[Beowulf] Intel Phi musings

[atchley tds.net]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Mark Hahn <hahn at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

> It may depend on how many you are trying to get. We have a new cluster here
>> with about 80 nodes with four per node. I got a singe development node
>> from
>> another supplier last week.
>>
>
> do you mean it's easier to get large quantities?  that is the impression
> I'm getting.  we have two nvidia clusters, and unfortunately
> are out-of-phase to fund a new phi cluster.  but spending 5-20k
> on phi is doable, except that they seem to have no "street"
> (reseller) presence at all.
>
> colfax lists them, but only in systems.  I'm not really clear on why
> I can't just buy one and drop it into an existing system.  it's not like
> hot pcie cards are anything new...
>
> thanks, mark.


I think that Intel may want a few high profile installs done while supply
is still tight, but that is purely my speculation.

When I called about getting a single card, I did not find any sellers
unless I bought a server as well. It turns out that you need a compatible
motherboard. Supermicro has a helpful list of there models here:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/Xeon_Phi.cfm

Our six month old systems were not compatible.

Scott
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