Intel compiler compatibility breaks with glibc-2.17-196.el7 or RHEL 7.4

Issue

• glibc update to 2.17-196 released via RHSA-2017:1916 broke the existing software stack on the system.

• After glibc update: incompatibility with Intel compiler

• This update caused crashes or incorrect results for several applications that were built with the Intel compiler and, consequently, also caused serious trouble for numerous scientists and support personnel.

• The root cause is an additional (non-security) patch that has been backported to version 2.17-196 by Red Hat. Although this backport had been identified as a "serious issue" by Red Hat early in March 2017, this had not been addressed because "Upstream conclusion is that ICC violates the ps-abi for x86_64 and there is no fault in glibc"

• On RHEL 7.4 why NaN is produced by code compiled with Intel compiler ?

• NaN produced by code compiled with Intel Fortran compiler v1x (x >3)

• We are facing a run issue when building code on RHEL 6 with Intel Fortran and running it on RHEL 7.4: the failures usually manifest themselves as NaN produced by various parts of Fortran or C++ codes.

• We use exclusively Intel compiler for our Linux products; the last released version of our apps that works on this platform was built with v13, then we moved to v14 and now v16 – both of these exhibit the NaN problem.