&gt; I was wondering how radically this architecture differs from more conventional x86 cores<p>The big difference besides memory and organisation is that the KNL cores are beefed-up Silvermont cores (the new Atom), which is an out of order core and pretty much what you would expect of a modern x86 architecture. The Knight&#x27;s Corner cores were custom cores, somewhere between barrel and vector processors. The Knight&#x27;s Landing should be even more general-purpose than the old Xeon Phi&#x27;s and easier to program for.