They say that you can't just do a straight die shrink of a CPU; it has to be re-designed in a lot of ways.
That said, I think AMD could bring an 8-core "thuban" to the 32nm process if they wanted to. You never know though; they might run into problems by going that route as well.
It probably wouldn't take too many engineering resources to effectively "fix" bulldozer *and* create this 8-core "thuban". It will be interesting to see what AMD does. I could see Bulldozer being an excellent server/workstation CPU if they can get the power consumption in check. The problem is that they made the pipeline too long and effectively created a souped up "hyperthreading" type of setup. The Pentium 4 proved that this type of arrangement creates a hot CPU that has horrible power consumption. Why on earth they chose to emulate that type of design approach is beyond me. Their CEO deserved to be fired. In fact, whoever made those decisions should be fired. I hope for their sake that they are marketing people and not engineers or designers.
That said, I think AMD could bring an 8-core "thuban" to the 32nm process if they wanted to. You never know though; they might run into problems by going that route as well.
It probably wouldn't take too many engineering resources to effectively "fix" bulldozer *and* create this 8-core "thuban". It will be interesting to see what AMD does. I could see Bulldozer being an excellent server/workstation CPU if they can get the power consumption in check. The problem is that they made the pipeline too long and effectively created a souped up "hyperthreading" type of setup. The Pentium 4 proved that this type of arrangement creates a hot CPU that has horrible power consumption. Why on earth they chose to emulate that type of design approach is beyond me. Their CEO deserved to be fired. In fact, whoever made those decisions should be fired. I hope for their sake that they are marketing people and not engineers or designers.