The full name for our software stack is the "Intel® Manycore Platform Software Stack.", and it is necessary to run the Intel® Xeon Phi Coprocessor. Users often call this stack "MPSS" for short. It is dependent on the 2.6.34 Linux kernel, and it has been tested to work with specific versions of 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4, as well as SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP1 and SP2.

The readme.txt file (referenced below) has 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 (SCI) 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, SCI abstracts the details of communicating over the PCI Express bus. The SCI 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. SCI API).

Please note: the 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

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Note:   If you are looking for information about accessing a Beta version of the Windows MPSS, see http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/windows-early-enabling-for-intelr-xeon-phitm-coprocessor

Also note:  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 

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.