fatslob-:O said:
1. Again, 7nm (equivalent to Intel 10nm) is only a tad more expensive than 14/16nm ... (the only reason I can't see Sony not transitioning to 7nm early in it's life is because of physical design costs and not manufacturing costs) I guess you took that diagram with the prices at face value, even though those where a) expectations and b) meant for when the chips are at full production, from which the 7nm process is still years away. There's a reason why AMD is still only producing test chips, and why Intel had such many problems and delays with their 10nm process. The Yields on those tests are still miles away from being good enough for being profitable. Oh, and you can't say equivalent if just the raw numbers are similar, they can be lightyears apart in performance. 2. Except PS4 slim doesn't consume 100 watts, it's already sub-100 watt TDP and could become sub-50 watt with 7nm and it's not like they'll need a high powered specialized node either since even the low powered version of 7nm will provide an automatic uplift from the original 28nm design ... The 100W was meant for the PS4 at release (134W to be precise, 136W for the Pro in 14nm). A high performance node is needed for high performance hardware like the PS4. Low performance chips are the tings embedded in Routers, Printers and the like. Unless you're going to tell me that the PS4 is nothing but a glorified Blu-Ray player, it's going to need a higher performance process and a very good yield in 7nm to be viable. 3. FD-SOI is dead much to the chagrin of the author of that article ... 4. The chart is listed as "price per millions of gates", I think you maybe getting confused here since I understood what that clearly entailed ... 5. Absolutely not true! Sony probably does modify their designs at the logic level since they've included customizations like the ID buffer but you fail to realize that there's more to a chip than just it's logic design and you need the physical design as in the designer will have to port the circuits to the physical geometries of the real chip! (chips are not just created from code but it is also printed as well) It's not completely up to the manufacturer, Sony has to acquire these PDKs (process design kits) from the specific foundries to translate the RTL code to physical design themselves cause fuck knows AMD is probably not allowed to order any significant fab capacity from TSMC ... They are asking for those modifications, but again, they are not designing any part of the chips themselves! You fail to realize what it need to have to design the damn things themselves. If Sony could do that, there would be no need to go to AMD and ask them to do so, as AMD isn't producing the chips, only designing them (=fabless) (though in fairness, the CPU would then been a POWER derived chip, not x86-64). The designs are done by AMD, the PDKs have been aquired by AMD, and AMD is producing a lot at TSMC, for instance all their GPU chips and a small part of CPUs and Mainboard chips. |
The Nintendo eShop rating Thread: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=237454
List as Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aW2hXQT1TheElVS7z-F3pP-7nbqdrDqWNTxl6JoJWBY/edit?usp=sharing
The Steam/GOG key gifting thread: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread/242024/the-steamgog-key-gifting-thread/1/