Based on the rumors and the things I know as a facts it seems that AMD is putting most of the effort in Zen server platforms / infrastructures and the desktop platform (AM4) will be the runt.
The rumor says that AMD will be releasing three different server platforms and a single desktop platform. All of them are supposed to use different packages for the CPU. If that's really the case, then the infrastructures alone require a huge amount of work D: All of the different infrastructures will be implementing the same exact silicon (die), only the quantity and the fuse configuration varies, allegedly :sneaky:
Based on the recent testing I've done, I think we have reached a point where in certain workloads even the 8C/16T Zen will need to be able to better the operating frequency of Intel 4C/8T SKL / KBL parts in order to match their performance.
I have no idea what kind (if any) IPC improvements Kaby Lake will bring, however the situation doesn't look too great for Zen in the light of the projected 40% IPC improvement over Excavator :'(
X265 1.9+141 (GCC 5.3 x86-64 / YASM 1.30)
Settings: Preset = Medium, RC = CRF 16.0, ME = 3 (Star)
Input: YUV 420P8 1920x1080, 30fps
ST
Steamroller (CMT/P)
Steamroller (No-CMT/P)
Excavator (AVX2)
Excavator (No-AVX2)
Haswell
Skylake
Thanks to Acizco for testing
So:
Excavator (AVX2) = 1.25fps
Steamroller = 1.26fps (+0.8%)
Excavator (No-AVX2) = 1.30fps (+4%)
Haswell = 2.36fps (+88.8%)
Skylake = 2.55fps (+104.0%)
Adding 40% to the performance of Excavator is still like shooting a speeding locomotive with a BB-gun (even Skylake would still have ~46% higher IPC, and Kaby Lake is not even out yet...)