On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <
[email protected]> wrote:

> It seems that Linux boots and runs on the co-processor card. What is the
> possibilities that Illumos can support Xeon Phi as a co-processor, or even
> usefully boot and run natively on Xeon Phi?
>

It attaches to the PCIe bus like a GPU so I imagine there would have to be
a driver for whatever OS it's used with as it wouldn't just appear as an
onboard processor. Unless Intel has a special motherboard that somehow
makes that possible... Either way, it looks like the card itself runs an
embedded linux and gcc changes have been introduced so similar work would
need to be done for any other platform if you're trying to replace what's
on the card itself. Here's a thorough description of its architecture:
http://www.anandtech.com/print/6451

q.v. http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/278102,
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/06/05/knights-corner-open-source-software-stack,
and http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/accelerators/phi.html

-Gary



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