Power 7 CPU - 8 cores

[Hattig]

If I'm not mistaken, PA6T is a mobile PPC970 ... and IIRC, PPC970 is a Power6 stripped and modified for desktop?

So it is not generations behind, even if it runs circles around (PA6T might be better in performance per watt).

Nope, PA6T is a completely different design to the PPC970.
The PPC970 was derived from POWER4 IIRC.

Power7 is a very nice chip, but the closest we will get to it as consumers will probably be a next generation console, if any of them use the basic core in their designs (i.e., WiiU, XBox720 - PS4 is most likely x86 according to the rumours).

[Hattig]

7nm is the current silicon wall that everybody is agreeing on (although it used to be 10nm, and before that 14nm, so don't bet on it not being worked around eventually).

[Hattig]

So just make the chips bigger... I don't see a problem with that. Make the chip the size of current motherboards for all I care... Just make faster chips, whatever it takes. :laugh1:

Unfortunately yield drops by the square of the increase in chip area.

Fortunately technologies such as Silicon Interposer, Through Silicon Via, etc, will allow for many smaller dies to be used as a single chip, via various implementations of die stacking.

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/05/hot-chips-talks-all-about-chip-stacking-good-and-bad/
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/06/die-stacking-has-promise-and-problems/