JRPGfan said:
7nm wont be "ready" and cheap until probably mid way through 2019. It wouldnt be smart to start a new gen, without aiming for makeing a 7nm chip (imo).
Also because of shrinkage difficulties this might be the last gen where we see big improvements like this. Which means Playstation 5 / Xbox Two will have to be built to last a while. Interesting to see what they plan to do after silicon based chip, and how that ll translate to consoles. |
7nm will be ready by 2018. TSMC is having designs taped out for 15 customers next year.
"We have expanded our N7 design ecosystem development to include both mobile and high-performance computing, to enable our customers to deliver their first-to-market products. Our N7 adoption is very strong, with customers ranging from mobile GPU, game console, FPGA, network processors and other consumer product applications. We have more than 20 customers in intensive design engagement with us and expect to have 15 customer tape-outs in 2017. The volume production of N7 will start from first half 2018"
http://www.tsmc.com/uploadfile/ir/quarterly/2016/2izbs/E/TSMC%202Q16%20transcript.pdf
So plenty of time for a late 2019 release. Also 16nm is less than 6 months available and the PS4P had a RX480 in it so it doesn't matter whether the technology is new and "not cheap".
The new consoles also don't have to be on a smaller node for there to be a giant leap against current gen. There's plenty of gpu gens between them, hell the leap will be big between the PS4P and Xbox Scorpio(1.8TFLOP) and they're on the same node, just different architecture. Besides 16nm is already that leap from 28nm. With 2.3x the power PS4P exclusive games would make quite the difference with the og PS4.
