They probably have something secret to counter intel in the 1k range. Probably 128 cores spread across a square-foot of silicon. Enough output that you can boil your coffee while gaming.
If you're basing that comment on TDP, think again.
NVIDIA redefined TDP to their convenience, to mean something more like "averages". So their numbers can't be compared directly.
Always look at third party measurements. I'm looking forward to Navi's, while on the topic, as they've announced large improvements in power efficiency.
In response to what you said about Navi, I'm also excited about that. I'd really love to see some really strong competition to Nvidia's offerings that might be able to give them a good fight.
Their dominance and tendency to push for proprietary features seems quite bad for the industry as a whole.
Yeah, I know. AMD GPUs also run a lot cooler as of the last time I checked. They've made a lot of progress, although the jokes from the R9 2xx-3xx era of a few years ago are still tempting.
I imagine their manufacturing costs are far lower than Intel's equivalent chip - the 3900X is essentially one and a half of a 3600X (since it has two CPU dies, and one interconnect), while Intel is still in the monolith business.
A modular approach! Kudos to AMD for making it work nicely (anyone remember the first Pentium Ds, that were just two Pentium 4s clobbered together to make a dual-core chip?).
Apart from that, I think you meant two-and-a-half, not one?
Nope, one-and-a-half! Two of the CPU dies, one interconnect die - that's going to be somewhere between one and two!
And their interconnect tech seems like it's going to be of huge importance in the server space - I can only imagine the yields on 8x4 core modules will be far higher than on a monolithic 32 core chip.
> I can only imagine the yields on 8x4 core modules will be far higher than on a monolithic 32 core chip.
The next EPYC's going to be up to 8 chiplets x 8 cores, competing against Intel's current 28-core monolithic die (or their dual-die non-socketed 56-core). How many cores remain enabled on a hypothetical next-generation Threadripper is an open question, but they would probably go beyond 32 cores total. And a 32-core Threadripper would probably not have 8 chiplets but rather four fully-enabled active chiplets and four mechanical spacers.