Installing Intel® Parallel Studio XE Professional Edition on Amazon* WorkSpaces*

Introduction

“Amazon WorkSpaces* is a fully managed desktop computing service in the cloud.” Utilizing the Intel Parallel Studio XE 2015 Professional Edition on an Amazon WorkSpace is very similar to using it on a local system.  The process is essentially the same:

1. Download the software package
2. Extract the package and invoke the installation
3. Enter your serial number when prompted
4. Once installation is complete, use the tools just like on a local system

Assumptions

• You have already connected to your WorkSpace via the Amazon WorkSpaces application or ssh/vnc.
• For Windows WorkSpaces, you have a supported version of Microsoft* Visual Studio* installed (see System Requirements section of Release Notes).
• For Linux WorkSpaces, you have Linux developer tools installed, including gcc, g++ and related tools.  See the Parallel Studio XE for Linux Release Notes for details.

Tips

• For ssh access to a Linux instance, follow the Amazon documentation for connecting to an instance.  You will also need to download the installation package on a separate system and copy it to the WorkSpace using scp.
• For VNC access, you will need to install one of the graphical interfaces, for example, Gnome.  You will also need to make sure that a “public ip” was requested when the instance was created and use that static ip address in the VNC client.  Finally, you will have to start the VNC server on the Amazon instance.
• Because the Amazon WorkSpace environment is a virtualized environment, there are some limitations when using the VTune Amplifier and those are covered in more detail below.
  • If you install the VTune Amplifier driver and attempt to collect any of the hardware-based sampling analysis types, e.g., Advanced Hotspots, General Exploration, etc., you will see a message about PMU resources being unavailable.
    
    This is to be expected.  You can only use the software-based sampling analysis types on Amazon WorkSpaces, e.g., Basic Hotspots, Concurrency, and Locks and Waits.

The Process

Because access to your WorkSpace can take many forms, your specific steps may vary slightly.  In general, you need a graphical interface, such as X11, KDE, or Gnome, with an internet browser so that you can download the software.  Otherwise, download the package from an internet capable system and copy the file to the Workspace.

1. Download the software package
   1. If you’ve already registered your copy of the Intel® Parallel Studio XE Professional Edition or Cluster Edition, using your internet browser, log into the Intel Software Development Products Registration Center and select the Intel® Parallel Studio XE Professional Edition or Cluster Edition product and download it to your WorkSpace.  To evaluate the software in the Amazon WorkSpace environment, from the browser go to https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/try-buy-tools and download the software, which includes registering your evaluation copy.
   2. Select either online or offline installer, the difference being that selecting the offline installer causes the entire package to be downloaded – over 3 GB!  The online installer (text-based for Linux) enables you to configure which parts to download.  So if you aren’t interested in installing the Math Kernel Library, for example, it won’t be downloaded.
2. Installation
   1. Windows*
      1. Execute the .exe file downloaded to your WorkSpace.  Files will be extracted and installation will begin.  During installation, enter the serial number received during registration and select Install from the Installation Summary dialog, unless you desire to change the components or architecture support (i.e., 32-bit or 64-bit – both is the default).
         
3. Linux*
   1. Installation
      1. Selecting the online installer will download a shell script that you then invoke.  After downloading, you must add the “execute” attribute (‘chmod +x <file>) to the file or pass the filename as an argument to the ‘sh’ command.
      2. Selecting the full offline installer will download a compressed tar file.  After downloading, extract the tar file, e.g., tar xzvf <tarfilename>.  A subdirectory will be created by the extraction.  Change directory into that subdirectory and execute the install.sh or install_GUI.sh script using your sudo privileges, e.g., ‘sudo ./install.sh’.
      3. If you do not launch the install script with the ‘sudo’ command, the install script will prompt you to choose between installing as root, installing using sudo privileges, or installing as the current user, in which case the tools will only be available for use by the current user.  If prompted for the sudo password, just press Next.
      4. If you don’t have the kernel sources installed on the system, the installation will complain about a pre-requisite not being met.  You can safely ignore this warning.
      5. Likewise, after pressing the Install button, you may see a message about g++ missing.  You can ignore this message and continue with the installation.
         
4. Once installation is complete, a web page will open in your browser (if your system does not have a browser, see this page for the same information) with links to tutorials and other resources.  Use these resources to learn how to use all the tools included in the Parallel Studio XE Professional Edition.

Conclusion

Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2015 Profession Edition tool suite simplifies the design, development, debug, and tuning of code that utilizes parallel processing to boost application performance.  Developers on Amazon WorkSpaces will benefit from the tool suite as much as other developers.  Try it and let us know about your experience on our user forums.