I would be curious as to how many chipsets back these could go to. 300 series? That would mean that if I built a Zen system I could upgrade it 4 generations...
I also would be curious as to how easily you could shoehorn a Zen 4 chiplet into a 5800X package. Is the Infinity Fabric identical? What sort of motherboard interfaces actually pass right through the I/O die into the CCX? Do we use better bins because of the lower power limit or worse ones with lower to not cannibalize sales of AM5? More cores or less? Zen 4 with V-Cache? So many questions...
That's what I asked - AMD proved they can mix and match IO dies with different gen CCX (Zen 2/Zen3 are the same IO die)
Intel definitely got one thing incredibly right (both brands tried this to limited extent, but intel took it furthest) - we DO NOT NEED every CPU Core to reach the same clock speed and performance. Single threaded apps are just that, and we only need 2-6 of these high performance cores, multi threaded loads can be happily spread over a greater amount of lower speed efficient cores instead.
If the memory controller and IO die don't change majorly, it absolutely could work on 300 series chipsets since memory support, USB ports, PCI-E lanes etc wouldn't change (I think that's AMD's goal with the newer unified AGESA. They seem to have long-term support on AM4 as a marketing weapon to use for AM5)
The big questions is: Will we see Zen 4 + Zen 3 in the one CPU package for a P/E core type scenario?
What about 3D cache cores mixed with regular cores?
Imagine a 5950x3D, where one die was the 5800x3D and the other two were regular zen 3 - if the OS could handle assigning the cores correctly (thanks to intel, that should happen in win 11 at least) they'd have a golden goose where they can mix and match high clocking dies as P cores and low clocking ones as E cores
They already have their preferred cores system so this would just expand on it, would it not?
Theres zero indication this IS whats happening and it's just my imaginary wishlist but after seeing intel successfully do it, i'm sure the AMD guys are trying to see if they can as well
My bonus explanations:
We can get halfway to this already on Zen3
Per CCX overclocking lets you set CCXs to different clock speeds, and windows 10/11 already seem to deal with that problem free
Some ASUS boards let you have base clock controlled by per-CCX while still doing PBO for low threaded clocks
AMD already showed they can re-use an IO die between generations
The only missing piece is can they do an intel legally without trademarks and patents getting in the way, and mix different generations together - and when they've got Zen 3, Zen 4, and 3D V-cache designs (as well as APU designs) to draw from it could get damned interesting
Hell what will next gen consoles be like with 4 3D cache cores + 8 E cores?