Prediction - PS3-PS4 and X360-XOne last big performance spec leap

[Bofferbrauer2]

fatslob-:O said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Don't forget the PS4 Pro APU includes the CPU, and the Jaguar CPU is very small. A Ryzen-based CPU part would be much bigger even with just half the cores

5nm will be problematic unless the PS4 releases 2021 earliest. While 5nm will probably start production in 2019-2020, the yield rates will be atrocious at first, so not really financially viable. As for EUV, well it's initial investment will be enormous and somehow the fab has to make that money back, which means more expensive wafers and thus more expensive chips. It's actually the main reason by now EUV hasn't been implemented yet, the technical difficulties have been largely solved now.

In any case, TDP will be a problem with Vega, maybe Navi can change that, but I doubt it personally

Ryzen will eventually get small too with more transistor shrinks ... 

I think PS5 will launch in 2021 and EUV research was already ammortized so not much need make the money back from research and it didn't cost tens of billions like you imagine ... 

I also don't think we'll be getting Navi, it's probably going to be the architecture after that one if PS5 releases in 2021 ...

It's not even ready yet for volume production and keeps getting pushed back. Right now Volume production is slated to start around 2019/2020 (Intel for 1919, Globalfoundries, TSMC and Samsung for 2020), though even then the WPH (wafers per hour) rate is pretty low at less than 100 compared to almost 300 for 193nm immersion lithography. What'smore is it's still about 20% more expensive to run than thraditional 193nm lithography, which compounded with the low output makes it very expensive. It's far from amortized, the big Fabs don't even have EUV ready yet. It's possible that you confuse it with DUV, which is Deep Ultraviolet Lithography and the 193nm processes actually in use (Ultraviolet starts at around 350nm already) by all the Fabs right now.

Even then, from the roadmap of Globalfoundries I can see that EUV will only be used in Conjunction with DUV, and the reason is to reduce the multiple patterning necessary with 193nm. For 7nm for instance, you'll need 4 mask patterns without EUV, which is pretty complex and prone for errors.

It also depends if ASML can actually deliver the necessary EUV Lithography devices, as they are the sole producer of them. But they just reduced the outlook for 2017 from 12 machines to only 6-7. They shipped a grand total of 20 EUV Lithography machines in the years 2010-2016, compared to 60 DUV in 2016 alone.