Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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batstick
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Xeon Phi Compatibility?

Post by batstick »

Is the Linux version of LuxCoreRender compatible with the old xeon phi coprocessors? has anyone tested it? also, would it need to be custom compiled to run on one? Thanks.
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Dade
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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batstick wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 3:17 pm Is the Linux version of LuxCoreRender compatible with the old xeon phi coprocessors? has anyone tested it? also, would it need to be custom compiled to run on one? Thanks.
As far as I know the Xeon Phi OpenCL support was lack luster (and done in the "wrong" way, not like ISPC) so you may be able to compile LuxCore on XeonPhi but both CPU rendering and OpenCL rendering are likely to be very slow because they can not take advantage of the vector units (i.e. AVX512).
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batstick
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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I believe some new processors (6000 or 7000 series from intel and higher) support avx512 too. Would support likely ever be added for the vector units in cpus?
there was an article that someone had compiled cycles to run on phi cards.
http://blender.it4i.cz/research/renderi ... -xeon-phi/
the performance is obviously in last place, but the important part is that it is about as fast as a single 12 core xeon v3. with how well cpus run in luxcore it seems promising.
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Dade
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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batstick wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 4:03 pm I believe some new processors (6000 or 7000 series from intel and higher) support avx512 too. Would support likely ever be added for the vector units in cpus?
I doubt, the only tool to obtain an half decent result at the moment is Intel ISPC (https://ispc.github.io) and no one is going to rewrite all the code for ISPC.
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batstick
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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Alright. Well hopefully by the end of tonight I will be able to test performance on the phi. Will I have to recompile or can I just drop the current Linux build onto it? Thank you for your help with this.
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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batstick wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 4:24 pm Alright. Well hopefully by the end of tonight I will be able to test performance on the phi. Will I have to recompile or can I just drop the current Linux build onto it? Thank you for your help with this.
The binary may work, not sure, it is supposed to be fully x86 compatible after all :?:
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batstick
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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When I run ./luxcoreui I get an error that says: cannot execute binary file. I assume that has something to do with ssh and not having a display. Also, is there a way to get the slave node running on Linux without a gui or python?
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

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batstick wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 12:06 am When I run ./luxcoreui I get an error that says: cannot execute binary file. I assume that has something to do with ssh and not having a display. Also, is there a way to get the slave node running on Linux without a gui or python?
The SDK version includes luxcoreconsole, a command line only version suited for you case. However the kind of error seem to suggest a major problem with the executable format more than a library related problem.
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batstick
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Re: Xeon Phi Compatibility?

Post by batstick »

Its the latter unfortunately. The command line scripts are also throwing the 'cannot execute binary file' error. This is very unfortunate. Ill look into compiling a custom version for myself if I can figure it out.
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