> After core counts, the next battle will be on the interconnect. Low power, scalable, and high performance: process node scaling will mean nothing if the interconnect becomes 90% of the total chip power.

I think this means that scaling processors to more cores (nodes) in a lightweight-NUMA scheme just isn't going to work.

My guess going forward is that the core counts will stay at the current level for quite a while, and that both AMD and Intel will optimize the heck out of their interconnects, using most power budget gains to bolster the actual cores.