Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[wbmw]

Re: Because they want their partners to have as few surprises as possible.

No, this is not correct. When you tell someone to design a power delivery system that must deliver x amps in order to power the processor at y volts, it is a maximum design constraint and therefore completely frivolous to force a cooling solution to support x * y watts. This is because delivering x amps comes with plenty of padding (else the system would be dangerously close to underdelivering current to the processor, which would cause instability problems); so if current gets even close to the max value, it is only for micro-seconds (and most of the time it isn't even close). Furthermore, cooling solutions are designed to support power levels in excess of the stated power for long periods of time, until the contact points exceed the stated temperature of Tcase. Therefore, cooling solutions can be rated much lower than x * y without the temperature exceeding Tcase or getting anywhere close. However, AMD forces the cooling solution to support x * y watts, but it's conservative to a fault and causing them to appear weaker competitively.