I don't think big little is a good idea for servers.. Better power stepping would do the same thing without needing to sacrifice performance on any of the cores.
Big little on desktop also doesn't seem like a good idea. I just don't see the attraction. Saving $20 a year on my electric bill isn't really a concern and I wouldn't be buying high end components if it was. Even at mid range it doesn't seem necessary. A "big" core could run at a lower clock and essentially save as much energy while also able to clock up if needed.
Ryzen is technically ready for big little and was from gen 1. They could easily put "little" cores in a CCX and call it a day... But why?.
Now if we are talking laptops & netbooks it's a different story and makes complete sense. It also would kinda make sense for the low end desktop APU's.
Honestly I think Intel did it just to increase core counts so they didn't look bad compared to Ryzen.
They beat Ryzen... Which is a year old but AMD is releasing the refresh with the 3d vcache which will likely give it the advantage again and with a year old core.
If AMD puts just a little more focus on IPC then Intel would be even further behind. Imagine AMD matching IPC with Intel on every generation going forward... It would do some serious damage to Intel across all sectors. There would be no reason to pick Intel over AMD for any application, big little or not...
Big.little is just the way of the future, it doesn't matter if none of us wants it or can use it, intel's whole stack of skus mobile, desktop, server is going to switch over to it, it's the only way to get enough compute into a small enough space to be able to make them at the crazy amount of volume needed to supply the whole world.
It uses less resources and is cheaper to make and cheaper for the customer.
Also, at least for now, there will be several skus without e-cores so people can choose what they want.
Also comparing alder lake against a year old Ryzen isn't exactly a fair comparison lol. Why was Intel stuck on 12nm for like a decade? Why did Intel change from nm to their new naming scheme? Oh because they are still being..ok.got it.
Why did AMD not bring anything out at the same time as alder so that we wouldn't compare against a year old ryzen? Oh because they don't even have fabs and are forced to wait in line until tsmc can give them some wafers.
Adding 3d vcache to a year old architecture is going to put amd back on top lol....that's genuinely sad. Also it doesn't double the silicon or "area" used. It's stacked cache. Think HBM.
Yeah on top of the most waiting time until you can get them, how many do you think they will be able to make.
Yeah because it's stacked you don't need any wafer to produce it, it just magically appears stacked above your main cores.