AMD has been keeping real Zen info much closer to their chest than Bulldozer info ever was, fueling speculation that they might have another flop on their hands

AMD has been keeping real Zen info much closer to their chest than Bulldozer info ever was, fueling speculation that they might have another flop on their hands, especially since Jim Keller left right after it taped out. Their future at this point all rides on if they can survive the next 1.5-2 years with little cash while getting Zen to the marketplace and hoping it is competitive with whatever Intel is putting out in the meantime. That being said, I think Zen is entering in a much better position to succeed than Bulldozer was - They're entering with a leading-edge 14nm process from Glofo, which has been producing for a year at this point, at good performance and yields by all accounts. Glofo's 32nm process that Bulldozer is on was less than stellar and never really achieved good power consumption. What we do know about Zen's architecture also seems much more conventional and "fat and wide" than Bulldozer, a design which Intel and AMD previous to Bulldozer were pulling off successfully for years. Bulldozer's module design might have been good in theory, but single-threaded performance suffered too much compared to the fat and wide design. If they can match Intel performance at even slightly lower price points, which seems likely given the above, I think they will easily survive the near to medium term, and if they are somehow able to do even better than that, we might be in another 2003-2007 era for Intel where they struggle to play catch up for the next few years. Seems unlikely, but you never know.