[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Your incorrect use of the term IPC discredits any opinion that you have on the technology, but I'll also add a few things to that. AMD improved the core architecture of each APU over the desktop series before them, so it stands to reason that they will do so again. AMD managed to improve power efficiency with every APU release over the previous desktop version that they're based on, so it also stands to reason that AMD improved it yet again.Intel hit a wall because they had a huge front end and memory bandwidth bottle-neck. If Intel wanted to keep using it, Netburst most certainly could be still used today with some tweaking and it'd probably do just as well as Sandy and Ivy have been doing if implemented properly.AMD does not need to trash the architecture at all and they won't need to any time soon if they don't want to. The base architecture with Piledriver still needs some work, but most of the work that needs to be done is not architectural, at least at the point of Steamroller that should be out this year or early next year at the latest. Simple evidence for this is as follows:The architecture used in the Core/Core2 CPUs and the architecture used in the Sandy and Ivy CPUs is extremely similar. Going from Nehalem to Sandy and Ivy, it's almost identical. The differences in performance are mostly from minor tweaks, cache improvements, and memory controller improvements. Have a look at the basic architecture used in each (diagrams and such can be found all over the internet) and you'll probably notice how the biggest differences between Core 2 and Sandy/Ivy Bridge in integer performance per core are the cache and memory. There's also feature support and such, but although a different, albeit related, topic from hardware differences.As such, even without looking at the front end improvements planned in Steamroller (of which there are many), given the extremely poor front end situation with Bulldozer and even Piledriver, there is undoubtedly a lot of headroom for the modular architecture in performance per clock improvements without sacrificing clock frequencies.Furthermore, chasing clock frequencies isn't even necessarily a bad way to go about this. Just compare the first Netburst CPUs to current Piledriver CPUs for proof of that. The performance difference (even when you use modern DDR3 memory to alleviate the huge memory controller issue for the LGA 775 interface) is huge, to say the least. With comparable real-world memory bandwidth for both platforms, it also becomes clear how Athlon 64 actually wasn't a huge win over Netburst architecturally.Moving on to what you said about core count, it most certainly is extremely important so long as the software can utilize the cores. For example, when all cores are properly utilized, AMD's eight-core FX CPUs easily trump Intel's quad-core i5s in overall performance. That AMD opted for high core counts in a time where most software used by people on this site, IE gaming, is generally not able to scale across large numbers of cores (large, in this case, being more than four) is arguably a decision worth criticizing. However, that's not a good reason to say that the concept itself is flawed, especially since the greatest improvements in performance over the last few years generally involve increasing core and/or thread count.For example, although we've manged to increase performance per core from a roughly 3GHz Core 2 Duo to a similar price-point 3GHz Sandy/Ivy i5 by about 50%, doubling the core count had a far greater impact on performance for work that can scale across enough threads. The same can be said going from one of the top-end Core 2 Quads to a hexacore SB-E i7 where, again, both are around 3GHz with a roughly 50% performance per core increase, but a roughly 100% increase in multi-threaded performance not counting the performance per core increase.[/citation]
Blazor, you are preaching a good surmon but to the wrong choir. He is completely out the know when it comes to AMD, why do you think he never makes a comment on the AMD conjecture thread, because he will be shot down in flames. He lives in a naive world created by the odd line picked up from Toms or Anandtech and regurgitates them on the forums in a AMD bashing tirade.
I can deal with peoples choices but simply put he never has anything good to say about anything AMD so its pointless even wasting time responding to him.
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