Issues using Xeon Phi 5110P

[Justin_Bennett]

My team just purchased an Intel Xeon Phi this week with the hope of doing some initial testing for a project we're working on using an HP 8300 desktop PC.  For the moment we're using these for testing while we figure out what our long term hardware requirements will be so that when we buy server hardware it ends up being exactly what we need.

I got the card yesterday and (naively) popped it into our HP 8300.  When I power the box on, the BIOS just hangs, never even outputting anything to the display.  I remove the card and everything is fine.  

Unfortunately there is not a lot of information to find about these cards yet, but I did find one other post on this forum from a few weeks ago that indicates that the Xeon Phi requires some kind of "large BAR" support in the BIOS that many may not have.  

Has anyone else had similar issues with these?  Anyone come to a conclusion about exactly what is needed to use one of these cards?  I know that the product page on Intel's site lists a handful of server motherboards that are compatible but surely there are others that will work, right?

Any input or suggestions you have are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Dragos_Constantin]

Hi Bennett,

Is your power supply big enough? XEON Phi needs 225W from what I know. This might be an issue, otherwise I see no reason why a PCIe card would generate problems. In any case please report ack if you figure out what is going on.

Dragos

Justin Bennett wrote:

My team just purchased an Intel Xeon Phi this week with the hope of doing some initial testing for a project we're working on using an HP 8300 desktop PC.  For the moment we're using these for testing while we figure out what our long term hardware requirements will be so that when we buy server hardware it ends up being exactly what we need.

I got the card yesterday and (naively) popped it into our HP 8300.  When I power the box on, the BIOS just hangs, never even outputting anything to the display.  I remove the card and everything is fine.  

Unfortunately there is not a lot of information to find about these cards yet, but I did find one other post on this forum from a few weeks ago that indicates that the Xeon Phi requires some kind of "large BAR" support in the BIOS that many may not have.  

Has anyone else had similar issues with these?  Anyone come to a conclusion about exactly what is needed to use one of these cards?  I know that the product page on Intel's site lists a handful of server motherboards that are compatible but surely there are others that will work, right?

Any input or suggestions you have are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[Justin_Bennett]

The power supply is definitely not the issue. I'm using a 1200W Antec supply to power the card since the HP power supply is not sufficient.  I've been running an ATI 7990 in the same configuration without issues.  Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Dragos Constantin wrote:

Hi Bennett,

Is your power supply big enough? XEON Phi needs 225W from what I know. This might be an issue, otherwise I see no reason why a PCIe card would generate problems. In any case please report ack if you figure out what is going on.

Dragos

Quote:

Justin Bennettwrote:

My team just purchased an Intel Xeon Phi this week with the hope of doing some initial testing for a project we're working on using an HP 8300 desktop PC.  For the moment we're using these for testing while we figure out what our long term hardware requirements will be so that when we buy server hardware it ends up being exactly what we need.

I got the card yesterday and (naively) popped it into our HP 8300.  When I power the box on, the BIOS just hangs, never even outputting anything to the display.  I remove the card and everything is fine.  

Unfortunately there is not a lot of information to find about these cards yet, but I did find one other post on this forum from a few weeks ago that indicates that the Xeon Phi requires some kind of "large BAR" support in the BIOS that many may not have.  

Has anyone else had similar issues with these?  Anyone come to a conclusion about exactly what is needed to use one of these cards?  I know that the product page on Intel's site lists a handful of server motherboards that are compatible but surely there are others that will work, right?

Any input or suggestions you have are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[BelindaLiviero]

clarification on the BIOS question:

the motherboard BIOS must support memory mapped I/O above 4GB (large Base Address Register support per the PCIe specification).

[TimP]

As you saw from another post on the forum, there are specific requirements on the BIOS and BIOS settings which may not be present in a stock desktop BIOS, so it would be good to check with the OEM (HP, apparently, in your case).

In order to support 2 of the earlier model coprocessor on a desktop (single multi-core CPU) we were using 1100w power supplies.

[siyao_z_]

I have the same problem here, system just hangs without any output on display.

So my question is that is this hanging caused by BIOS not supporting larger than 4GB memory map? I have tried the card on another machine which does not support larger than 4GB memory map. That machine can successfully boot and enumerate the card but failed on loading mic.ko which says unable to map memory.

TimP (Intel) wrote:

As you saw from another post on the forum, there are specific requirements on the BIOS and BIOS settings which may not be present in a stock desktop BIOS, so it would be good to check with the OEM (HP, apparently, in your case).

In order to support 2 of the earlier model coprocessor on a desktop (single multi-core CPU) we were using 1100w power supplies.

[Victor_H_]

We managed to run it on ASUS P9X79 WS: http://www.elekslabs.com/2013/05/introducing-intel-xeon-phi-hardware-tools.html