I meant "ULV lineup" - the mobile parts.You're kidding zen is more efficient than anything Intel has atm, excluding Denverton.
And I didn't say they're more efficient than Zen. I said that they exist and work beautifully. So Intel can make a good purpose-built CPU for passively cooled notebooks.
Lets face it. Intel mobile CPUs work beautifully in the frugal 7.5W mode, while it's difficult to imagine a Zen+Vega package sipping under 15W (but I'd love to be surprised).
You see: since this is MCM, the bigger it is, the more efficient it gets. But it's also pretty complicated as a result: Infinity Matrix, SenseMI, large cache... a lot of things that are important for the efficiency of the whole package, but need energy as well.
The result of this could be that Zen is very effective where it's not that important (gaming desktops) and not very effective where it really matters (ultrabooks).
Look at this Ryzen review:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_3_1200/18.html
Ryzen CPUs are efficient under load, but suck at idle. All of them.
And now Vega:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_RX_Vega_64/29.html
Vega sucks at both idle and load.
BTW: Intel HD is 1-2W. I bet Infinity Matrix itself draws more.
Mobile KL and Broadwell were also released before desktop variants, Skylake and Haswell - together.If anything RR is the reason Intel might've been spooked & released mobile parts first, before desktop CFL.
Mobile segment is way more important for Intel. That's where the new tech goes first.