Hi devs,
I am currently trying to complie numerical simulation code Woo [1] to
run on Xeon Phi. Woo is written in a mix of Python and c++, using a
number of c++ libs and Python packages.
As you may know, Xeon Phi is 60-core (240 Hyper-Threaded cores) card
with 4-16GB RAM, Pentium-like cores and ISA with many extensions for
64bit and parallel computing; it can be used either as co-processor for
CPU tasks, or as a standalone machine accessible over virtual network
between the host and the card. The card itself boots minimalistic Linux
and userland (Yocto-based) and has access to the host filesystem through
NFS. The platform is identified as x86_64-k1om-linux-gnu; gcc, binutils
and glibc support this arch since a few years back (gcc supports it as
target, but does not have target-specific optimizations, which are only
present in the commercial Intel compiler).||
My experience with Yocto was not great (it fails to build with newer
headers in the system), and Intel's forum seems to welcome only people
running huge clusters in this segment.
The first goal of this port would be to bootstrap Debian (using
gcc+binutils as cross-compiler, those are available from Intel IIRC) and
use its cross-compiled userland (compiler, packaging infrastructure)
over NFS to compile other packages on the card itself, using
cross-compiled native compiler (Python cannot be really cross-compiled
currently).
Second optional goal would be to compile some of the debian packages
(many wouldn't make sense) on the card natively and have pre-built
binaries in the public archive.
After that, see how feasible it would be to boot Debian itself on the
card -- that might be complicated due to special services for the card
(like virtual network, configuration framework, no access to console
while booting AFAIK) and is perhaps not really needed.
From what I understood, the porting infrastructure is being
consolidated at the moment, so I would appreciate some guidance on where
to start; if there is a more specific and more suitable list
(debian-ports was shut down recently), please let me know. Maybe some
other Debian developers have the same interest, or more experience with
Xeon Phi.
Looking forward to fruitful discussion.
Cheers, Václav
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=794710
