Any problem for Fortran under Windows to read files produced by Fortran under Linux

[Anders_S_1]

Hi,

I will run the Cluster Studio and Fortran both under Windows and Linux. I want run code under Linux to produce result files. I then want to read the result files using Fortran code under Windows with nice Quickwin graphics to inspect the results. Later on I will add a Xeon Phi card and has found out that there a lot of hands on documentation of running the Phi under Linux but virtually zero information on running the Phi card under Windows.

Best regards

Anders S

[TimP]

The data files created by ifort (as influenced by open parameters and environment variables) should be portable between Windows and Linux. It's true that text file record separators lf vs. Cr-lf might be a problem if you change brands of Fortran between Os.

[Kevin_D_Intel]

Do you have question about Xeon Phi™ on Windows that I could try to help answer?

[Anders_S_1]

Hi Tim,

Thank you very much for your reply, which solved the matter!

Best regards

Anders S

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for picking up my Windows interest!

I took a lot of contacts with various hardware companies and asked about a quotation for a workstation with Xeon Phi cards and working under Windows. Virtually nobody had any experience with Xeon Phi under Windows. I could also read some blogs were poeple seemed to be sceptical  about running the Phi card under Windows, even if they had not tried this.

Anyhow, summing up my experiences, I thought I could read between the lines that why go to Windows when everybody (?) uses Linux..

Therefore, I have ordered a dubbelboot system and will start to learn to use the Phi cards under Linux.

Nevertheless, I have experienced during my work in industry that the endusers of software strongly want to avoid Linuxcommands and instead want a welldesigned GUI with simple intuitive commands or press-button operation. As a developer I use a lot of graphics (QuickWin) to monitor convergence in various numerical iterations and also get detailed feed-back on the physics and dynamics of the system.

I am therefore very curious if I am the only one wanting to run the Xeon Phis under Windows or if there are success stories with Windows-based systemsat other places. 

Best regards

Anders S

[TimP]

Evidently, Intel considered the market for Intel(R) Xeon Phi(tm) with Windows host (but still linux running on the coprocessor) large enough to justify the development effort.  I suppose a minority of that market uses Fortran. 

As far as I know, Intel still didn't announce any plan to support full MPI for Windows host, so linux gives you a wider variety of parallel programming models.

[Anders_S_1]

Hi Tim,

Thank you very much for a very interesting answer!

I think even without a full implementation of MPI a lot cases can be succesfully handled, can't they? Is there any listing of the missing MPI commands under Windows?

I think that HPC has had a much quicker acceptance in science and universities compared to industry and in the former case the Linux commands do not cause any trouble due to daily use. In industry, however, most applications using very advanced software packages or codes developed in-house will sooner or later end up as a decision support tool for an operator. The ultimate wish of an operator (somewhat simplified)  is a message yes/no and a single button to push. Today Windows seems a better tool for nice GUIs than Linux. In my opinion, continued support for Windows or improved graphics for Linux is the way to pave the road for the huge amount of industrial process simulation software that will slowly be developped. Xeon Phi (read KNL) and the simple programming model will definitely contribute to help industry to increase the use of compute-heavy simulations. At the moment I think getting the message into the companies is the key factor. Mentioning of the word supercomputer will make a lot of industrial persons stop listening, Supercomputer to them means paying the salaries of  typically, say, five extra specialized persons. 

Best regards

Anders S

[Kevin_D_Intel · Accepted solution]

Pardon the delay getting back to you.

There is some activity on Windows with Xeon Phi™ but in large part most activity is on Linux. You may already be aware of the Xeon Phi™ Developer site. There is a wealth of information available including the App Catalogs tab (right-side navigation) contains information about applications that run on or are being optimized for Intel® Xeon Phi™. The specific target OS is not called out so one would have to dive into an app’s details to know if Windows is supported.

The MPI limitations on Windows specific to Xeon Phi™ that Tim mentioned involve only supporting MPI ranks running on the Windows host and those ranks offloading to the coprocessor. The two additional models available for Linux-only are Symmetric (MPI ranks run on the host and coprocessors) and Native (the entire app and MPI ranks run natively only on the coprocessor).

For the most part there is full support on both Linux and Windows for the available offload programming modules, the Intel Language Extensions for Offload and Openmp 4.x extensions. Some restrictions exist on Windows related to using Windows specific programming features within offload code regions. Because the initial offerings were on Linux, that contributed to more content having a Linux specific focus/leaning; however, that was not meant to imply support was not available for Windows.

Finally, in addition to this Visual Fortran forum, where you are welcome to raise Xeon Phi™ specific questions, there is also the Intel® Many Integrated Core Architecture (Intel MIC Architecture) forum available for discussing topics about the Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessors.

Hope that helps. I wish you success in your endeavors with Xeon Phi™.

[Anders_S_1]

Hi Kevin and Tim,

Thanks for your really clarifying information on Windows versus Linux as host systems for the Xeon Phi.

Best regards

Anders S