That's crazy. Do modern cores not also use local, integrated power regulation? I think I remember an Intel PR release about that, but I don't know the detail.
IIRC, the only part they replaced was the controller IC itself. All of the main power components (switching transistors, filter inductors and capacitors) remained off-chip.
Consider that the VRM's have as much or more silicon in them than in the host processor, and they have completely different breakdown voltage and switching speed requirements relative to a CPU.
Followup question. Now that we know it's 100 amps of current going to the chip. In a conservertive world that would be ~300 power and another ~300 ground pins. (Could be 100 of each)
Lets talk board layers. My best board was two data, one power and one ground. I was nowhere near 100 amps for current needs. How many layers in a motherboard to support this CPU?
I'm thinking that these state of the art chips are really pushing the support infrastructure of board layers and power supplies.
It's a 100 watts, so at 3.3 volts its drawing 30+ amps, so I'm guessing that a good chunk of those pins are power and ground. Is that a good theory?