Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack (MPSS)

• Summary of latest changes
• The Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack: Description, and supported Operating Systems
• Downloads
• Archive of previous Intel® MPSS releases
• How to receive notification of future updates
• Additional Documentation
• Where to ask questions

Summary of (latest) changes

Here we will list the most recent 1-2 changes made to the Intel® MPSS so that if you've subscribed to get notifications on updates, you'll be able to quickly determine whether this applies to you.

• November 7 2013:  Published source code for unmodified GPL components for Linux Intel® MPSS 3.1 release
• October 31 2013:  Published Intel® MPSS Performance Guide (see Additional Documentation section)
• October 24 2013:  Posted First MPSS 3.1 release for Linux
• October 22 2013:  Posted MPSS hotfix 2.1.6720-21
• October 7 2013: Added Chinese and Japanese translations of the readme file for Microsoft* Windows Yocto (3.1) release
• September 29 2013: Added Microsoft* Windows Yocto (3.1) release

About the Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack

The "Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack." is necessary to run the Intel® Xeon Phi Coprocessor. Users often call this stack "MPSS" for short. It is dependent on Linux kernels 2.6.34 or later , and it has been tested to work with specific versions of 64-bit Operating Systems:

•  Red Hat Enterprise 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4
•  SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 and SP2 (MPSS 2.1 release) and   SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP2 and SP3 (MPSS 3.1 release) 
•  Microsoft* Windows 7 Enterprise SP1, Windows 8 Enterprise, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows Server 2012 

The readme files (referenced in the Download section) have more information on how to build and install the stack.

The open source updates we have made are in support of the instruction set, the ABI, initializing and controlling an SMP on-a-chip, and the glue software to support the coprocessor communication with the host system. The changes in the Linux kernel are primarily for three reasons:

• Numerous little changes to support the unique combination of an Intel® Pentium® processor core that also supports 64-bits including the Intel® Initial Many Core Instructions (Intel® IMCI).
• Power management, which is a feature not associated with the original Pentium processors. Power management is much more important when you have up to 61 cores on a single die
• The Intel® Many Integrated Core (MIC) check architecture, also a feature not present in the original Pentium processor designs.

The Symmetric Communications InterFace (SCIF) is included in the RPM bundle. SCIF provides a mechanism for inter-node communications within a single platform. A node, for SCIF purposes, is defined as either a Intel® Xeon Phi Coprocessor or the Intel® Xeon® processor. In particular, SCIF abstracts the details of communicating over the PCI Express bus. The SCIF APIs are callable from both user space (uSCIF) and kernel-space (kSCIF).

The MPSS is downloadable from the sources below. Note that these packages include documentation and APIs (e.g. SCIF API).

Please note: the Linux* MPSS download files marked '.gz' should end in '.gz' when downloaded; most browsers leave the extension alone, but Windows Explorer may rename the files. If this affects you, we recommend renaming the file to the proper extension after downloading.

If it is necessary for you to access slightly older releases of the MPSS, please visit the archive at: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-manycore-platform-software-stack-mpss-archive

Getting notified of future updates

Do you want to receive updates when we publish a new MPSS stack?   Click on the 'Subscribe' button at the bottom of this page to be notified when this document gets updated!

Downloads

There are currently 2 major releases available of the MPSS;  The 2.1 release is an evolution of the MPSS that Intel originally released in November of 2012.     The 3.1 (YOCTO) release is new as of September 2013 and is organized very differently from the original 2.1 release.

We recommend new adopters to start by using the 3.1 release.   We recommend existing users to read this FAQ and migrate to the 3.1 release as soon as feasible for them, to inherit new features and bug fixes as they become available over time.   Support for each Intel® MPSS release ends 1 year from the date it was posted.

Get the MPSS 2.1 release for Linux*

Get the MPSS 3.1 release for Linux*

Get the MPSS 3.1 release for Microsoft* Windows

MPSS 2.1 release for Linux*

MPSS 3.1 release for Linux

As of October 2013, Intel transitioned the Intel® MPSS to a Yocto-based release.   See more information on this at:  http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intelr-mpss-transition-to-yocto-faq.   

MPSS 3.1 release for Microsoft* Windows

As of September 2013, Intel transitioned the Intel® MPSS to a Yocto-based release.   See more information on this at:  http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intelr-mpss-transition-to-yocto-faq.   

Additional documentation

There is additional documentation in the MPSS packages, more specifically:  a Platform Status Panel User Guide (in /opt/intel/mic/sysmgt/docs) and MIC_SCIF_API_Reference_Manual* and User guides in /opt/intel/mic/scif/docs.   On the MPSS 3.1 release, these are in /usr/share/doc/sysmgmt and /usr/share/doc/scif

Additionally, there is a document attached below, the Intel® MPSS Performance Guide, which documents best known methods for fine tuning the Intel® MPSS runtime environment for best application performance.

Where to ask questions

The discussion forum at http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-many-integrated-core is available to join and discuss any enhancements or issues with the MPSS.

Information about Intel® MPSS security can be found here