Heikki Kultala (hkultala.delete@this.iki.fi) on November 4, 2015 1:30 am wrote:
>
> > I think Zen will be expensive because (i) there are many more transistors than
> > Excavator, (ii) the FinFET node is not cheap, and (iii) AMD needs the money.
> >
> > I think AMD will be behind in efficiency, unless drops clocks enough to compensate.
>
> I'm quite sure that
> 1) one Zen core(including l2)(which executes 2 hw threads) has much less transistors than an excavator
> module(which also executes 2 hw threads) while having the much better single thread performance.

I doubt that "much less".

> 2) Two Zen cores+their L2 caches have less transistors than a steamroller module.
>
> But just comparing amounts of transistors are not apples to oranges comparisons.
>
>
> And, the sizes of the cores itself are a very small part of the area(and
> even smaller part of the transistor count) of modern SoC chips.

I am comparing on core per core basis because I want to compare octo-core CPU to octo-core CPU and quad-core APU to quad-core APU.

If you want compare Zen core to modules, don't forget that top FX CPU is four module, but top Zen CPU will be octo-core, and one module is not twice bigger than one Zen core, but are about same size.