It will be 20 real cores. They got a new top tier engineer from the successful days of the Athlon 64. I'm sure its possible. Windows 9 and Directx12/Mantle will take advantage of the core count better. The future will be multicore. Clock speed is over with. You can't get much faster anymore without generating too much heat. Only way now is to increase the amounts of CPU's aka cores in the system to increase the processing power. IPC optimizations will only get so far. I'm sure we are at a point where the focus now is at core count. They got G34 Opteron 16 core cpus already. I wouldn't be surprised if they upgraded the memory controller to DDR4 and added 4 more cores with the latest tech they could hit at least 3-4ghz. They can already hit 3.2ghz at 115watts right now with 16cores. AMD is making a secret weapon mostly. AMD might come out on top this time :sneaky:
I really like and agree with what you say, but unfortunately there are two major obstacles to solve first.
In summary the laws of physics (diminishing returns, overly expensive chip plants, ever increasing energy (Electricity) prices, limited practical TDP and customers not willing to pay three times as much, to get 4.6 GHz rather than 4.5 GHz (Exaggeration!) mean that sooner or later, a massive number of (probably) relatively low clocked cpu cores, is the likely future direction, especially in the very long term.
The two (or more) major obstacles are:
(1)..There would need to be massive improvement/updating/innovation/invention with the existing software base, and especially future software, to properly/efficiently/usefully utilise many core processors (of the future).
For various reasons, this could take a long time, and be extremely difficult. It is not simply a matter of latter versions of windows (9), Linux or similar (FreeBsd etc) to improve themselves, as mostly it is the applications themselves that would need to be considerably revised.
tl:dr
We have had this problem for about the last fifty years. (i.e. mainframes, and about 30 years ago the
Transputer). There has been some progress, but most programming languages in common use today, have little/poor/incomplete multi-core/multi-thread support.
(2)..It would need to sell in huge quantities (i.e. most/many people/businesses would need to choose 20 core cpu computers over dual/quad cored ones.
So we would need "KILLER" applications.
But by and large, no such applications really exist to any extent yet.
E.g. Gaming is still mostly about how expensive/good a graphics card (or on chip IGP) you get.
There is some stuff like Chess/Video editing and such, which can already use multi-cores/threads with great efficiency, but it is not a major thing for most people.
Even a low cost dual/Quad core cpu, can do a decent enough job of playing Chess or video editing, that the massive extra cost of the current hex cored (socket 2011) stuff (soon to be replaced by Haswell-E[EP]) is just not worth the massive extra cost.
So even if AMD brought out a decent 20 cored (FX/APU) chip, it would be difficult to sell it at a significantly higher cost over a decent dual/quad cpu, with "TODAYS" software. Except the massive server market, which would gobble them all up in a milli-second, if they were competitive with Intel, overall.
(Enthusiasts would still get it, I might even by 2 or more, lol).
Probably it is because people like weird things, so people made weird rumours to satisfy the demand for those. Just expecting a proper SMT core is fine enough IMO, and it is always better to set your bar of expectation lower - at least not 20 core in the first wave of products. Eww.
Yes, I'm a big sucker for any rumour, of new affordable high core count cpus.
I'm still crossing my fingers on someone bringing out, e.g. 32 core Arm Cortex A57, at reasonable cost, available on the mass market.
Maybe AMD might do just that, eventually (as an 8 core one, Opteron A1100, is suppose to be coming out reasonably soon).