Intel's Artificial-Intelligence Chips: Marketing Gimmick Or Real Thing?

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) told technology developers few days ago that the company is planning to bring to the market a new version of its Xeon Phi processor (code named Knights Mill) next year with special features supporting artificial intelligence ("AI"). The ultimate goal of scientists with AI is making the computer to mimic human brain. Since the basic advantage of a human brain over a computer is that the human brain can perform extensive parallel processing, primary requirement for running AI workloads is massive amount of parallel processing. The question is can the Xeon Phi of future offer this kind of parallel processing? According to a recent research conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, modern budget GPUs are capable of offering similar application boosts compared to high-end GPUs in HPC (high performance computing) despite having lower floating point precision capabilities.