Summary of (latest) changes
This article describes the most recent changes that have been made to the Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack (Intel® MPSS) 4.x. If you've subscribed to get update notifications, you can use this information to quickly determine whether these changes apply to you.
- May 8, 2017, Intel® MPSS 4.4.0 HotFix 1 released for Linux* and Windows*
About the Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack 4.x
The Intel MPSS 4.x is necessary to run the Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor x200. It has been tested to work with specific versions of 64-bit operating systems:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.2, 7.3.0 (for Intel MPSS 4.4.0 Hotfix 1)
- SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12, SP1, and SP2 (Intel MPSS 4.4.0 Hotfix 1)
- Microsoft Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server* 2012 R2, and Windows Server 2016
The readme files (referenced in the Downloads section) have more information on how to build and install the stack.
One important component of Intel MPSS is the Symmetric Communications Interface (SCIF). The SCIF is included in the RPM bundle. SCIF provides a mechanism for inter-node communications within a single platform. A node, for SCIF purposes, is defined as either an Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor or the Intel® Xeon® processor. In particular, the SCIF abstracts the details of communicating over the PCI Express* bus. The SCIF APIs are callable from both user space (uSCIF) and kernel space (kSCIF).
Intel MPSS is downloadable from the sources below. Note that these packages include documentation and APIs (for example, the SCIF API).
For Linux systems, users can measure Intel® Xeon Phi™ processor and coprocessor x200 product family performance with a tool called micperf. micperf is designed to incorporate a variety of benchmarks into a simple user experience with a single interface for execution. For the coprocessor, the micperf package is distributed as an RPM file within Intel MPSS. The following table summarizes all the benchmarks that can be run with the micperf tool:
Benchmark | CLI Name | Target Operations | Component | Comments |
Intel® Math Kernel Library (Intel® MKL) DGEMM |
| Double-precision floating point | VFU | For the processor, micperf provides a MCDRAM and DDR version |
Intel MKL SGEMM |
| Single-precision floating point | VFU | For the processor, micperf provides a MCDRAM and DDR version |
Intel MKL SMP Linpack |
| Double-precision floating point | VFU |
|
SHOC Download* |
| Bus transfer host to device | PCIe* bus | Only available for the coprocessor |
SHOC Readback* |
| Bus transfer device to host | PCIe bus | Only available for the coprocessor |
STREAM* |
| Round-trip memory to registers | MCDRAM, GDDR and caches | For the processor, micperf provides a MCDRAM and DDR version |
HPLinpack* |
| Double-precision floating point | VFU | Only available for the processor |
HPCG* |
| Double-precision floating point | VFU | Only available for the processor; requires Intel® MPI Library |
Note: the Intel MPSS download files for Linux marked “.gz” should end in “.gz” when downloaded; most browsers leave the extension alone, but Windows Explorer* may rename the files. If this affects you, we recommend renaming the file to the proper extension after downloading.
Getting notified of future updates
If you want to receive updates when we publish a new Intel MPSS 4.x stack, add a comment at the bottom of this page.
Release support schedule?
The following table shows when releases were issued and when Intel will no longer support them. Releases with a strikethrough are no longer supported. For an overview of Intel's release structure and support length, please see this article.
Downloads
There are currently two major releases available for the Intel MPSS 4.x. The most recent major release is 4.4.x.
We recommend that new adopters start by using the 4.4 release. Support for each Intel MPSS release ends 6 months from the date it was posted, except for long-term support products.
Intel MPSS 4.4.0 HotFix 1 release for Linux
| Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack version | Downloads available | Size (range) | MD5 Checksum |
|---|---|---|---|
mpss-4.4.0 Hotfix 1(released: May 8, 2017) | 214MB | 8a015c38379b8be42c8045d3ceb44545 | |
214MB | 694b7b908c12061543d2982750985d8b | ||
| 213MB | 506ab12af774f78fa8e107fd7a4f96fd | ||
| 213MB | b8520888954e846e8ac8604d62a9ba96 | ||
| 213MB | 88a3a4415afae1238453ced7a0df28ea | ||
| Card installer file (mpss-4.4.0-card.tar) | 761MB | d26e26868297cea5fd4ffafe8d78b66e | |
| Source file (mpss-4.4.0-card-source.tar) | 514MB | 127713d06496090821b5bb3613c95b30 |
| Documentation link | Description | Last Updated On | Size (approx) |
|---|---|---|---|
| releasenotes-linux.txt | Release Notes (English) | May 2017 | 15KB |
| README.txt | Readme (includes installation instructions) for Linux (English) | May 2017 | 17KB |
| MPSS_Users_Guide.pdf | MPSS User's guide | May 2017 | 3MB |
| EULA.txt | End User License Agreement (IMPORTANT: Read Before Downloading, Installing, or Using) | May 2017 | 33KB |
|
Intel MPSS 4.4.0 HotFix 1 release for Microsoft Windows
| Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack version | Downloads available | Size | MD5 Checksum |
|---|---|---|---|
64-bit Install Package (release May 8, 2017) | 1091MB | 204a65b36858842f472a37c77129eb53 |
| Documentation link | Description | Last Updated On | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| releaseNotes-windows.txt | English - release notes | May 2017 | 7KB |
| readme-windows.pdf | English - readme for Microsoft* Windows | May 2017 | 399KB |
| MPSS user's_Guide | MPSS User Guide for Windows | May 2017 | 3MB |
| EULA.txt | End User License Agreement (IMPORTANT: Read Before Downloading, Installing, or Using) | May 2017 | 33KB |
Additional documentation
The Intel MPSS packages contain additional documentation for Linux: man pages and documents in /usr/share/doc/ (see myo, intel-coi-* and micperf-* directories). The Platform Control Panel User’s Guide is now in /usr/share/doc/systools/micmgmt/
Also, below is a link to the Intel® MPSS Performance Guide, which documents best-known methods for fine-tuning the Intel MPSS runtime environment to get the best application performance.
http://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/managed/72/db/mpss-performance-guide.pdf
Where to ask questions and get more information
The discussion forum at http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-many-integrated-core is available to join and discuss any enhancements or issues with Intel® MPSS.
Information about Intel MPSS security can be found here.
You can also find support collaterals here or submit an issue.