[pavlov]

The Xeon Phi was a “manycore” x86 design with lots of tiny CPU cores, something like the original Pentium, but with the addition of 512-bit SIMD and hyperthreading:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi

[rbanffy]

IIRC the first Phi has SMT4 in a round robin fashion similar to the Cell PPUs. To make a core run at full speed, you should schedule 4 threads on it.

[p_l]

The very, very first Phi still had its ROPs and texture units, being essentially a failed GPU with identifying marks filed off (yes, the first units were Larrabee prototypes with video outputs unpopulated)

[rbanffy]

> the first units were Larrabee prototypes with video outputs unpopulated

Such a shame. I'd love to base a workstation on those.

Seems to be a hobby I never quite act upon - to misuse silicon and make it work as a workstation.