variable should contain a space- or comma-separated list of CPUs. This list may contain different kind of entries: either single CPU numbers in any order, a range of CPUs (M-N) or a range with some stride (M-N:S). CPU numbers are zero based. For example, GOMP_CPU_AFFINITY="0 3 1-2 4-15:2" will bind the initial thread to CPU 0, the second to CPU 3, the third to CPU 1, the fourth to CPU 2, the fifth to CPU 4, the sixth through tenth to CPUs 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 respectively and then start assigning back from the beginning of the list. GOMP_CPU_AFFINITY=0 binds all threads to CPU 0.

There is no GNU OpenMP library routine to determine whether a CPU affinity specification is in effect. As a workaround, language-specific library functions, e.g., getenv in C or GET_ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE in Fortran, may be used to query the setting of the GOMP_CPU_AFFINITY environment variable. A defined CPU affinity on startup cannot be changed or disabled during the runtime of the application.

If this environment variable is omitted, the host system will handle the assignment of threads to CPUs.