topic What qualifies as MIC ? in Software Archive

What qualifies as MIC ?

magicfoot — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:13:27 GMT

What processor qualifies as a MIC processor? The term MIC has been used previously to describe a variety of Nehalem and other 4 and 8 core processors, but now with the intro of Knights Corner it seems to be reserved exclusively for the Phi. Is this so ? Can one still refer to the Xeon 5500 as being MIC ?

As far as I know, from a

TaylorIoTKidd — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:43:13 GMT

As far as I know, from a trademark and branding perspective, Intel(r) Many Integrated Core Architecture refers to only the Intel(r) Xeon Phi(tm) coprocessor.

What may be causing you some confusion is the use of "Many Core". In my group, "Many Core" refers to IA processors with a # of HW threads in excess of something like 100. From this perspective, only the Intel(r) Xeon Phi(tm) coprocessor -- yes, I do have to refer to it in that way -- is the only Many Core product that I know about. The other Intel platforms are "Multi-core" since they have less than that.

I recently found out that other parts of Intel are using "Many core" to refer to what my group calls "Multi-core". This category includes 4 and 8 core processors (meaning 8 to 16 HW threads), etc as "Many core".

So what is "multi-core" vs "many core"? If standard new gen IA systems out there are "many core", then what is the Intel(r) Xeon Phi(tm) coprocessor? (Oh, how I enjoy typing "Intel(r) Xeon Phi(tm) coprocessor" every time.) Perhaps it's a Many Many core processor. It's above my pay grade to make such decisions.

Regards
--
Taylor

Perhaps this has a

TimP — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:41:04 GMT

Perhaps this has a relationship to the original reluctance to use the term MIC, but I never heard of multiple core Intel processors such as Xeon referred to as MIC or even as "many" core. There have been products of very limited usage with more than the 10 cores per CPU which up to now has been the most available for Xeon (with up to 4 such CPUs per server, or 8 from certain OEM vendors).