Will Phi installed on a z800 2xX5650 workstation give the full potential of Phi?

[Anders_S_1]

Hi,

I got an offer to buy a Phi 5110p and now wonder if my Z800 workstation with two X5650 CPUs and 48GB of promary memory

is a suitable platform for the Phi coprocessor? What will I miss?

Best regards

Anders S.

[Frances_R_Intel]

A Z800 with 2 X5650 processors? Boy, people are asking some hard questions! I don't know if the X5650 processors will work. A quick look around didn't turn up any systems with coprocessors (5110P or otherwise) still using Westmere processors. Perhaps some others know better than I on this point. 

But step 1 would be to determine that your BIOS will support large Base Address Registers ( >4GB ). That is an absolute must have. If your BIOS doesn't support it and you can't get a new BIOS that does, then the coprocessors won't work.

[TimP]

I have run c0 coprocessors on westmere host, but now I have only b0 and I have given up trying to upgrade mpss. I suppose there is reasonable chance latest mpss could work with a current coprocessor and newer Linux.

[Anders_S_1]

Hi,

Thanks both of you. I got some more information from you clarifying the scene. I will now go for a E5-equipped workstation host.

Best Regards

Anders S