[Pw_forum] QE on Xeon Phi

[Eduardo Menendez]

Dear fellows,

I need to know if it is worth to buy Xeon coprocessors for use with Quantum
ESPRESSO. I need make a choice between more CPU or less CPU+coprocessor,
and even to choose between few Intel cores vs not-so-few AMD Opterons.
Searching in the Web I have found these implemntatios of QE on Xeon Phi:
(1) a Quantum ESPRESSO modified for Xeon Phi, by Fabio Affinito,  and
(2) an instructions for instalation of standard Quantum ESPRESSO with some
automagic use of Xeon Phi by the MKL. Here is the site
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/quantum-espresso-for-intel-xeon-phi-coprocessor

Is the choice (1) available and  mature enough for a general use, or at
least for
using PWscf for calculations of defects in supercells containg a multiple
of 64 atoms?
Is choice (2) effcient? I see a benchmark in that site that, if I interpret
correctly, it indicates only a 12% improvement. Hence I think this
automagic choice is not worth enough. Am I wrong?

Choice 2 needs installing MPSS (Manycore Platform Software Stacks) and
Intel MPI. Does choice (1) also require these components?

MPSS is supported for Red Hat and SUSE. Is there any good experience with
Debian or Ubuntu?

At this point I feel rather conservative :-( . If not warmed by
enthusiastic praise of coprocessors, or GPU, I will keep looking for as
many CPU cores as possible.


Cheers,


Eduardo Menendez Proupin
Departamento de Fisica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile
URL: http://www.gnm.cl/emenendez

  “Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.”
Karl Popper
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.quantum-espresso.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20140711/2e8bb69d/attachment.html>