4 ms·

Note: the instruction set and open source software stack are available: http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/06/05/knights-corner-open-source-software-st

Note: the instruction set and open source software stack are available: http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/06/05/knights-corner-open-source-software-stack/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/06/05/knights-cor... http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/showthread.php?t=105443 http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/showthread.php?t=1054...

ilaksh 14y ago
So this means that each core is running its own version of Red Hat or some other Linux? Does that mean that I can install my own software on those ah, tiny machines? Someone may probably get mad or think I am stupid for asking this, but can I install node.js on each core?
- raverbashing 14y ago
  It's probably going to be a small RTOS in each core Or like it's done in PS3, where you have one core scheduling the others "but can I install node.js on each core?" maybe, but that's really not the idea
  - ilaksh 14y ago
    ok whats the idea then, how am I supposed to program the tiny machines/cores?
    - PopaL 14y ago
      Have a look at OpenCL, I think you will use OpenCL or a similar framework to code for this device.
    - samlittlewood 14y ago
      Have a look at http://ispc.github.com/ http://ispc.github.com/ - Intel SPMD Program Compiler "An open-source compiler for high-performance SIMD programming on the CPU"
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    You can go the RTOS route, but each card looks like a 50-core, 200-thread machine with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and can comfortably run a Linux or *BSD stack. In fact, I'd love to see developers using them as their personal machines (Intel would probably have to make ATX motherboards with it) so that more and more software makes use of the more and more available threads on our own machines. An entry-level laptop these days looks like 8 processors to the OS and this number will only go up.
    - ajross 14y ago
      While these are x86 cores, and clearly capable of running desktop software, it wouldn't be a good experience as the primary CPU. The circuit size almost certainly means that these are in-order CPUs, probably with minimal superscalar capability, and likely a shallow pipeline. So scalar code is going to run terribly on them. Desktop usage is dominated by scalar CPU overhead.
      - rbanffy 14y ago
        That's precisely why it would be interesting - developers would have to work around these limitations. Number of cores will continue to go up and, if the software allows it, they can be simples ones.
        ajross 14y ago
        With all due respect: yawn. People have been predicting the end of scalar code now for a decade, and it's no closer than it was. Show me a SIMD Javascript interpreter, or DOM layout engine, or SSL implementation, or compression algorithm, or heap allocator, or... Won't happen. Out of order, heavily superscalar, deeply pipelined cores have won in the market because they're better for 90% of the problems you will see. But there are better architectures for the remaining 10% (and of those, "3D games", "Bitcoin mining" and "Password cracking" seem to make up about 90%), so you'll see lots of churn in this space as people try to figure out the best and most future-proof architeture. For me, I like this a lot. The Knight's Corner architecture looks mostly identical to the AVX code you can run on Sandy/Ivy bridge right now, just with a few new features and a different SIMD width. From a programmer's perspective, it's much cleaner than the hidden-behind-multiply-abstracted-layers-above-proprietary-secret-hardware nonsense being peddled by AMD and NVIDIA. But it won't run your desktop. Ever. Sorry.
- samlittlewood 14y ago
  From my limited understanding: each card will appear as a 50 core linux box. Each core has a set of 16 way vector insns, and there is a little api for synchronization.
- ubernostrum 14y ago
  Think of graphics cards, since they're the most commonplace example of coprocessors. You don't install a game on your graphics card; rather, the system gains the ability to offload graphics processing to the card, in order to improve how well the system as a whole runs the game.
  - reitzensteinm 14y ago
    Except in this case, you can install Linux on it.
- steveb 14y ago
  Each card (not core) is running an embedded version of Linux. Binaries are almost all linked to busybox. You can mount NFS shares to share data. The embedded systems need specially compiled binaries. With the Intel compiler, this is usually achieved by turning on a flag at compile time. So yes, you can install and run your own software on the nodes.

ilaksh 14y ago

So this means that each core is running its own version of Red Hat or some other Linux? Does that mean that I can install my own software on those ah, tiny machines? Someone may probably get mad or think I am stupid for asking this, but can I install node.js on each core?

raverbashing 14y ago
It's probably going to be a small RTOS in each core Or like it's done in PS3, where you have one core scheduling the others "but can I install node.js on each core?" maybe, but that's really not the idea
- ilaksh 14y ago
  ok whats the idea then, how am I supposed to program the tiny machines/cores?
  - PopaL 14y ago
    Have a look at OpenCL, I think you will use OpenCL or a similar framework to code for this device.
  - samlittlewood 14y ago
    Have a look at http://ispc.github.com/ http://ispc.github.com/ - Intel SPMD Program Compiler "An open-source compiler for high-performance SIMD programming on the CPU"
- rbanffy 14y ago
  You can go the RTOS route, but each card looks like a 50-core, 200-thread machine with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and can comfortably run a Linux or *BSD stack. In fact, I'd love to see developers using them as their personal machines (Intel would probably have to make ATX motherboards with it) so that more and more software makes use of the more and more available threads on our own machines. An entry-level laptop these days looks like 8 processors to the OS and this number will only go up.
  - ajross 14y ago
    While these are x86 cores, and clearly capable of running desktop software, it wouldn't be a good experience as the primary CPU. The circuit size almost certainly means that these are in-order CPUs, probably with minimal superscalar capability, and likely a shallow pipeline. So scalar code is going to run terribly on them. Desktop usage is dominated by scalar CPU overhead.
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      That's precisely why it would be interesting - developers would have to work around these limitations. Number of cores will continue to go up and, if the software allows it, they can be simples ones.
      - ajross 14y ago
        With all due respect: yawn. People have been predicting the end of scalar code now for a decade, and it's no closer than it was. Show me a SIMD Javascript interpreter, or DOM layout engine, or SSL implementation, or compression algorithm, or heap allocator, or... Won't happen. Out of order, heavily superscalar, deeply pipelined cores have won in the market because they're better for 90% of the problems you will see. But there are better architectures for the remaining 10% (and of those, "3D games", "Bitcoin mining" and "Password cracking" seem to make up about 90%), so you'll see lots of churn in this space as people try to figure out the best and most future-proof architeture. For me, I like this a lot. The Knight's Corner architecture looks mostly identical to the AVX code you can run on Sandy/Ivy bridge right now, just with a few new features and a different SIMD width. From a programmer's perspective, it's much cleaner than the hidden-behind-multiply-abstracted-layers-above-proprietary-secret-hardware nonsense being peddled by AMD and NVIDIA. But it won't run your desktop. Ever. Sorry.
samlittlewood 14y ago
From my limited understanding: each card will appear as a 50 core linux box. Each core has a set of 16 way vector insns, and there is a little api for synchronization.
ubernostrum 14y ago
Think of graphics cards, since they're the most commonplace example of coprocessors. You don't install a game on your graphics card; rather, the system gains the ability to offload graphics processing to the card, in order to improve how well the system as a whole runs the game.
- reitzensteinm 14y ago
  Except in this case, you can install Linux on it.
steveb 14y ago
Each card (not core) is running an embedded version of Linux. Binaries are almost all linked to busybox. You can mount NFS shares to share data. The embedded systems need specially compiled binaries. With the Intel compiler, this is usually achieved by turning on a flag at compile time. So yes, you can install and run your own software on the nodes.