Building MFEM

A simple tutorial how to build and run the serial and parallel version of MFEM together with GLVis. For more details, see the INSTALL file and make help.

In addition to the native build system described below, MFEM packages are also available in the following package managers:

• Spack
• OpenHPC

MFEM can also be installed as part of

• xSDK
• E4S
• FASTMath
• RADIUSS
• CEED

A pre-built version of MFEM is also available in a container form, see our AWS tutorial and the mfem/containers repo.

Instructions

Download MFEM and GLVis

• https://mfem.org
• https://glvis.org

Below we assume that we are working with versions mfem-4.5 and glvis-4.2.

Serial version of MFEM and GLVis

Put everything in the same directory:

~> ls
glvis-4.2.tgz   mfem-4.5.tgz

Build the serial version of MFEM:

~> tar -zxvf mfem-4.5.tgz
~> cd mfem-4.5
~/mfem-4.5> make serial -j
~/mfem-4.5> cd ..

Build GLVis:

~> tar -zxvf glvis-4.2.tgz
~> cd glvis-4.2
~/glvis-4.2> make MFEM_DIR=../mfem-4.5 -j
~/glvis-4.2> cd ..

That's it! The MFEM library can be found in mfem-4.5/libmfem.a, while the glvis executable will be in the glvis-4.2 directory.

Note: as of version 4.0, GLVis has additional dependencies that need to be installed first, see its building documentation.

To start a GLVis server, open a new terminal and type

~> cd glvis-4.2
~/glvis-4.2> ./glvis

The serial examples can be build with:

~> cd mfem-4.5/examples
~/mfem-4.5/examples> make -j

All serial examples and miniapps can be build with:

~> cd mfem-4.5
~/mfem-4.5> make all -j

Parallel MPI version of MFEM

Download hypre and METIS from

• https://github.com/hypre-space/hypre/tags
• https://github.com/mfem/tpls

Note: We recommend MFEM's mirror of metis-4.0.3 and metis-5.1.0 above because the METIS webpage, is often down and we don't support yet the new GitHub repo.

Below we assume that we are working with hypre-2.26.0 and metis-4.0.3 (see below for METIS version 5 and later). We also assume that the serial version of MFEM and GLVis have been built as described above.

Put everything in the same directory:

~> ls
glvis-4.2/  hypre-2.26.0.tar.gz   metis-4.0.3.tar.gz   mfem-4.5/

Build hypre:

~> tar -zxvf hypre-2.26.0.tar.gz
~> cd hypre-2.26.0/src/
~/hypre-2.26.0/src> ./configure --disable-fortran
~/hypre-2.26.0/src> make -j
~/hypre-2.26.0/src> cd ../..
~> ln -s hypre-2.26.0 hypre

Build METIS:

~> tar -zxvf metis-4.0.3.tar.gz
~> cd metis-4.0.3
~/metis-4.0.3> make OPTFLAGS=-Wno-error=implicit-function-declaration
~/metis-4.0.3> cd ..
~> ln -s metis-4.0.3 metis-4.0

(If you are using METIS 5, see the instructions below.)

Build the parallel version of MFEM:

~> cd mfem-4.5
~/mfem-4.5> make parallel -j
~/mfem-4.5> cd ..

Note that if hypre or METIS are in different locations, or you have different versions of these libraries, you will need to update the corresponding paths in the config/defaults.mk file, or create you own config/user.mk, as described in the INSTALL file.

The parallel examples can be build with:

~> cd mfem-4.5/examples
~/mfem-4.5/examples> make -j

The serial examples can also be build with the parallel version of the library, e.g.

~/mfem-4.5/examples> make ex1 ex2

All parallel examples and miniapps can be build with:

~> cd mfem-4.5
~/mfem-4.5> make all -j

One can also use the parallel library to optionally (re-)build GLVis:

~> cd glvis-4.2
~/glvis-4.2> make clean
~/glvis-4.2> make MFEM_DIR=../mfem-4.5 -j

This, however, is generally not recommended, since the additional MPI thread can interfere with the other GLVis threads.

Parallel build using METIS 5

Build METIS 5:

~> tar zvxf metis-5.1.0.tar.gz
~> cd metis-5.1.0
~/metis-5.1.0> make BUILDDIR=lib config
~/metis-5.1.0> make BUILDDIR=lib
~/metis-5.1.0> cp lib/libmetis/libmetis.a lib

Build the parallel version of MFEM, setting the options MFEM_USE_METIS_5 and METIS_DIR, e.g.:

~> cd mfem-4.5
~/mfem-4.5> make parallel -j MFEM_USE_METIS_5=YES METIS_DIR=@MFEM_DIR@/../metis-5.1.0

CUDA version of MFEM

To build the CUDA version of MFEM, one needs to specify the CUDA compute capability, with the CUDA_ARCH flag. In the examples below we use CUDA_ARCH=sm_70 to build the MFEM serial and parallel versions for compute cability 7.0 (V100).

Build the serial CUDA version of MFEM:

~/mfem> make cuda CUDA_ARCH=sm_70 -j

Build the parallel CUDA version of MFEM:

~/mfem> make pcuda CUDA_ARCH=sm_70 -j

To use hypre with CUDA support in MFEM, follow the instructions above but configure it with the following command, specifying the CUDA compute capability:

~/hypre-2.26.0/src> ./configure --with-cuda --with-gpu-arch="70" --disable-fortran

HIP version of MFEM

To build the HIP version of MFEM, one needs to specify the HIP architecture, with the HIP_ARCH flag. In the examples below we use HIP_ARCH=gfx908 to build the MFEM serial and parallel versions for gfx908 (MI100).

Build the serial HIP version of MFEM:

~/mfem> make hip HIP_ARCH=gfx908 -j

Build the parallel HIP version of MFEM:

~/mfem> make phip HIP_ARCH=gfx908 -j

To use hypre with HIP support in MFEM, follow the instructions above but configure it with the following command, specifying the HIP architecture:

~/hypre-2.26.0/src> ./configure --with-hip --with-gpu-arch="gfx908" --disable-fortran

Installing MFEM with Spack

If Spack is already available on your system and is visible in your PATH, you can install the MFEM software simply with:

spack install mfem

To enable package testing during the build process, use instead:

spack install -v --test=all mfem

If you don't have Spack, you can download it and install MFEM with the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/spack/spack.git
cd spack
./bin/spack install -v mfem