I guess this is partly about stealing AMD's thunder following their recent release of the 16-core bulldozer chips. Not that the technologies directly compare, but most non-geeks are just going to see 50 cores >> 16 and buy Intel again next time.
Non-geeks will not care because it will not be marketed to them or available for them to purchase. This is a High Performance Computing product going against AMD's Firestream or nVidia's Tesla. These are high dollar products for niche tasks that non-geeks won't be doing. Non-geeks will be listening to what the salesman tells them is good, not referencing some blurb their geek friend told them about a 50-core Intel product. This product is the successor to Knights Ferry which was a 32-core part released way-way-way before Bulldozer.
