(Update) Rumor: PlayStation 5 will be using Navi 9 (more powerful than Navi 10), new update Jason Schreier said Sony aim more then 10,7 Teraflop

[Bofferbrauer2]

Intrinsic said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

I know that fully well.

That being said, AMD was forced to pay up for a specific amount of wafers from Globalfoundries upfront in 2015, whether they'd actually need them or not (and even pay extra if they produce chips at other foundries). Thus, AMD sold their chips to Sony and Microsoft at the lowest possible price for them to ensure they don't need to pay for unused wafers. However, since GF doesn't have a 7nm process, the deal got eased a lot and the Ryzen/Epyc chips already fulfill it, thus having no need to go as low with the price as they did this gen.

Thats not how that happened.... 

AMD had contracted a certain number of chips with GF. This is normal with thee chip contracts for everyone. The issue was that TSCM moved onto a newer process earlier than GF and AMD and its customers needed to be on tat new process.  So even though AMD and their customers had shifted onto a new process AMD was now in breach of contract with GF since they now needed  far fewer wafers from them.

They never were now selling their chips to sony and MS for some bargain bin price. I really don't know where you heard that.

AMD got forced to buy a specific amount of wafers from GF per year, what the reasons for that are is irrelevant, they had to pay even if AMD didn't need or couldn't sell any more chips from any additional wafers.

And yeah, they got bargain prices. AMD got around 100$ for the OG PS4 chip (the article write must think AMD produces hem out of thin air at no cost), and that's also what the chip did more or less cost in production. So not, AMD did not gain much from it, but was good enough to stay afloat.

Besides, NVidia said themselves they weren't interested because the margins were way too small. Like the article details, NVidia made about 10$ per PS4, which isn't very much and barely worth the work. The X1 was readily available and in surplus, so they had nothing to loose from the Nintendo deal as they needed to do zero work for it. But they stated themselves they won't do custom chips anymore, which also limits any upgrade to the Switch to an X2 unless they change their mind on it.