The General said:
More power = "4 times the processor power because theres four processors!!"
More money = "n00bs buy buy buy like they did with SLi"
Less R+D expenses = "cool, we dont have to waste our money on R+D to refine our architecture because we can just add more processors!"
[Awaiting Flankers inevitable criticism]
And it shall come.
First of all, you need to consider they way in which they obtain the extra performance. Its not from something noble, like designing an awesome new architecture. Its from something shamful and cowardly like just adding on another high-end processor. But yea, it does give more power. Now on to its effects.
More power does not equal more money. You seem to be under the impression that everybody with an Athlon 64 system is going to flock to this. They're not. Firstly, this is for the Uber-High-End. Info says that you
will not be able to use two lower-end cores together, only high-end FX processors. Now, even if someone is able to afford one FX-series processor, they probably won't be able to afford 2 of them. The people that remain are now a miniscule part of the enthusiast market. Moving on, how many people would spend $3000 on a 4X4 system to beat a $999 X6800? Take the people that can afford that, for one, and then remove all but the AMD fanboys. I don't care how much money you have, you still won't buy that.
Less R&D expenses -- Well it seems like you're one of the people that would design something like this 4x4 idea. What you wrote up there shows sheer laziness and a total lack of enthusiasm about the business. Despite all the crap I talk about AMD nowadays, I still know the company from my previous AMD experiences. And I assure you, they are not the kind of company that would design this just to get out of R&D expenses. 4x4 was something that AMD knew it would get bashed for by the enthusiast market, but it was something that it HAD to do, for business reasons. AMD is a company that is
very enthusiastic about its R&D. Thats one of the reasons they don't advertise, because they want to focus on the processors.
And they will have to redefine their architecture if they want to stand any chance at all. "Adding on more and more processors" is a flawed strategy. Its only so long before it becomes so expensive and impractical that even the greatest AMD fanboy won't touch it. Like Trotter said, its just a stop-gap solution for the time being. Although it might be interesting if AMD brings out some really nice processors later on, something better than Conroe. Now that would own. <3.
It's still lame, IMO.