Xeon Phi Developers Starter Kit

Table of Contents

What is the Intel Xeon Phi starter kit? … well, if you get a new system with a Xeon Phi installed from an Intel platinum partner (like us) you have an option to get some really nice software development tools for a significant discount. If you are in a situation where you would need a commercial license for Intel's developer tools for your Phi development work, then the discount is REALLY significant! — greater than 85% discount!*.

*I really don't want to commit to pricing too much since it is somewhat in flux. Just figure between $300-$400 extra on a system price for some really good developer tools. It's a bargain even for those who can get academic pricing and people who have compiler only licenses already. If you are getting a system for Phi development work and you don't already have a license for the full Parallel or Cluster Studio XE then, yes, you really should get the kit!

Here's what you get

For a kit with a Xeon Phi 3120 …

Intel® Parallel Studio XE

Intel® Advisor XE: – This is a code analysis tool for finding and testing different threading opportunities and potential problems.
Intel® VTune™ Amplifier XE: – A really impressive and comprehensive performance profiler.
Intel® Inspector XE: – Helps find memory leaks, race conditions and deadlocks in programs.
Static Analysis: – Does the above with the code itself.
Intel® Threading Building Blocks: – C++ template library for task parallelism.
Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives: – Optimized multi-threaded and vectorized C/C++ library for multi-media and data analysis outside of the scope of MKL.
Intel® Math Kernel Library: – (MKL) Very nicely vectorized and threaded library for Linear Algebra, Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT), Vector Math and Statistics functions.
Intel® C++ Compiler XE: – Nice optimizing C/C++ compiler.
Intel® Fortran Compiler XE: – Really good modern Fortran compiler! Mostly up to date with 2008 standards spec.

Extra Documentation

Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor High Performance Programming: – James Jeffers and James Reinders – good reference written by a couple of really talented and knowledgeable Intel guys with deep understanding of MIC aka Phi.
Parallel Programming and Optimization with Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessors: – Andrey Vladimirov and Vadim Karpusenko Stanford University and Colfax International – good reference for C/C++ programmers written by a couple of skilled Physicists, programmers and great guys.
Quick start guide: – "TOP 10 useful developer resources".

With a system including a Xeon Phi 5110P you get Intel® Cluster Studio which adds …

Intel® MPI Library: – Yes, Intel's own tweaked MPI library based on MPICH. Co-array Fortran uses the run-time libs from this.
Intel® Trace Analyzer and Collector: – MPI parallel analyzer and profiler.