[smueller1234]

Without coming up with a pretty new overall design, Intel will struggle with that: the IO capabilities of Zen are much better than those of today's Xeons. And the more chips, the more sockets, the more chip IO. On top of that, as the throughput requirements for NICs, accelerators, storage (ssds and nvram-type devices) keeps increasing very quickly, that'll put further pressure on such a design.

Don't get me wrong, it seems likely that Intel is considering such options, but they won't be all too amazing for many workloads.

[bhouston]

They do need to come up with a new design.

Intel hired Jim Keller that developed AMD's HyperTransport and the Zen's interconnection fabric and was intrumental in the Zen project a few months ago.