INTEL XEON PHI
Introducing Intel’s Knights Landing
Knights Landing is the codename for Intel’s 2nd generation Xeon Phi Product Family, which delivers massive thread parallelism, data parallelism and memory bandwidth – with improved single-thread performance and Intel Xeon processor binary-compatibility in a standard CPU form factor.
2U Intel Xeon Phi Processor (KNL) Quad Module Server/Omni-Path Host Fabric Interface
Designed for parallelized workflows in the HPC market and features four Intel Compute Modules, each with support for the Intel Xeon Phi Processor. The Intel Omni-Path Host Fabric Interface Adapter offers up to 100 Gbps per port of bandwidth, delivering performance that scales with high node and core counts. The hot-swappable compute modules, 3.5″ drive bays, and redundant power supply modules offer easy serviceability.
The most distinguishing feature of the chip is that it’s a bootable host CPU — unlike its predecessor Knights Corner, which is a coprocessor that connects over PCIe. The Knights Landing Phi is the first chip to offer an integrated fabric, Intel’s Omni-Path Architecture (OPA), in the package.
Knights Landing also puts integrated on-package memory in a processor, which benefits memory bandwidth and overall application performance. A six-channel memory controller supports up to 384 GB of DDR4-2400 memory (~90GB/s sustained bandwidth). There are 36 PCI Express 3.0 lanes for connecting PCIe SSDs or discrete graphics cards. The MIC (Many Integrated Cores) design fits 8 billion transistors on a die, using 14 nm process technology. The Phi product family comes in two variants: a stand-alone CPU, and a stand-alone CPU with integrated Omni-Path fabric technology. The SKU stack that Intel is launching includes four parts with different core counts, frequencies, TDPs and price points.
Product Specifications
| Processor Number | Cache | Clock Speed | # of Cores/ # of Threads |
Max TDP/ Power |
OPA on Chip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xeon Phi Processor 7290F (16GB, 1.50 GHz, 72 core) | 36 | 1.50 GHz | 72/72 | 260 | Yes |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7290 (16GB, 1.50 GHz, 72 core) | 36 | 1.50 GHz | 72/72 | 245 | No |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7250F (16GB, 1.40 GHz, 68 core) | 34 | 1.40 GHz | 68/68 | 230 | Yes |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7250 (16GB, 1.40 GHz, 68 core) | 34 | 1.40 GHz | 68/68 | 215 | No |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7230F (16GB, 1.30 GHz, 64 core) | 32 | 1.30 GHz | 64/64 | 230 | Yes |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7230 (16GB, 1.30 GHz, 64 core) | 32 | 1.30 GHz | 64/64 | 215 | No |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7210F (16GB, 1.30 GHz, 64 core) | 32 | 1.30 GHz | 64/64 | 230 | Yes |
| Xeon Phi Processor 7210 (16GB, 1.30 GHz, 64 core) | 32 | 1.30 GHz | 64/64 | 215 | No |
Many Trailblazing Improvements in Knights Landing
| Improvements | What / Why |
|---|---|
| Self-Boot Processor | No PCIe bottleneck |
| Binary Compatibility with Xeon | Runs all legacy software. No recompilation. |
| New Core: SLM based | ~3x higher ST performance over KNC |
| Improved Vector density | 3+ TFLOPS (DP) peak per chip |
| AVX 512 ISA | New 512-bit Vector ISA with Masks |
| Scatter/Gather Engine | Hardware support for gather and scatter |
| New memory technology: MCDRAM + DDR | Large High Bandwidth Memory, MCDRAM Huge bulk memory, DDR |
| New on-die interconnect: Mesh | High BW connection between cores and memory |
Summary
- Knights Landing (KNL) is the first self-boot Intel Xeon Phi processor
- Many improvements for performance and programmability
- Significant leap in scalar and vector performance
- Significant increase in memory bandwidth and capacity
- Binary compatible with Intel Xeon processor
- Common programming models between Intel Xeon processor and Intel Xeon Phi processor
- KNL offers immense amount of parallelism (both data and thread)
- Future trend is further increase in parallelism for both Intel Xeon processor and Intel Xeon Phi processor
- Developers need to prepare software to extract full benefits from this trend
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