[pastaguy1]

They tried to check many, some, maybe possibly more of the boxes with the Xeon Phi, and it kinda seems like things simply didn't go their way.

Cuda wasn't as flexible, and the payoff wasn't as big in 2010 or so as it is now.

I've never used a phi, but i can see where they were coming from i think. No need for a full rewrite like Cuda (maybe). The hardware is also more flexible than a GPU, but that turned out to be less important than they thought it might be.

[shaklee3]

this isn't true. the phi was extremely complex to program for, and it was not simply a port of standard x86 code. it required you to pay attention to multiple levels of memory hierarchy, just as the GPU did.