[geeks] Xeon Phi

[Jonathan Groll]

Hi all,

Just a heads up that recently I noticed a seller of Xeon Phi
coprocessors on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelabsales/comments/8db2ry/fs_usfl_100_intel_xeon_phi_7es_71s1p_7110p/

The Phi models the redditor is selling are Knights Corner models, from
around 2012 and have 'only' 61 cores. I guess we should be happy to
buy them as they've at least passed basic health checks, and are
fairly cheap! And I'm not so sure how frequently these 'super
computer' parts come on to the open market, for all I know this could
occur frequently, but I assume that Knights Mill is completely
unaffordable for the hobbyist.

The host computer needs to be fairly beefy (so this diversion would
not be super low budget, see mining article below) - both in terms of
PSU and cooling, and it also requires "above 4G decoding". Not clear if
the machine can be LGA2011v1 (although from what I've read out there
LGA2011v3 is certainly supported). Custom cooling and shrouds are
almost certainly required if you go the budget route.

This guy has been using them effectively for crypto mining:
https://lukminer.org/2018/01/06/more-on-building-phi-7220-mining-rigs/

I'm not sure how feasible it is to adapt generic code to run on these
as one of the great benefits is that they are some variant of x86, I
have some (backtesting) python scripts that I wouldn't mind throwing
at them, but have no idea if that is a feasible propostion or not.

Cheers,
Jonathan
--
jjg: Jonathan J. Groll : groll co za
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