Requirements and Troubleshooting for Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessors

The Requirements and Troubleshooting of/on Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessors document helps deal with any coprocessor-related scenario. 

Requirements

Scenario 1: Presales (prior to purchasing):

1. Information on what it is and what it's for:
   Is the Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor right for me?
2. Refer to the Product Specifications page for information on system compatibility.

Scenario 2: After you integrate it into the x16 PCIe slot, either before you turn the system on the first time or turn on a system with the operating system (OS) already on:

1. One dual processing system where only one processor is in place, make sure power supply for second processor is populated. This is required for PCIe* to work properly.
2. Due to airflow and thermal limitations, you must install the coprocessor into the top x16 slot of a 2-slot PCIe riser card.
3. For coprocessors with passive heatsinks, on 2U Intel® Server Systems, the AWTCOPRODUCT air duct kit is necessary.
   
4. Know the cable and power connectors on the coprocessor:
   

   Note

   Our resellers don't ship the coprocessor with it, as the cable depends on the system where the card will be integrated in. The 2U Riser Spare A2UL16RISER2, which is a kit that is sold separately, does include it, though.    Still, we first recommend customers contacting the system manufacturer and/or place of purchase.

5. BIOS settings to trigger:
   1. Disable the following:
      • Virtualization: Found within the Processor Configuration section, under Advance menu.
      • Hyperthreading: Found within the Processor Configuration section.
      • Onboard, software RAID: If you would rather have a hardware Intel® RAID Controller card, disregard. Needless to say, if you would rather configure your system with onboard RAID, back up your data before disabling.
      • All PXE options within NIC configuration
   2. Enable the following:
      • Maximize Memory below 4GB: If your system has less than 4GB; otherwise, disable this one.
      • Memory Mapped I/O above 4GB
      • Make sure the Memory Mapped I/O Size is set to 256G.

Troubleshooting hints

1. Very, very important: Check the Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack Troubleshooting Guide for both Windows* and Linux*.
2. Have customer run the pci command in the EFI shell to see if the coprocessor is listed:
   
3. Information on driver installation

   Note

   Aside from configuring the card through the command prompt, ssh, and so on, you need to assign tasks or applications specifically to the Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor. If you don't take this action, it's expected to have zero core utilization: Irrespective of the fact the Windows Device Manager detects the coprocessor with zero conflicts Irrespective of the temperature and memory usages you may see the Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor Platform Control Panel (part of the driver bundle package) reporting:

4. Technical Resources: Intel® Xeon® Processors
5. For programming purposes (for your programming needs):  Intel® Xeon Phi™ Coprocessor Developer’s Quick Start Guide