By: Heikki Kultala (hkultala.delete@this.iki.fi), October 30, 2015 3:45 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
> The fact AMD Zen provides 256-bit AVX compatibility via fusing 2x 128bit units
> shows that they consider 256-bit software is relevant enough to be supported.
AVX has been out for about 5.5 years when Zen will be released and was supported by many earlier AMD processors. They just have to support AVX.
> The real reason why AMD Zen is stuck with 128bit units can be cache/memory bottlenecks or Skybridge
> (pin and inside compatibility of both K12 and Zen) or simply saving die space or .
The width of the FPU's has nothing to do with the external pins of the processor. There are zillion different-width buses between them.