Consumption trend with changes in the Vcore and production process

Assuming that the CPU consumption is 125W under Lynx full load, considering the efficiency of the VRMs and the power supply and considering 1.2V as a reference Vcore and 250W as reference consumption for the entire system, you can calculate an approximation of the power dissipated by the CPU to each of these supply voltages. With Vcore of 1.1 volts, the system absorbs 215W, 35W less. Considering the loss in the VRMs and the power supply, this translates into just about 20W less absorbed by the CPU, i.e. 105W. The Vcore of 1.1V was chosen for the following reason: in ISSCC declarations of February 2011, a Bulldozer module was credited with a supply voltage between 0.8 and 1.3 V. From the AMD data sheet we know, however, that now a module Bulldozer requires 0.9 to 1,415 V depending on the frequencies. This leads us to suppose that the 32 nm Global Foundries production process requires approximately 0.1V more than expected. If Global Foundries would, over time, improve the process so you can get Bulldozer modules operating at 1.1 V, this would mean that the 4 modules CPU would consume a maximum of 105W at 3.6GHz. Not to mention that an improvement of the process may also lead to reductions in leakage. And if this process would improve to the point where they can afford higher frequencies than 3.6GHz with 1.1V, the upper limit would be given only by the 125W TDP. Assuming the power consumption goes linearly with the frequency at the same Vcore, we would have a default frequency of 4.285Ghz, i.e. close to 4.3GHz, up to 700MHz. This could have been the default frequency of Bulldozer, with a Vcore of 1.1V, if the production process had been more mature. We hope that Global Foundries is able to improve its 32 nm process in order to approach or exceed this level of consumption, whereas Intel with a 32nm HKMG process, but bulk, can get 3.4GHz and beyond on an architecture with a much higher FO4 (24-26 the FO4 of Sandy Bridge, against about 17 of Bulldozer), with a Vcore of 1.2V. On the Intel production process, a CPU with FO4 of 17, i.e. at least 40% lower than that of Sandy Bridge, excluding consumption problems, could go at a frequency of at least 30% higher than that of Sandy Bridge, at the same Vcore. That is a CPU with FO4 equivalent to that of Bulldozer, implemented on Intel's current production process, at 1.2V, excluding consumption problems, could go at over 4.4GHz.