The core count and network processing is the same, but the number of SERDES lanes is half. This allowed the SOC's die size to be much smaller. You can fit 4 SOMs in the space of a single CEX7 module.
Do they like multi-"socket" settings?
The number 32 is important because a stack of boards should look like a Thinking Machines CM-2a (http://www.corestore.org/cm2a.htm) and each CPU would control one LED (or three - Octavo now has a 3-core, two puny, one even punier, part, ending up with only 10 nodes per board).