Part chip design, part 7nm being unexpectedly good.
But the chiplet architecture, supported by fast Infinity Fabric interconnect is what puts AMD ahead. Intel will have to go same route to stay competitive. And now they are two steps behind.
Chiplets were for sure an amazing bet AMD made that’s paid off big time.
The smaller dies and modular setup even on the same die gives them so much flexibility in their binning and package integration and must keep defect rates much lower than Intel’s monolithic high core count chips.
Intel has some very impressive chiplet technologies in house, aka EMIB. It's surprising they haven't used it for anything but that weird 8809G yet, but I'm sure it'll be used in more products next year.
But the chiplet architecture, supported by fast Infinity Fabric interconnect is what puts AMD ahead. Intel will have to go same route to stay competitive. And now they are two steps behind.