Strong knocking combustion has become the greatest challenge for advanced internal combustion engines to pursue thermal efficiency limits at high power density conditions. Arising from enclosed space and extreme combustion situations, the fundamental mechanism for strong knocking combustion has still not been fully understood. In this study, synchronization measurement was performed through simultaneous pressure acquisition and high-speed direct photography, and knocking experiments were comparatively conducted under spark-ignition (SI) and compression-ignition (CI) conditions in a high-strength optical rapid compression machine (RCM) with flat piston design. Strong knocking phenomena were reproduced through varying initial thermodynamic conditions, and localized autoignition (AI) initiation and reaction wave evolutions were visualized, companied by synchronous pressure and temperature trajectories. The results show that compared with initial temperature, initial pressure and equivalence ratio exhibit greater influence on the variations of knocking severity. The weighting of different contributors can be further quantified by an effective energy density that shows positive but nonlinear correlations with knocking severity. However, the distinctions between CI and SI knocking characteristics at identical effective energy density also reflect the essential role of the interplay between primary flame propagation and end-gas AI progress. Visualized combustion images show that through improving end-gas thermodynamic state and reactivity sensitivity, the primary flame propagation can enhance localized AI initiation and secondary intensive AI evolutions, facilitating combustion mode transitions into developing detonation. The significant influence of primary flame propagation is diminished until ignition delay time becomes sufficiently short. Finally, with estimated thermal heterogeneities in flat-piston RCM configurations, the ignition modes of strong knocking cycles are quantified by a non-dimensional ignition regime diagram, and favorable scaling agreements with strong and mixed ignition regimes are observed. (C) 2019 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.