| ssj12 said: 1. Actually its not that bad of a deal since the deal also includes R&D to constantly shrink the RSX cutting manufacturing costs for the GPU and console. Cost per console started at like $70~ when the PS3 was launched. Now it probably costs like $20 max. 2. Next revision it will drop again by at least 15% for the GPU and the rest of the console due to shrinking the PSU, and mobo. |
1. Actually yes, it was a bad contract (that ran out last year). Industry rumours, as I have written in various threads before, say that Sony was pulled over the table by NVidia. We can certainly assume that the new contract (signed last year) is better now for Sony. In general, customers do not pay for R&D on die shrinks. It is up to every fab (or the company behind the fab) to stay competitive by increasing yields and doing research. If you don't, the customer walks away. You the customer implicitly pay that research if you order product from a fab (as a rough estimate, you pay $6000 wholesale for a wafer which guarantees you a certain number of working chips if you follow the fab's design rules more or less).
2. There won't be any more die shrinks. Sub 30nm fabs will be mass manufacturing sometimes late 2012, this is far too late in the life cycle for current chips. The very few fabs in operation will be used for state of the art chips, there simply will be no capacity to use them for old stuff.
