Intrinsic said:
Sigh.... An R9 290x has 40 compute units, each compute unit is made up of 64 shader cores, as I'm sure you know. The PS4 has 20 CUs. A "good" 290x chip will have all 40 of those compute units working. A "good" PS4 chip requires only 18 of its 20 cores working. If AMD/Nvidia pay let's just say $10k for a wafer that has 100 chips on it, and expect that 1 in every 10 chips is probably defective, then they are efeectively paying for just 90. And if 3 in every 10 are bad then they are paying the same $10k but now for only 70 chips. Sony circumvents this problem because out of those 100 chips on that wafer, Sony will be able to use practically every single one, cause even if a chip is defective that defect will most likely not affect more than one CU or at worst two of them. simply meaning they can meet a higher yield. And also that they can move onto new fabrication processes faster. Don't know how else to explain his to you. But let's just agree to disagree and see what happens in 12-18 months. |
Ofcourse the chances of a smaller chip to work are higher. But if that happens Nvidia and AMD will roll out first their mid sized 20nm GPUs before the big ones enter. Sony and MS chips wont give AMD such a high margin so obviously they will first make some profits with selling their 20nm GPU line up. But the APUs of Ps4 and Xone also have CPU Cores on them so they are quite big. The profit margin on the APUs in both consoles are very slim so why would AMD waste their precious capacities on something that is contractually fixed already. 20nm for PS4/Xone will come but only when the process matured enough and they made first some bucks on their own PC GPUs. This is way more important for the Industry then the PS4 chips since the progress is halted and tons of other industries wait for more computing power. Consoles are not the priority they will first start to profit from 20nm when it became fairly cheap. In the beginning 20nm will not be profitable for Consoles. Think about it the newer GPUs will cost as much as the whole consoles and more. My point is that before there is not even a 20nm line up announced a release date we will definetly not see a 20nm APU in consoles. The size difference between high end gpus and the APUs is way smaller then the size difference between Phone chips and the APUs. There is a factor of 10 between them while there is a factor of not even 2 between PS4/Xone Apu and the biggest Nvidia/AMD GPU. If you can make Console APUs on 20nm you can also roll out the new GPUs. GTX 680 is just 294mm2 both APUs are way bigger. 500-600mm2 is the biggest.
All rumors and pictures of a Slim version of the PS4 are fake aslong we havent even an announced release date for 20nm GPUs thats simple logic. In 18 Months the landscape could be different but I doubt Sony or MS will get the capacities at a cheaper or atleast same price then their current 28nm APUs any time soon. There is a huge pend up demand for 20nm we haven seen a node shrink for GPUs since December 2011 that was more then 3 years ago. Also historically AMD/Nvidia first bring their super expensive Flagship GPU on a new node before the others roll out due to the way higher profit margin. My guess would be 2017/2018 Slim Versions maybe 20nm will even be totally skipped the PS4 is fairly small. the Xone needs a Slim way more then the PS4. So there is no way Sony does it before its not way cheaper to redesign the thing.
