AMD Keeping Core Count High With Focus on Octa-Core Zen Hardware

AMD’s upcoming CPU architecture, codenamed Zen is long overdue and according to the company’s CEO, Lisa Su will offer a 40% IPC improvement over Excavator. As a result, enthusiasts are excited by this prospect and hope AMD can produce something which rivals Intel and instigates a pricing war. This is needed because Intel holds a very strong position in this market, and it would be beneficial to see AMD regain a stronger foothold. The concrete details surrounding Zen are unclear until official confirmation but sources close to Bitsandchips.it claim:

“AMD will produce just the 8 “Zen” Cores Die, at least initially. This strategy will save a lot of money, because AMD has just to design a single Die. From this single Die, AMD will be able to commercialize 8 cores and 6 cores Zen CPUs in the retail market (maybe, with and w/o HT enabled). Also, in case of bad yields, OEMs/ODMs can use 4 cores Zen CPUs. So, no dual core Zen CPUs.”

This makes business sense due to the way manufacturing yields work and it looks likely that AMD will focus their efforts on producing 8-core Zen products, then 6-cores at a more affordable price point. I also believe that Intel’s stubbornness to only offer a 4-core, 8-thread CPU on the Z170 platform for now and beyond (if reports are correct) allow AMD to capture this section of the market. Hopefully, the statement surrounding the 40% IPC improvement comes to fruition and AMD has an innovative product line which will help them to be a financially better position.