Can we dual boot on Intel Xeon MIC card?

Question

I'm using an rhel machine as my host for the mic0 coprocessor. Currently I have mpss3.2.3 installed on my mic0 .

I wanted to know if I can apply the concept of dual boot and can install mpss3.3. also so that on the boot screen I can select which kernel I want to work on. Like we can install different kernel versions and can then select which one to work on eg.: Windows or Linux, same way can I have some setup which will give me the previledge of installing different kernel versions of mpss on mic0 coprocessor.

If yes, then how? If no , then why not?

Thanks

Answer 1

On a host system, one can install one MPSS stack at a time. That is, if you have MPSS x and you want to work with MPSS y, you need to uninstall the MPSS x before you can install MPSS y.

However, you still can setup a dual boot on your system so that you can boot different OS (or different Linux kernels), and for each OS you can install a different MPSS.

Answer 2

It's possible to do but a bit involved (my scripts to convert a standard rpm base automatically into a multi version setup are about 3000 lines of shell code ....)

a) unpack the *rpm packages using rpm2cpio and cpio into a location, say /opt/intel/mpss/VERSION instead of installing them directly

b) create custom script to load/unload the MPSS mic.ko driver

c) set PATH/LD_LIBRARY_PATH/MIC_LD_LIBRARY_PATH.... to suitable values

d) create a custom SOMEPATH/etc/mpss.VERSION directory and conf files - important are correct pointers to bzimage and initrd

e) start the mpssd via: /opt/intel/mpss/VERSION/usr/sbin/mpssd -d SOMEPATH/etc/mpss.VERSION

f) execute the micctrl -b command with: MPSS_CONFIGDIR=SOMEPATH/etc/mpss.VERSION micctrl -b

that way mpssd and micctrl look in the right places for your config files, and everything is independent from standard locations

Michael