Former AMD exec: Xbox One APU project worth over $3 billion

[Soleron]

zarx said:

Birimbau said:

cell = 500 million dollars

 

It's hard to believe, because 1,2 TFLOP is so underwhelming for 3 billion...

It was $400m but the CELL was just a CPU tho, and that was just the R&D budget not including the licensing costs over the life of the console. An APU with CPU and GPU (and custom memory system with ESRAM, etc) plus licensing over the life of the console is of course going to cost a lot more than just R&D of a CPU. 

The expensive part was the factories (fabs) Sony owned to produce it. They were expecting higher chip yields (less failed ones) and higher volumes (more PS3s sold) to make back the investment.