Almost bought a Xeon Phi

[jhu]

They're going for about $300 on Amazon and eBay. I placed the order. It was pretty exciting. Then I looked further into how to setup everything, and it turns out Xeon Phi only works with certain server-grade motherboards. Well, crap. Order canceled. And I was looking forward to playing around with this thing.

 

[Nothingness]

Buy the $5000 system Intel just made public a few days ago: KNL with 6x16GB and a one year license of Intel Parallel Studio

 

[jhu]

Buy the $5000 system Intel just made public a few days ago: KNL with 6x16GB and a one year license of Intel Parallel Studio

I'll wait until it comes down to $300. Haha

 

[monstercameron]

They're going for about $300 on Amazon and eBay. I placed the order. It was pretty exciting. Then I looked further into how to setup everything, and it turns out Xeon Phi only works with certain server-grade motherboards. Well, crap. Order canceled. And I was looking forward to playing around with this thing.

what is your source for the compatibility? This would have been and interesting exploration...

 

[jhu]

what is your source for the compatibility? This would have been and interesting exploration...

Here. I'm pretty sure my motherboard doesn't support these features.

Compatible motherboards, but that's more than I'm willing to shell out just to play around with a Xeon Phi.

 

[nerp]

This is always the dilemma for someone thinking of picking up a cheap server-grade Xeon chip. The motherboard situation can be daunting.

 

[Essence_of_War]

This is always the dilemma for someone thinking of picking up a cheap server-grade Xeon chip. The motherboard situation can be daunting.

A xeon phi isn't a xeon.

 

[NostaSeronx]

A xeon phi isn't a xeon.

It's an Atom with AVX512. To improve on your post.

 

[nerp]

A xeon phi isn't a xeon.

I learned this today.

But those motherboard prices!

 

[Arachnotronic]

It's an Atom with AVX512. To improve on your post.

Actually it's a crazy souped up Atom that's so far removed from Atom that it may as well be a separate CPU core with 2x AVX-512 units per core bolted on.

 

[SarahKerrigan]

Actually it's a crazy souped up Atom that's so far removed from Atom that it may as well be a separate CPU core with 2x AVX-512 units per core bolted on.

KNL is Atom-derived. KNC is not - it uses a heavily modified P54C derivative instead. Additionally, KNC doesn't use AVX-512, but rather IMCI.

 

[Nothingness]

KNL is Atom-derived. KNC is not - it uses a heavily modified P54C derivative instead. Additionally, KNC doesn't use AVX-512, but rather IMCI.

Indeed. KNC is a dead-end and no one should spend time developing on it, except for the fun of it

 

[ShintaiDK]

KNL have been shipping in volume to customers since January. that's why older versions now comes on ebay and such. Its funny to see how cloud and HPC companies have found a way to recoup some of the investment. Its pure bonus for them since the TCO of the upgrades pays for that alone.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Actually it's a crazy souped up Atom that's so far removed from Atom that it may as well be a separate CPU core with 2x AVX-512 units per core bolted on.

Yeah, it's pretty wild! Don't forget, each of those cores has HT also!

 

[Nothingness]

Its pure bonus for them since the TCO of the upgrades pays for that alone.

Is anything public about real performance, power and price? If not, how do you know?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Is anything public about real performance, power and price? If not, how do you know?

Plenty of released KNL information.

 

[Snafuh]

300$? What a rip-off. You could get them for less than 200$ new a few months ago. If you get more than 10 it was 125$ each.
Intel really wanted to sell some Phis

 

[NTMBK]

Watch out for the passively cooled ones (name ending in a P), you need server fans pushing air through them.

Almost got one myself a few months back, but motherboard problems likewise stopped me.

Edit: Intel are really bad at building up a developer base. If you are an undergrad student who wants to play with CUDA to speed up a simulation, you just need an Nvidia GPU in your laptop/desktop. All the developer tools (compiler, profiler, debugger) are available free. For Intel you need a £10,000 dedicated workstation, and £100 a year on an academic Parallel Studio licence.

Without that easy ground level entry for academics, it's hard to build a good user base with development experience.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Watch out for the passively cooled ones (name ending in a P), you need server fans pushing air through them.

Almost got one myself a few months back, but motherboard problems likewise stopped me.

Edit: Intel are really bad at building up a developer base. If you are an undergrad student who wants to play with CUDA to speed up a simulation, you just need an Nvidia GPU in your laptop/desktop. All the developer tools (compiler, profiler, debugger) are available free. For Intel you need a £10,000 dedicated workstation, and £100 a year on an academic Parallel Studio licence.

Without that easy ground level entry for academics, it's hard to build a good user base with development experience.

This is a really good point.

 

[Nothingness]

Plenty of released KNL information.

You know this will lead to the next thing... Link?

According to Intel themselves here is what is publicly known:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/what-disclosures-has-intel-made-about-knights-landing

This is missing a lot to get TCO, such as price, real performance and power consumption.

 

[jhu]

300$? What a rip-off. You could get them for less than 200$ new a few months ago. If you get more than 10 it was 125$ each.
Intel really wanted to sell some Phis

Huh… if you only need 6, might as well get 10 and have 4 spares for about the same price!

 

[Nothingness]

Edit: Intel are really bad at building up a developer base. If you are an undergrad student who wants to play with CUDA to speed up a simulation, you just need an Nvidia GPU in your laptop/desktop. All the developer tools (compiler, profiler, debugger) are available free. For Intel you need a £10,000 dedicated workstation, and £100 a year on an academic Parallel Studio licence.

Without that easy ground level entry for academics, it's hard to build a good user base with development experience.

You can get a KNL workstation for $5K including 100 GB of memory, with a one year license for Dev Studio. How much is a Pascal machine exactly?

You nonetheless raise a good point. It's much easier getting started into CUDA than into Intel multicore dev.

Without that easy ground level entry for academics, it's hard to build a good user base with development experience.

Some labs have gotten free KNC cards back then. I bet this will be the same for KNL.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You know this will lead to the next thing... Link?

According to Intel themselves here is what is publicly known:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/what-disclosures-has-intel-made-about-knights-landing

This is missing a lot to get TCO, such as price, real performance and power consumption.

Dont be lazy.

Price is pretty much irrelevant.

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...on-phi-equipped-workstations-starting-in-2016

http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/03/25/more-knights-landing-xeon-phi-secrets-unveiled/

So around 200W. 3Tflops+ DP. 6Tflops+ SP.

That's minimum 3x the perf/watt over KNC. Even if KNL used 300W its 3x.

 

[Socio]

Here. I'm pretty sure my motherboard doesn't support these features.

Compatible motherboards, but that's more than I'm willing to shell out just to play around with a Xeon Phi.

The Asus X99-E WS, and both Z9PE and Z10PE D8 and D16 versions have been purported to work with the Xeon Phi as well.

 

[Nothingness]

Dont be lazy.

I'm not lazy, I thought you had more information than the approximations Intel made public, and tried to get that out of you. So imagine my disappointment when I get links that contain even less info than what I already provided :biggrin: