Random Number Generators

Developer Reference for Intel® oneAPI Math Kernel Library for Fortran

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ID 766686

Date 4/28/2026

Version

Public

Random Number Generators

Intel® oneAPI Math Kernel Library (oneMKL) VS provides a set of routines implementing commonly used pseudorandom, quasi-random, or non-deterministic random number generators with continuous and discrete distribution. To improve performance, all these routines were developed using the calls to the highly optimized basic random number generators Basic Random Number Generators random number generators BRNG (BRNGs) and vector mathematical functions (VM, see “Vector Mathematical Functions” ).

${MKL}/include

VS Fortran header The mkl_vsl.f90 header is intended for use with the Fortran include clause and is compatible with both standard forms of F90/F95 sources - the free and 72-columns fixed forms. If you need to use the VS interface with 80- or 132-columns fixed form sources, you may add a new file to your project. That file is formatted as a 72-columns fixed-form source and consists of a single include clause as follows:

include 'mkl_vsl.f90'

This include clause causes the compiler to generate the module files mkl_vsl.mod and mkl_vsl_type.mod , which are used to process the Fortran use clauses referencing to the VS interface:

use mkl_vsl_type use mkl_vsl

Because of this specific feature, you do not need to include the mkl_vsl.f90 header into each source of your project. You only need to include the header into some of the sources. In any case, make sure that the sources that depend on the VS interface are compiled after those that include the header so that the module files mkl_vsl.mod and mkl_vsl_type.mod are generated prior to using them.

NOTE:

For the Fortran interface, VS provides both a subroutine-style interface and a function-style interface. The default interface in this case is a function-style interface. The function-style interface, unlike the subroutine-style interface, allows the user to get error status of each routine. The subroutine-style interface is provided for backward compatibility only. To use the subroutine-style interface, manually include mkl_vsl_subroutine.fi file instead of mkl_vsl.f90 by changing the line include 'mkl_vsl.f90' in includemkl.fi with the line include 'mkl_vsl_subroutine.fi' .

All VS routines can be classified into three major categories:

Transformation routines for different types of statistical distributions, for example, uniform, normal (Gaussian), binomial, etc. These routines indirectly call basic random number generators, which are pseudorandom, quasi-random, or non-deterministic random number generators. Detailed description of the generators can be found in Distribution Generators .
Service routines to handle random number streams: create, initialize, delete, copy, save to a binary file, load from a binary file, get the index of a basic generator. The description of these routines can be found in Service Routines .
Registration routines for basic pseudorandom generators and routines that obtain properties of the registered generators (see Advanced Service Routines ).

The last two categories are referred to as service routines.

Product and Performance Information
Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Learn more at www.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex . Notice revision #20201201

Product and Performance Information

Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Learn more at www.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex .

Notice revision #20201201

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Random Number Generators