Quote Originally Posted by savantu View Post
Intel's design cycle is 4 years old.
No, it's 5 years.

Secondly Nehalem was designed to be completly modular , you can modify it much easily than older designs , that is you don't have to redo everything.
With this extra flexibility Intel can choose between IMC or not , integrated graphics or not , etc.
That's true, but all the performance data for with/without IMC and such take months to complete. Most of this stuff will have been decided many months in advance.

What I mean is this : FSB is out of breathing room ; you can't go over 1600MHz with ease , the technicals hurdles are staggering and the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

While it might be fine for notebooks , on desktops once the core count reaches 4 and above the limitations start to pan out.
That's true. That's why they're switching to CSI.