They're not staggering. They're inline with Intel's mesh uncore #'s and understood from an industry wide perspective to be what you'd expect. Intel's mesh has just about the same consumption. You want core scaling? This is what it costs. Cores don't connect via magic pixie dust. They require pretty active
high speed interconnects that burn power.
AMD has a major highway. Intel has tons of through streets. Both consume almost the same amount of power.
Compare the various thread counts
TOTAL Power Utilization between AMD and Intel. They're the same. You expect the highway to consume more power. It alleviates per
junction (core<->interconnect) power utilization. So, It is what you can expect.. More consumption on AMD's highway (Infinity Fabric) and less power consumption at the cores. This is basic multi-core computer architecture taught in college. Both Intel and AMD's approach have limits. It's a matter of tradeoffs which unironically sum to the same power envelopes albeit one cost way less to manufacture.
From a high level, should the U.S have been connected with a bunch of through streets w/ no major highways? Of course not, traffic flow would be a nightmare. The same goes for cores. You want a highway. Everybody needs to eventually make highways (this includes Intel). Highways take a lot to construct and are pretty
wasteful when they're not in use. Those interconnects have to be
hot at all times. You can't play power games w/ it.
Btw, anandtech needs to clarify how they got their #'s :
And here is the confirmation of shenanigans :
And even more confusion .. Is it IF or uncore?
Come on guys.. what is this? So, essentially my guess is that they're blindly doing some backhand calculation of subtracting core power utilization from total power utilization and
THE FIGURE THEYRE REFERRING TO IS UNCORE POWER UTILIZATION for both AMD/INTEL. In this case, the numbers
are just fine for AMD
because it has far more I/O in its UNCORE.
Reviewers need to start detailing the methodology behind arriving at these unofficial #'s.
I'm growing tired of the
IPC (Instruction per clock) like memes.