[StillBored]

Yield might be part of it, but I'm sure intel can ship partially functional chips with a core here/there disabled.

Another of the big advantages for AMD is that their products aren't reticle limited. The basic design lets them have a single design they bolt into dozens of configurations that scale larger than what intel can fit on a single die. Hence 64 "big" cores in a single socket.

There are likely other advantages too (cooling?) that partially make up for the longer more complex core->core latencies.

[sitkack]

Do a simulation, chiplets extract multiples of revenue more than binning on failed functional units. Lots of functional blocks are NOT redundant, leading to the total loss of part. At these small feature sizes and massive chip areas, yields are down. Chiplets avoid this.

[StillBored]

I don't have anywhere close to enough information to know what the actual yield numbers being experienced by AMD's products vs Intel's (you can probably count on 1 hand the number of people who know such things). For sure its much harder to make a perfect large die, which is part of why most of the 7nm parts are so small (or experiencing really low yields). But its so completely different. Intel is on a very mature process with a larger feature size, and so much of their large die chips _ARE_ consumed by things that can be disabled (cache slices, cores, etc) that the probability of landing on some critical portion of the die that completely junks it are probably fairly low or we would be seeing a glut in the lower core count parts too and intel doesn't really seem to be having a problem sourcing the upper mid range xeon parts.

Bottom line, I don't believe that intels product lines prices in any way reflect what the actual yield curves are.

[solidasparagus]

Chips with problematic cores are sold as lower end chips. For the same production cost, you are getting less revenue - failure rate plays a big role in profit margins.

[StillBored]

Vs throwing the whole die away because you don't sell enough systems that small?

Its hard to tell, but intel still has a strong markup on 24 core parts being sold from 28 core dies. Intel has often be "caught" down selling parts to protect their higher margin parts. (AKA they are selling parts with things disabled that work)

[LegitShady]

they weren't "Caught" - binning is a common practice in the cpu industrty. this isn't a problem

[StillBored]

I wasn't talking about binning, I was talking about when you have binned at a certain level, but the product is sold under its capability because you want to maintain the illusion of scarcity of the better parts.

AKA its a perfect part, but its being sold with a couple cores disabled or at a frequency below whats its capable of.

[LegitShady]

You won't even know if it's a perfect part. There is likely a microscopic defect on a part of the cpu they can turn off that disqualified it from being perfect or having a feature of the high end part.

[johncolanduoni]

That’s part of binning and is common across manufacturers. There used to be some nvidia chips where you could reprogram the firmware and have a decent chance at getting a quadro for a fraction of the cost.