Taking a Long Shot (unsupported hardware)

[Russell_B_]

I have an Asus z87-a motherboard, a couple notches down from the workstatoin model that officially supports the Phi, but on paper it's mostly the same thing. I am only even slightly optimistic because as I was looking around in "advanced" settings of bios, under "system settings" there was an option for "Memory Remap" and the description was "remap memory above 4g." I thought it sounded like some of the logic I'd read about here...
http://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2013/08/06/Will-your-motherboard-work-with-Intel-Xeon-Phi-490/

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had experience with a z87 (no ws) motherboard, and at that with failure or some degree success. I am a CS Alumni working with some students at UT who have friends at Elon Musk's new Brownsville space center, I spend most of my time these days hacking OpenCL kernels in large C++ frameworks as replacement algorithms and I'd like to be the kid with the cool toys.

So, is the "Memory Remap" optoin what I want/need to operate the phi? For the sale price I simply can't say no to these things, a non GPU OpenCL device would be too fun.

[Russell_B_]

One other thing. Are there any programs/commands that would let me detect whether I'm mapping 64 or less bits on the PCIE bus? Would regular lspci be enough?

[TaylorIoTKidd]

Hi Russel,

There is an article on the MIC developer page that discusses what capabilities a motherboard and BIOS need to support the coprocessor. I can't seem to find the article but will post the link when I do.

There's another difference between OEM Xeon systems designed as hosts for the coprocessor and those that aren't. Most of the coprocessors you'll find are passively cooled. This means the host system must provide the cooling. Unlike some CPUs, you can't just blow air on the coprocessor to cool it; it needs to have a certain amount of air pushed through it's cooling vents.

The problem with most OEM systems not specifically designed as hosts for the coprocessor is that they don't support the required airflow. This not only includes getting cooling air to the coprocessor but also forcing air through it as well. This topic has arisen several times in the past. Search the forums looking for "phi" and "overheating."

Regards
--
Taylor
 

[jimdempseyatthecove]

Russell,

I have an earlier ASUS P9X79WS

Issues I had with this:

a) The User Guide had absolutely no information as to how to enable "large addressing" PCIe devices (nomenclature may differ). Which permits a single PCIe to occupy more than 4GB of address. I only discovered this option by walking through the BIOS screens.

b) The factory firmware would lock-up trying to boot with Xeon Phi installed

c) The (then) latest firmware would lock-up differently trying to boot with Xeon Phi installed

Only by flashing an intermediary BIOS version would the system successfully boot with Xeon Phi installed.

The ASUS support center was very courteous excepting nobody had any clue as to what a Xeon Phi is. Their only point of reference is a video card.

If your firmware (or version you can flash) fully supports "large addressing" PCIe cards then you might be OK.

Good luck.

*** Please note Taylors warning about cooling.

The "passive" cards means:

    No active cooling (fans) supplied with card.

It does NOT mean:

    No active cooling (fans) required by card.

The integration vendor (you in this case), MUST supply sufficient airflow longitudinally through the card.

Jim Dempsey