MPSS 3.5.2 is available

[Loc_N_Intel]

Please note that the new MPSS 3.5.2 is now available at https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-manycore-platform-software-stack-mpss . RHEL 6.7 and SuSE SLES 11 SP4 are now supported in this new release MPSS 3.5.2.

[JJK]

Great news!

Two questions:

1. will there be a 3.4 release that supports RHEL 6.7?
2. on the webpage you mention it is listed that the 3.4 series is supported til somewhere in 2017, whereas the 3.5 series is supported until end of september 2015. Is that correct?

[Loc_N_Intel]

Hi JJK,

1. For this question, I will ask the MPSS team to see if any future release of 3.4 will support RHEL 6.7. Will get back to you.

2. The information is correct. MPSS 3.4 is identified as a Long Term Support product, which has support until Q3 of 2017. MPSS 3.5 is a regular product, which has only six month support (in this case, the supports ends at Q4 of 2015).

[Loc_N_Intel]

Hi JJK,

We don't add OS support in future releases of MPSS 3.4 . Thank you. 

[JJK]

thanks for your speedy replies.

This leaves me a bit puzzled, however: which release should I use after Q4 2015 on RHEL 6 ? mpss 3.5 will no longer be supported and the 3.4 series does not support the 2.6.32-573 kernel series.

[Frances_R_Intel]

MPSS 3.5 will be followed by MPSS 3.6 and so on. Having MPSS 3.4 allows sites which require long term stability to have something they can hold onto. For those who are not able to use MPSS 3.4, they can continue using MPSS 3.5 after support ends but will need to upgrade to the latest release should they run into any problems. There will be another long term stable release at some point in the future but I don't believe a date has been set.

[CFR]

I've seen MPSS OS support matrix tables in various Intel presentations (ex: page 4-6 of https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/managed/d3/0f/IntelXeonPhiClusterAdminWG3_final.pdf which appears out of date). Would it be worth "promoting" something like that to the MPSS web page, and keeping it updated, so users can plan accordingly.  (I know I'm facing a big RHEL 6.4 -> 7.1 upgrade here in the not too distant future if I want to be able to keep up with MPSS.)