One of the strengths of the Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor is the ability to build existing software to run on the Intel® Many Integrated Core (Intel® MIC) architecture with a minimum of change (in most cases, no changes to the code itself are necessary). The same cannot always be said, however, for the build systems used to compile existing software packages.
For software built with nothing more complicated than Makefiles (or even just invoking the Intel® Composer XE compiler directly), the necessary build change is often as simple as adding –mmic to the set of compiler and link flags.[1] When the build scripts are generated via GNU Autotools (automake/autoconf), SCons or Kitware CMake, however, the process is different..
Below are links to three articles that cover the mechanics of how to build existing Open Source packages:
- With GNU Autotools (see attached document, below)
- With CMake
- With GCC - please reference this case study on how this is done - we will provide a succinct guide soon!
[1] The process is slightly more complicated for code builds that involve “fat” libraries and binaries – those including code intended to run on both Intel® Xeon™ and Intel® Xeon Phi™ coprocessor hardware. Such scenarios are outside the scope of these articles.