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Intel Knights Ferry GPU/Coprocessor Troubleshooting

Hi,

Not so long ago I got hold of an Intel Aubrey Isle/Knights Ferry/Larrabee card (whatever you want to call it!) from work. The card is the final KNF revision (Rev. F) before Knights Corner (AKA Xeon Phi). It has no video outputs soldered to the board, however there are solder points where video ports would be located.

 

I am not currently trying to get the card to display graphics, though if I can then that's a bonus, I'm simply trying to get it to work as a coprocessor. I have been trying for months now to get the card working with no luck. It shows up in Windows and Linux as a coprocessor as "Intel Corporation Device 224a" but I don't even know how to get the card uOS to boot or how to run anything on it as SSH only works when the card is booted.

MPSS does not work with the card as it tries to boot the card with a Knights Corner uOS which is based on a different architecture.

 

I was recently watching the videos of Linus and Anthony getting an Nvidia mining card and the unreleased AMD GPU working by modifying drivers and I was wondering if it would be possible to do that for this card?

I'd really appreciate any help I can get.

 

Photos attached are just showing the card itself, the bare PCB and the lspci output in Linux.

 

 

lrb1.thumb.jpg.b2d8d64e1838066147360c075006d7f2.jpgcpkfabf.thumb.jpg.d4bb3a2041c0589ea18949d04d9b8570.jpglrblinux.thumb.jpg.b0f8b0b5f24df3925f7448f977db99bc.jpg

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Have you tried to see if opencl recognizes this card under linux? Another thing to try is to see which drivers are currently loaded for that card with lspci -k

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6 minutes ago, igormp said:

Have you tried to see if opencl recognizes this card under linux? Another thing to try is to see which drivers are currently loaded for that card with lspci -k

I haven't tried opencl in Linux, but the there are no drivers which load in Linux. No kernel drivers are in use and there are no kernel modules listed either.

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10 minutes ago, Binary_Nexus said:

I haven't tried opencl in Linux, but the there are no drivers which load in Linux. No kernel drivers are in use and there are no kernel modules listed either.

I guess that makes sense, since it's a co-processor. Anyway, have you tried older versions of MPSS?

Is there anything relevant on micinfo's output?

Is the device under /dev/ by any means? Maybe you could get a serial connection to it without having to solder anything.

FX6300 @ 4.2GHz | Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 R2 | Hyper 212x | 3x 8GB + 1x 4GB @ 1600MHz | Gigabyte 2060 Super | Corsair CX650M | LG 43UK6520PSA
ASUS X550LN | i5 4210u | 12GB
Lenovo N23 Yoga

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10 minutes ago, igormp said:

I guess that makes sense, since it's a co-processor. Anyway, have you tried older versions of MPSS?

Is there anything relevant on micinfo's output?

Is the device under /dev/ by any means? Maybe you could get a serial connection to it without having to solder anything.

I tried the oldest version of MPSS available and it still only worked for Knights Corner Phis. Micinfo basically just says "unable to manipulate co-processor - Knights Ferry: Unknown error". The serial connection idea is very intriguing however. As in something like a virtual serial connection through pci-e? How exactly would I go about doing that?

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8 minutes ago, Binary_Nexus said:

I tried the oldest version of MPSS available and it still only worked for Knights Corner Phis. Micinfo basically just says "unable to manipulate co-processor - Knights Ferry: Unknown error".

Bummer :(

Quote

The serial connection idea is very intriguing however. As in something like a virtual serial connection through pci-e? How exactly would I go about doing that?

Yes, pretty much it. See if there's anything under /dev that seems to be that card. Usually serial stuff are labeled under /dev/tty (such as /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyACM0). Then you can connect to it with screen or picocom.

FX6300 @ 4.2GHz | Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 R2 | Hyper 212x | 3x 8GB + 1x 4GB @ 1600MHz | Gigabyte 2060 Super | Corsair CX650M | LG 43UK6520PSA
ASUS X550LN | i5 4210u | 12GB
Lenovo N23 Yoga

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11 minutes ago, igormp said:

Bummer :(

Yes, pretty much it. See if there's anything under /dev that seems to be that card. Usually serial stuff are labeled under /dev/tty (such as /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyACM0). Then you can connect to it with screen or picocom.

It's worth a shot.

Cheers, I'll have a look at that when I'm able to!

I'm not currently with the card but will be again in a few days so I'll post here again if I get anywhere with it, unless someone else has any other ideas.

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