Seihyouken said:
I'm sure I don't need to tell you of all people that the revision coming later this year isn't simply swapping the 65nm Cell for the 45nm one. It goes a lot deeper than that. Pretty much the entire innards of the console will be restructured. Heatsinks, outer air vents, and other internal components will be reduced in number, reduced in size, and in some cases removed entirely |
ok, some reality check here:
a) Going from 65nm to 45nm, the die size is reduced by about 30% (175 to 120 mm^2) so you get roughly 25% more dies out of your wafer (more dies means more safety area waste). Running a wafer through the fab cost you around $10'000 per wafer and you get about 320 (65nm) or 400 (45nm) dies out of it. So the pure difference in manufacturing cost of a PS3 cell chip is around $5-$15 (times 1.yield differences which number noone ist going to tell you). Now if you go from 65nm to 45nm as a customer (as Sony is one, actually the _only one_ for the cell chip), you pay production costs, not manufacturing costs, as a rule. It takes _a lot_ of money to research and develop and test a 45nm fab line, and you as the customer have to pay for that, too (you don't think the fab throws up a cool $1b for free?). In essence, the savings will be zero for Sony for the intial few million cell chips (until these setup costs are recouped by the manufacturer).
b) The new 45nm dies will be put into the very same chip carrier the 65nm dies use. That's just the way it is, chip carriers are normed (and basically the size is defined by the pin count of the die inside of it). So the geometry inside the PS3 stays the same - until Sony decides to redesign the entire unit. This likely happens when all components have reached their final design stages.
c) Changing heatsinks, vents, or case as a whole leads to an _increase_ in costs for the first batches. That is simple logic since you need new manufacturing tools to make the new stuff. In any case, we are talking cents to a few dollars max for the entire plastic and metal shielding stuff.
So what does Sony save by going from 65nm to 45nm ? The surprise answer is zero, ziltch, nada. Until the development costs are recouped. Once there, the cost savings will be in the order of $30-$50 (for both chips together). And finally, manufacturing a PS3 costs around $350 now (my estimate from industry experience, no sources available).
