Quote Originally Posted by Darakian View Post
A dumb shrink is the term given to shrinking a core without giving a redesign, ex. newcastle to winchester in the athlon 64 days. As I recall the only benefit to doing a dumb shrink is to lower the power consumption.
And to get things tested so the new architecture can be designed better. Its why new node + new arch atr the same time almost always have problems of some sort. Just look at Phenom I and Bulldozer. All fixed with subsequent core tweaks because of too many issues from trying too much at once. Steamroller looks great on paper, I just hope it executes well since it is a shink and somewhat of a core re-design again. Granted, at least its not a 100% architecture change so it has more hope than Bulldozer did.