Early experiences with the intel many integrated cores accelerated computing technology

Abstract

We report on early programming experiences with the Intel® Many Integrated Core (Intel® MIC) Co-processor. This new and x86 based technology is Intel's answer to GPU-based accelerators by NVIDIA, AMD and others. Accelerators have generally sparked interest in the HPC community because they have the potential to significantly increase the compute power of the next generation of supercomputers. The merits of accelerators for general HPC purposes are still very much under debate. Undoubtedly accelerators add more complexity to an already very complex cluster, and the programmability of accelerators will be the key to enticing the diverse HPC user community to this new technology, even if the performance promise may be large.