Actually, Intel&#x27;s BLAS (in MKL) is probably an even better product. [On Intel hardware] MKL makes an <i>enormous</i>, borderline hard-to-believe magic level improvement even over the other tuned BLAS libraries like ATLAS.<p>Gfortran is OK and ifort isn&#x27;t insurmountably more advanced, but Intel definitely has the mindshare in the HPC market locked down and they do a lot to promote their technologies in that community. That is what really gives them the vice grip on the market. IBM is really the only other company with the same cachet in that market.