The names Knights Corner (KNC) and Knights Landing (KNL) are easily confused. KNC was designed as a plug-in card as you describe, but the current KNL generatio

The names Knights Corner (KNC) and Knights Landing (KNL) are easily confused. KNC was designed as a plug-in card as you describe, but the current KNL generation has standalone systems running a standard operating system. While there are differences in where the bottlenecks are (see Agner's report) you can/should/must optimize for these standalone KNL systems as you would for a CPU: http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc27/HC27.25-Tuesday-Epub/HC27.25.70-Processors-Epub/HC27.25.710-Knights-Landing-Sodani-Intel.pdf http://www.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc27/...