XBONE having problems with eSRAM yield. Crazy Buttocks confirms.

[sergiodaly]

drkohler said:

sergiodaly said:

but the reason MS has a bigger and more expensive chip is to allow them to use much less expensive RAM... its like this... MS= 40$ chip + 50$ mem  while sony = 30$ chip + 80$ mem (these numbers are made up just to show a POV)

That is not how it works. At the beginning of the development, you start with a blank sheet of paper and make two decisions on cpu, gpu and ram layout. First, you either go unified memory (XBox 360) or separate memory (PS3, PC). Each solution has its (dis-)advantages which have been discussed to death. Both companies went unified memory. The second decision is how to hook the gpu to the memory. The simple way is use graphics memory (expensive and fast). If you go the cheap route (ddr), you need something to offset its slow speed, which is local gpu memory (cache structured or bank addressable). Both solutions lead to the same performance if carried out correctly.

When the development started, MS already had the "entertainment angle" in sight, so they neeed a 8G ram console for all the stuff. Sony pondered on 2G or 4G ram for a games console. (At that time, 1G gddr5 PC graphic cards were "cool", 2G cards "insane", 4G cards unaffordable). MS went eSram instead of eDram (like WiiU) because of ? (? could be speed/ power/ process technology not available at 28nm/  related). Probably an 80mm^2 transistor grave or half the gpu die size...

The rest is history. 4GBit gddr5 chips became available in quantities and Sony got a last-minute deal (or it was planned intention since the clam-shell layout allowed for simple chip replacement without adding anx design costs/changes) and went up to 8G, apparently. Major piss-off for MS. Now we have Sony: $150 APU + $90 gddr5 versus MS: $220 APU + $15 ddr3 (These numbers are not made up and prices will of course go down over time but just not this year in the initial fab runs).

don't take this personally, but you said things i already know... in the end you agree with me (eSRAM its what makes the MS chip more expensive and they use eSRAM because they choose DDR3 memory type, witch is cheaper than GDDR5) after this you post similar numbers as mine but true numbers that say the same... cool man... :D
i was just trying to point something out to Slimebeast that i think he was missing in his argument with walsufnir...

BTW eSRAM instead of eDRAM is because SRAM is true cache ram and is faster, but more expensive and has more transistors (bigger in size, obviously)...