Intel CoProcessors for Rendering (Xeon Phi)

Bumping an old closed topic…

Embree: A Kernel Framework for Efficient CPU Ray Tracing was ported to the xeon phi so this means that there are several 3D Software Packages that can leverage the Xeon Phi’s - Autodesk Maya, VRay 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, LuxRender… Not sure how this compares to gpgpu yet as it is just kind of an aside as I get my first compute node up and running but it looks quite interesting for artist/computer geeks.

My current build as it sits -
Supermicro X9DRG-QF
2 - E5 2670 SR0KX,
64GB ECC DDR3,
2 Xeon Phi’s (31SP)

  • 4 will fit on the board but until I can build a workstation node it will have 3 and an old GTX580.

  • A couple of ssd’s for boot (need to get a few nvme disks in raid 0 for scratch - SM has a two port card. HP and DELL have created x16 cards for 4 nvme m.2 but proprietary firmware).

  • A few terabytes of disk for storage.

Networking :
Planning on QDR IB (IB/RDMA/NFS)
4036 switch (4036E would be nicer but twice the price - 10gbe ethernet bridge is nice though).

KVM as Hypervisor, Centos for Dom0,
Centos VM for Compute Node (intel supports redhat libs so redhat/centos/fedora) - wine for windows required
PfSense - Virtualized Firewall or on a cheap 2U.

FileServer will be some version of solaris (best support for zfs/ib
ZFS on SM216 - 24 2.5" Bay
mirrored striped ssds - likely 850’s with zeusram or a 3700 for slog.
( Either Napp-It or build a Napp-It clone on Solaris)

The extra compute support probably doesn't work on linux, and even less likely to work through wine on linux. Really, Phi's are still not as good as GPGPUs. if you want rendering power, you want a FirePro.

Re: rendering - gpu ... yup, far better off with the $3000 card. :)
... and I definitely wouldn't build a xeon phi render farm.

Just pointing out that in one specific area there is a ray tracing library that has been ported and is being used by actively 3D graphics programs. The libraries will definitely work under linux/solaris/bsd et al.

The Phi is a far better tool for general purpose smp (science, math, data mining.) The graphics cards are extremely well designed for drawing. At this point in the life cycle a Xeon Phi only has about 1 teraflop of fp64 calculation ability at peak and the current gen video cards can far outstrip that number in fp32 in the subset of instruction that they are able to carry out.

The difference really is that the Phi is a bunch of cpus that can execute programs (logic) and a graphic card has shaders that can execute discrete instructions.

Knight's Landing when it comes out 2017 should be interesting power wise. ARM has really been stepping up in the low power super computing realm and may yet eat intel's breakfast.