[daniel-cussen]

> From what I read a long time ago Phi has the same branch limitation - it can do branches by running same code twice, just like Cuda.

I'm fairly sure that's not the case now. Certainly the capability is there for it to do independent branches--just look at the GA144, which while limited in other ways, can have its 144 computers branching all over the place simultaneously. No, I'm pretty sure that's the whole point of this type of architecture: to allow more branching.

If it didn't, I'd be a little bit screwed, because I was counting on it for a compute-bound algorithm that really needs that branching.

[sspiff]

It's not the case. These are 57 independant cores, much like you'd see in a quad core CPU, except that they're Pentium-vintage feature wise (with the addition of some modern vector instructions and SMT).

As far as I can tell, they're not binary compatible with existing software and software need recompilation, using Intels compilers.