> The advantage for AMD is that they've built a single design: the Zeppelin die. RyZen is simply one Zeppelin. Threadripper is two Zeppelins. And EPYC is four Zeppelins.

While a popular meme, this is not actually true. Epyc is actually a totally different die, stepping B2 vs the B1 die used in Ryzen+TR.

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_7/1800x

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/epyc/7601

The 2700X is actually on a different die as well, and Raven Ridge on another. There will probably be another die for Banded Kestrel, if AMD ever gets around to releasing that. Presumably, their embedded SOC products are their own die as well.

So, about 5 dies per generation, across AMD's lineup (Epyc, Ryzen, APU, Atom, and embedded SOC). They're using about half as many dies as Intel is - still a significant difference, but far from the "one die for the whole lineup!" meme.

The big difference is that they're serving the whole server market with one small die, vs the three that Intel uses.

Of course, a small die isn't all roses either - both mfrs limit you to 8 dies per system, so right now with an 8-core die AMD systems are limited to 64-core systems (dual-socket Epyc) versus the 224-core systems that you can do with octo-socket 28-core Xeons. But, not everybody needs a million-dollar octo-socket system either.

Once AMD takes a node advantage that advantage will be diminished somewhat, but Intel's 10nm woes are a whole different story ;)