Hi all,
I'm wondering if current version of Lammps can run on Intel many
integrated core (MIC)? If not, is there a new version expected to run
on MIC?
Thanks in advance!
Best,
Hai
Hi all,
I'm wondering if current version of Lammps can run on Intel many
integrated core (MIC)?
no.
If not, is there a new version expected to run
on MIC?
i cannot say for certain, but since the
information that i have received from folks
at intel that the preferred interface to program
MIC is going to be an extension to OpenMP,
it would likely have to be based on the OpenMP
code in LAMMPS, that is maintained by me.
(unless somebody else is working on it
without telling me).
have been in contact with folks from intel
and have made the following conclusions
(i.e. these are *my* speculations not statements
from intel folks).
a) the MIC hardware to be released to a
wide audience will be different from the
evaluation hardware that select people
are working on
b) programming/compiling up to now
required a special version of the intel compilers
intel just today announced the availability of
modifications for open source software to
make use of MIC. even that announcement
hints at the fact that it is not yet fully resolved
how this hardware will be best programmed
and what APIs will ultimately be properly supported.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/06/05/knights-corner-open-source-software-stack/
there is a remote chance, that also the
OpenCL programming interface may be
supported at some point in time, which means,
that with some (hard to say how much) effort,
the GPU package could be augmented to utilize
MIC hardware. however, the preference seems
to be on directive based acceleration.
thus at this point, with this status and also
based on experiences made with CUDA/OpenCL
support on nvidia and ati/amd hardware, it would be
foolish to assume that there will be a properly
usable MIC support in *any* regular scientific
application software soon.
it is my personal impression, that there
are still significant bottlenecks that need
to be overcome to achieve good performance
for any application, that cannot fit entirely
into the MIC onboard storage or needs
to communicate its results to the host
frequently.
HTH,
axel
The GPU library in LAMMPS supports an OpenCL build that Intel has stated will be supported on mic. This will require a LAMMPS upgrade to 1) add a set of OpenCL preprocessor defines in lal_preprocessor.h that are appropriate for mic (there are some sets for other accelerators in there) and 2) possibly make some adjustments to efficiently allow multiple MPI procs to share the accelerator.
- Mike
Although, as axel stated in his response, intel has given no indication to the public of when the opencl runtime might be released in the talks I have attended... so plz don't take my response to mean that this will be available at mic release (or that intel will actually deliver on the statements I have heard).
- Mike