Quote Originally Posted by flyck View Post
Because it is the Cpu that consumes the power budget, not the gpu. The gpu is actually very clean and extremely efficient. (it is a complete marvell... far exceeding the efficieny of SB or any other gpu we know at the moment). They need the high voltages to get yields on the cpu, not the gpu. While it probably would do better without the gpu in the yield department. BD is also suffering issues on the 32nm node. So doubling the llano cores, adding fast l3cache will explode on the current process.... Currently having 50W for 4cores@2,6GHz with proper yields is pushing it for llano.... try double that, add cache and 1,5Ghz and see where that would get you. (most likely to a nuclair generator as power supply..).

I am not talking about the possibilities on a good working process, because that would affect BD also in a positive way.
How do you know that it's the CPU and not the GPU that consumes the power budget? Besides, the silicon and design could be limited by the compatibility with the GPU.

A Phenom II X6 at 32nm would be almost half the size of a Thuban if caches scales as good as cores when shrinking the process. BD must significantly outperform Thuban to justify this change in architecture.