AMD to start Bulldozer AM3+ production by March 2011, launch in April 2011

[Apokalipse]

Time*quantity/per core= performance
Even if Amd will have more cores, if they don't reduce also the time in wich a core do the operationS iT's ussless...

Of course they are increasing per-core performance. The only question is how much.
I think most likely IPC will at least reach i7 level if not SB level.

Then there's the question of frequency, which depends on manufacturing and materials.
With 32nm and HKMG we can expect better frequencies for sure - again, only question is how much.

And power efficiency depends on a combination of manufacturing, materials, design

Performance depends on a combination of IPC, frequency, and memory access (getting data to/from the cores fast enough for the cores to keep working).

looking at IPC alone only gives you a part of the picture, and looking at frequency alone only gives you part of the picture