AMD Istanbul chip die picture

[gallardo]

Here's what Hans has to say:

It's probably not a bad idea for AMD to take advantage of their relatively
small core size. At 45nm it can cram two cores (with 256 kB L1 total) into
30mm2. A single Nehalem core with 256 kB L2 also occupies ~30 mm2.

So in terms of IPC/mm2 you get two cores against one core with 2 threads.

Yeah... if only there would be an aircooler capable of keeping a 700 mm2 AMD chip from overheating.

And they probably need to do 2 real cores against 2 of Nehalem's threads to keep up anyway...