lol more than 20 comments and nobody explained why the BOM is high for Xbone than PS4.
Patcher is right about the differnce between BOM and prices but I can't say the values are these he is claming.
...........
Now I will try to explain the difference between the PS4's APU and Xbone's APU.
PS4's APU
* 8-core Jaguar CPU
* 18 CUs GPU
* Memory controller
* 3 billion transistors
* < 300 mm² in 28nm
Xbone's APU
* 8-core Jaguar CPU
* 12 CUs GPU
* Memory controller
* 32MB eSRAM
* Fixed units: Data Moves, etc
* 5 billion transasistors
* > 400 mm² in 28nm
What define the cost and the complexity of chip? The size and how many differente parts the chip have inside it. So the Xbone's chip is huge (billion transistors > 400mm²5) and have a lot of differnt part inside it (eSRAM, Data Move, etc).
So Sony have the advantage...
In a 300mm Wafer you can produce 150 chips of the 300mm² size.. in the same 300mm Wafer you can produce only 100 chips of the 400mm² size (not real numbers... just for comparison... I used the 40nm processo... in 28nm you can produce more chips too). The cost of a Wafer is fixed... so paying the same Sony can have more chips per Wafer than Microsoft... the cost of the PS4 APU is cheaper than Xbone APU.
That not end here... you have a percentage of chips that pass in the tests for real use... so a simple and good production of chips have a margin close to 90% of the chips are GOOD... a complex and bad production (issues) have a margin below 50% of the chips are GOOD.
So using the same cost for the Wafer... I will use $10,000... and using the 80% good chips for PS4 and 50% good chips for Xbone... I can estimate these costs...
PS4: $10,000 / 120 (80% of the 150 chips are good) = $83 per APU
Xbone: $10,000 / 50 (50% of the 100 chips are good) = $200 per APU
I don't how the cost of the Wafer used to produce the chips... I can guess a value from $5,000 to $8,000 (these are the cost I remember from the 40nm process)... and I don't know the percentage of GOOD chips or the real die-size of the Xbone or PS4 APUs.
But I can say for sure... the Xbone's APU is more complex to produce end and at least 40% more expensive than the PS4's APU.
MS will never catch PS4 in APU costs in this generation... the difference is simple:
PS4: small (3 billion transistors) and simple (CPU, GPU and memory controller)
Xbone: big (5 billion transistors) and complex (CPU, GPU, memory controller, eSRAM, DataMove, etc)
The percentage of the GOOD chips per Wafer for PS4 will be always better than Xbone too.
