Intel's SDK for OpenCL Applications Now Supports OpenCL 1.2 for 3rd and 4th Generation Core Processors
Intel's Software Development Kit for OpenCL Applications now supports the OpenCL 1.2 standard.
Intel's latest release of its Software Development Kit (SDK) now has full support for the Open Computing Language (OpenCL) framework, including the OpenCL 1.2 standard on current and future generation Intel core processors. The release is primarily targeted towards content creation applications such as music creation, photo and video editing. It is expected to provide better performance and battery life on low-power Intel platforms running Windows 7 or 8.
The OpenCL framework is an open standard that is currently maintained by the non-profit Khronos Group and has thus far been widely adopted by companies such as Altera, AMD, ARM Holdings, Nvidia and Samsung.
The Intel Software Development Kit for OpenCL Applications 2013 can be downloaded for free from the Intel Software Website.
As for the Xeon Phi, the less I have to think about how to communicate, coordinate, and schedule its many cores, the better. If your problem maps well to OpenCL, it greatly simplifies most of those issues.
Basically, the harder a parallel architecture is to program, the more benefit OpenCL can provide.