For what it's worth, OpenBLAS is not significantly slower than MKL, at least for level 3 linear algebra on x86 on AVX2 downwards. I don't know whether it suppo

For what it's worth, OpenBLAS is not significantly slower than MKL, at least for level 3 linear algebra on x86 on AVX2 downwards. I don't know whether it supports SKX well now, but otherwise BLIS does. (Also OpenBLAS and BLIS are infinitely faster than on POWER and ARM.) I don't understand "compiling down" -- the linear algebra performance is determined by the library, which is, or could be, the same in each case. [I agree about the marketing aspects and the huge waste of university resources buying into that rather than funding development of free software.]