Applications of Level 2 BLAS in the NAG library

We describe work done to improve the performance of NAG Library routines for nonlinear equations and nonlinear least squares problems on vector-processing machines. Calls to the Level 2 BLAS routines for matrix-vector operations were introduced wherever possible, so that further efforts to tune the code could be concentrated within the Level 2 BLAS, and advantage can be taken of optimized implementations of the Level 2 BLAS when they become available. Performance measurements from a CRAY-1S, an AMDAHL VP1100, and a CDC CYBER 205 are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of this strategy.